Back on Monday, Oct. 20, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy reset the schedule for the Artemis program and return to the moon. The essence of the message was "everyone's taking too long! Everything's too expensive! I want new bids for a new lunar lander on my desk ASAP!" By the next day, Elon Musk had referred to Duffy as "Sean Dummy" and had said, “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”
Today, SpaceX let out some information on what they've been looking into.
On Thursday (Oct. 30), the company posted an update called "To the Moon and Beyond," which summarizes the progress that SpaceX has made with Starship to date and lays out the vehicle's potential to make NASA's lunar ambitions a reality.
"Starship provides unmatched capability to explore the moon, thanks to its large size and ability to refill propellant in space," the blog post reads. "One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, which is roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, and is complete with a cabin that can be scaled for large numbers of explorers and dual airlocks for surface exploration."
I knew a Starship was big, but one ship having 2/3 of the volume under pressure of the entire ISS is mind-blowing. And they're going to use that just to put four astronauts on the moon? Yes, and that's not all. But in the update, SpaceX showed a rendering of just how much room is available in Starship:
Artist's rendering of the cabin of SpaceX's Starship vehicle during an Artemis moon mission for NASA. (Image credit: SpaceX)
I don't believe I've ever read about an astronaut saying their capsule was too big and empty inside. I guess I never heard them saying it was too small, either, but nobody ever said it was so big and empty that it was creepy.
In the update, SpaceX announced they were working on two parallel design paths for Starship: the core Starship and a moon-lander upper stage exclusively for Artemis.
SpaceX is self-funding the core path, and its contract for the Artemis lander is of the fixed-price variety, "ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs," the company wrote.
In the "To the Moon and Beyond" update, SpaceX said they have already completed 49 of the milestones for the Artemis lander, including testing of micrometeoroid and space debris shielding as well as "lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control" systems. The company plans to make even more progress soon, sending a Starship upper stage to Earth orbit and completing an in-space fueling test with the vehicle in 2026, if all goes to plan.
Scott Manley has a YouTube short on this subject which is definitely worth the 80 seconds to watch. In it, Scott mentions that many have been recommending that SpaceX go over to much shorter version of Starship, and I've seen mentions of that as a way to minimize the amount of fuel they'd have to transfer to the lander. That has such a large impact on the difficulty and cost of the mission that I wouldn't be very surprised if the next time the give us something like this update that the Human Landing System of Starship instead of having 2/3 the volume of the ISS had something smaller like maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the volume of the ISS. Maybe that's the "a moon-lander upper stage exclusively for Artemis" mentioned as their second parallel design path.
I sure wouldn't bet against SpaceX. Adaptability is their specialty.
ReplyDeleteOne of the comments by Skylab astronauts was that there was just so much room. They could actually get away from each other, move without bouncing into something, and just stretch. That and the interior had many good padded areas.
ReplyDeleteIt was the overloaded schedule that made life on Skylab uncomfortable, so much so that one crew 'mutinied' over the schedule.
So, no, even with V3 or V4 Starship, we won't reach 'too much empty space' for a long time. Unless NASA does stupid garbage like send 2 people on a long-duration flight using a Starship V3 or V4.
As to a shorter stacked HLS, why? The whole land 4 people on the Moon with the HLS is a test to prove to NASA that a V3 or V4 based Starship HLS can do it, cheaper, better, faster. Yes, it's stupid. The first lander should be depositing tons of drones and supplies, the first manned lander should be depositing tons and tons of drones and supplies and vehicles and power packs and... But NASA insists on sending an empty HLS.
And the really douchy thing that NASA's done? Delaying the surface suits. So it doesn't matter how slow SpaceX is, NASA's not going to have the Moon suits till at least 2029. Whattayabet that SpaceX already is quietly developing their own Moon suits as an evolution of their first exo-vehiclular suits?
RE: your last paragraph
DeleteI'd be looking for CCP influence, incl honeypots, among NASA and contractors.
Hanlon's Razor, "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity".
DeleteThere is one issue with so much open internal space. This was found with Skylab. If an occupant gets stop in the middle of the open space they are stuck there until someone rescues them as they cant propel themselves to a wall. They actually need more compartmented space to insure that this doesn't happen. The ISS is small enough that they avoid this problem.
DeleteIt reminds me of the old joke:
ReplyDeleteAn optimist says the glass is half full, a pessimist will say the glass is half empty.
An *Engineer* says the glass is twice the size it needs to be.
I think Elon is just yanking Duffy's chain.
ReplyDeleteIf SpaceX were serious they'd have given everything a gold tint to appeal to Trump.
That artist's rendition looks an awful lot like how '50s and '60s sci-fi movies depicted the interiors of rocket ships.
ReplyDeleteIt has been a long LONG time now that nasa has been suffering from terminal cranial-rectal inversion.
ReplyDeleteThe Challenger murders pretty much set that in stone :-/