as long as he doesnt favor boeing/lockheed over new space

OP updated.

Final stacking and NET launch announced.

SPACEX ALONE!!


Suck it Blue Origin

Damn no love for the actual Artemis thread.

Once it's stacked and rolling out to the pad it'll gain some traction.

Since no one has posted it yet and there appear to be commenters of... special... intelligence that need to see it:

Agreed. Expensive boondoggle or not it'll be powerful and loud and I'd like to be there the first time they light it.

So we give to poor people, who will only make more poor people, right?

Did I miss it?
Who got the lander contract?

Space X

SLS:
Attached File

All the pieces are there,  ready to go,  just the program goals of integrating them together and test need to meet impossible cost,  schedule,  and performance objectives.

Kharn

The entire thing is going to be about the first woman, the first black woman, the first gay, the first transexual on the moon. I don't know if I'm looking forward to it. At least Musk will just pick the best people for the job on going to Mars.

Maybe I can buy you two a drink

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

The good news is, with Lunar Starship HLS they can fit all the "firsts" to the moon almost in one mission if they chose too.

If the man is victor glover or Johnny Kim and if the girl is anything like them than I won’t mind to much.


Astronauts usually bleed red white and blue exceptionalism.

Is the SLS launcher correct?

BREAKING: NASA have officially awarded the highly anticipated Artemis Human Landing System contract exclusively to @SpaceX's lunar Starship under stipulation that it must launch on SLS.

Attached File


Attached File

Starship will have to find its own way to the moon


SLS no mix with starship

A document on the selection criteria and why they chose SpaceX over Blue Origin and Dynetics
TLDR:
SpaceX: Proven technology and great management
Blue Origin: Disqualified for literally trying to grift NASA for advanced payments through sleight of hand bureaucratic rewording , even though those weren’t allowed in contract
Dynetics: Seem to have no idea what they’re doing in terms of development of technology needed and no firm plan
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf

I wonder what the data rights clauses look like in that contract. NASA paying Space X to learn how to land on the moon, and then them being allowed to transfer that data to the rest of the company for other efforts, would be a huge leg up.

Same if they can just make a new payload adapter and launch duplicate landers on Falcon Heavy.

Kharn

Comparison of rockets; thrust power at liftoff ? peak thrust power (peak thermal power) name (successes/total)


118,042MW ? 133,505MW (237,092MW) Superheavy-Starship (0/0)
57,528MW ? 72,129MW (137,935MW) N-1 11A51 (0/4)
53,556MW ? 62,707MW (115,563MW) Energiya (1/2)
47,677MW ? 54,277MW (128,582MW) SLS (0/0)
44,847MW ? 57,871MW (116,608MW) Saturn V (13/13)
37,544MW ? 42,749MW (98,196MW) Shuttle (133/135)
32,308MW ? 32,422MW (73,461MW) Falcon Heavy (3/3)
25,777MW ? 31,487MW (58,218MW) New Glenn (0/0)
16,939MW ? 19,189MW (37,802MW) Delta IV Heavy (10/11)

I'm a little concerned about the lopsided commercial space environment.  SpaceX kicks ass and I love them but shit if they keep getting bigger while the competition stagnates I see another ULA monopoly in the future.

I'd like to see 5+ SpaceX size companies not one juggernaut.

When Neutron comes online Rocket Lab will probably become a viable competitor to SpaceX. Rocket Lab is also sowing seeds for other companies to do what they do.

The Chinese are working on their own Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy knockoffs.

The trouble is that we are at a weird technological and financial friction point. SpaceX has proven that reusablity is very financially viable. But as of right now only a few outfits are trying to copy their techniques. Most other rocket companies are stuck in the old way of doing business.

All that said, once Starship is up and running and makes everything else comically obsolete. SpaceX will have a defacto monopoly on heavy transport and deep space. If those prove to be profitable. I think they will be. It will be a massive incentive for other companies to develop their own Starship knockoffs. As things are now though, that just isn't profitable enough for the MBA's of the world to justify the investment. Those people are risk adverse to the point where they are, in the space business right now. Slitting their own throats to save a nickel here and a nickel here. Counting on Cold War era hardware that governments already footed most of the bill for.

As I often say when discussing this stuff. Their greed gets in the way of them making money. But I suppose in this case it's more short sightedness than greed.

If Starship can deliver on half of what it promises then we will see a flowering of new space companies. Money will flow into that sector of the economy and we might have a dozen new SpaceX's. Some will doubtless be swampy fragments of old space companies. Promising little and delivering nothing. But by sheer force of cash. As SpaceX starts printing huge amounts of money from Starlink, others are going to want to get into that game and not all of them will be ludicrously incompetent.

Or who knows. It's just as likely that we will have a civil war break out and the corporatist-communists will win and drag humanity into a new feudal era. Since we can't go straight from where we are technologically to the Warhammer 40,000 universe. All of these rockets will be scrapped and space travel will become a distant, hazy memory as they showed in the movie, Interstellar.



I think this movie was overwrought and fucked up a lot of science and human behavior for the sake of drama. But this scene haunts me. Who knows, perhaps instead of teaching this they will be teaching that the world is flat in the neo-feudalist nightmare that the corporatist-communists are quickly shackling us into.

LOL, why would I want to live in that shithole of a Galaxy? There’s a million better options, and technologically....the Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisitions attitudes towards innovation and certain alien technologies are fucking everything up for the Imperium.

I have an anti-gun Senator on the pay of the Chinese who'd prove that statement wrong, unfortunately.

I think you're generally right, but once you start getting into 'firsts' (in his case, twins in space...) some of those things go out the window. And NASA has gotten increasingly political over the years.

Hey look honey! There is a lunar lander!!




My view for the weeks cigar is better yours.




Smoking a cigar. Pissing in the open by myself. Watching the future of human Spaceflight. Beat that.

If the virtue signaling of having the FIRST woman on the moon means anything, make it an all female crew.

Well, you wouldn't.

But those who wish to be the lords of Terra or the Emperor of All mankind, do want to live in such a shithole. To them all that matters is power.

Brilliant scene.

We had some of the special people here claim that movie was actually endorsing the "we never went to the moon" narrative with that scene. We have... special... people here.

I only skimmed the source selection doc but I think that helped them get such a high rating on the management volume.

I'm surprised dynetics didn't win since they were the company to beat but I knew spacex would be able to submit a unique proposal too due to their vertical integration and business cases with their commercial launches.

I originally meant for SpaceX duplicating the lander for their own missions (much easier to convince space tourists its safe when it's a NASA approved design, etc), but NASA should also certainly be thinking of a SLS-free future for when the bean counters admit it isn't good stewardship.

Kharn

subscribed!

Core Stage came out of the B2 test stand Monday.

Attached File

A fresh batch of photos has just been uploaded to the NASA site per the Artemis-1 SLS Core Stage being loaded into Pegasus.

They've already since set sail for KSC:https://t.co/zN47vFMKwC pic.twitter.com/yfrzwdldzQ

Chris B - NSF  (@NASASpaceflight) April 23, 2021

NASA’s bold bet on Starship for the Moon may change spaceflight forever

By betting on Starship, which entails a host of development risks, NASA is taking a chance on what would be a much brighter future. One in which not a handful of astronauts go to the Moon or Mars, but dozens and then hundreds. In this sense, Starship represents a radical departure for NASA and human exploration.

"If Starship meets the goals Elon Musk has set for it, Starship getting this contract is like the US government supporting the railroads in the old west here on Earth," said Rick Tumlinson, a proponent of human settlement of the Solar System. "It is transformational to degrees no one today can understand."

https://twitter.com/SpaceXFleet/status/1386794155653926917?s=20

I don't know how to do the Twitter thing.

Pegasus barge should be coming in today.

Maybe @Dagger41 will see it if he's hanging out at the port.

https://twitter.com/SpaceXFleet/status/1386995787251474432?s=20

https://mobile.twitter.com/SpaceXFleet/status/1387073820788396037

I still can't tweet

Pegasus barge with the core stage is visibe out at the buoy line Port Canaveral.

Off loading the Core stage from the Pegasus barge now.