News to keep an eye on while waiting to find out if the FAA issues their environmental approvals for Starbase Boca Chica. At least they haven't already delayed it. It seems like a lot of milestones need to be completed by Monday, the 28th, but we'll see.
I need to remind you all of something. The Human Landing System contract that SpaceX won went through an arduous bidding process in which a group of companies were downselected into four to provide a deeper proposal, which SpaceX won. Which somehow led Blue Origin to sue NASA. Twice.
Today brought a story down that trail. Late this afternoon, 4:41PM EDT
(I think Twitter puts things in our time zone)
SpaceX's corporate account Tweeted
this, with an embedded NASA Artemis program message with a link to a
press release.
To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.
Did you notice the mention in NASA's tweet about Artemis III? I'm reading that to mean that NASA is committed to the Starship HLS (Human Landing System) through Artemis II, today's contract is to get SpaceX through Artemis III and the new "draft solicitation" for what they want is for more of the Artemis program and follow-on work on the moon.
And "oh, by the way," after the successful roll out to pad 39B, the SLS mission appointed to launch the first unmanned Artemis test mission has been proceeding smoothly toward the Wet Dress Rehearsal. The Artemis blog says:
... teams have connected numerous ground support equipment elements to the rocket and spacecraft, including electrical, fuel environmental control system ducts, and cryogenic propellant lines. Teams successfully powered up all elements of the integrated system at the pad for the first time on March 21 in preparation for the wet dress rehearsal test planned for April 1-3.
April first is one week from Friday, so blink twice and it will be here.
On Monday, Elon Musk tweeted an important message for people watching Starbase operations.
First Starship orbital flight will be with Raptor 2 engines, as they are much more capable & reliable. 230 ton or ~500k lb thrust at sea level.
We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test.
Because of the differences between the connections to Raptor 2 engines vs. the Raptor 1 that Starship SN20 and Booster 4 were built to handle, this means they will not be doing an orbital mission. It probably means their service life is either over already or close to it. B4 and S20 have been used for an uncounted number of tests, were stacked
yet again last weekend for some more ground support equipment tests,
and de-stacked again. They will be on display at the "museum" where other prototypes rest, or maybe a "real" museum.
Musk also explicitly confirmed that they would be replaced with a new ship/booster pair in a later tweet. For weeks now, the chatter on the Lab Padre channels have been that the first orbital flight will be Booster 7 and Ship 24.
Unfortunately, I'm forced to think that a May launch is "Elon Standard Time" and that probably means June or July.
Interesting that the contract for Artemis III includes making the HLS renewable, which I thought the Starship HLS already was. Wonder what's going on behind the scenes there.
ReplyDeleteNelson also stated that he was opening up contracts because Congress told him to. For once it sounds like it wasn't Nelson that was the problem, but LegacyAerospaceLobbyControlled Congresscritters.
As to B4S20, there have been so many tech leaps and outright changes between 4-20 and 7-24 that 7-24 are almost entirely new designs. Almost the same exterior, but not even that. So launching 4-20 really would be a waste of time, only needed if they just needed the space, which they don't at this time.
I think May might actually be the launch window. The FAA slow-rolling approval seems to have given SpaceX a lot of 'free' time to fix and improve greatly, rather than small-step incrementally.
And to add to all that, I do believe that some people who are in 'control' have seen that SpaceX is really the only 'white knight' available for heavy lifting, after the shutdown of Roscosmos, the end of Ariane 5, and, of course, the utter failure behind the engines of Vulcan.
Well, it would have been nice if they could have used 4/20 to test the viability and survivability of the heat shield tiles... but, I'm not the one calling the shots.
ReplyDeleteAnother good idea floated was to launch SN16 and 20 as tankers using B4. QD pattern is the same size/form factor.
As for Congress telling NASA to get another contractor, looks like the Space Lobby wants to pour more money down a black hole for designs that... suck. Typical of the Big Three Space Contractors...
BE-3, where are you?? Heh.
OOPS, BE-4.
DeleteOltimers disease. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
The heat shield tiles have changed significantly since 4/20. Thicker, better manufacturing, better behind the tile matting.
DeleteSeriously, the new booster and starship designs are much cleaner and better overall and in pieces-parts that launching 4/20 wouldn't teach them anything other than "It goes up." Even the attachments on the launch mount and on the arms have changed to better do things and thus leaving 4/20 in the dust.
In a way, the delays from the FAA may have enabled or even forced them to do more on the ground to answer as many questions or resolve as many problems as possible before a launch. I think the work goes back to Musk's tweets around the end of November about the Raptors needing to be changed over to Rev 2 ASAFP but the design team wasn't getting it done. ( to save you the lookup time )
DeleteThe pace of operations over there hasn't slowed down, it's just not as dramatic to watch.
It is if you look at the little things that are radically changed. Thanks to the open environment and all the watchers we are getting an unprecedented look at a good portion of the manufacturing of the ships and all the launch hardware.
DeleteSomething that we'll not probably get from the Roberts Road location on the Cape.
Elon Standard Time=decades ahead of NASA Standard Time.
ReplyDeleteNow into the end of April. FAA must not have had the right palms greased.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that the FAA is handling the EA, I'm also surprised they didn't require a full blown Environment Impact Statement; usually an EA tiers off an EIS.
ReplyDeleteParticularly since under an EIS the company usually pays the lead agency under the guise of "cost recovery".
But EIS have specific timelines and public comment periods on them which EAs don't, so if an EA can be justified, the process can be more opaque...