SpaceX's Starship became NASA's ace in the hole to get to the moon by 2024 | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX's Starship became NASA's ace in the hole to get to the moon by 2024

thehill.com

89 pointsbcaulfield75 comments

> The Starship is NASA’s “ace in the hole” for landing people on the moon by 2024 because in its original configuration it needs neither the Orion nor the Space Launch System to take people and cargo to and from the lunar surface.

The SLS situation is starting to get more and more awkward. The Falcon Heavy already has a lift capability that's about 2/3 of the SLS's Block 1 lift capability, and it's a real, flying rocket that is about an order of magnitude cheaper. And that's if it's flown expendable. If Starship starts flying then NASA will be pouring money into developing a booster that is worse in every way.

They made a bit of a gesture towards "let's use Orion but forget about the booster for a while" [1], but then they realized they can't dock the Orion to a Falcon Heavy. So now, all 3 of the contracts they've selected for getting to the moon [2] are without SLS at all. Everyone knew SLS was more about jobs than it was about building a good rocket, and now it's becoming glaringly obvious. If SpaceX gets Starship flying I think we'll see SLS outright cancelled.

1. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/what-is-going-on-wit... 2. https://arstechnica.com/?p=1672180

It's hard to work out the actual cost of each SLS. Especially when you're trying to take development costs into account. The lowest sensible estimate I've seen is $3 billion, but if you amortise development costs over ten launches it could be higher than $5 billion a launch. A Falcon Heavy in expendable mode can be had for $150 million, and NASA paid no development costs. So, between 20 and 35ish times more expensive (assuming nothing much more goes wrong for SLS), and Falcon Heavy is already flying.

Just one of the engines costs almost as much as a Falcon Heavy launch.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...

> If SpaceX gets Starship flying I think we'll see SLS outright cancelled.

One can only hope, I really wished Bezos had stepped up and fulfilled his promises/potential, but that's what you get when you confide in a guy that, consciously or not, looks and behaves more and more like Lex Luthor by the hour.

I personally think any Lunar expeditions are a waste of time and nothing more than geo-politics harking back to the Cold War, this time with China, and will do more create division amongst Space exploration than cohesion. But it seems NASA is resolved to do it, so its being funded and several contractors have submitted their designs [1].

If they landed tomorrow on the moon I still would think Starlink delivering on its promise and SN4/SN5 doing a launch test would still be more impressive as its success can aid to unify a fragmented Species--polarized by petty distractions and affairs that mainly try to give credence to prolonging the Nation-State model.

I'm entirely indifferent to the Moon as a habitat/colony for Humans, and aghast at the idea of a Lunar Gateway; then again that is the SLS project model that has prevailed.

1: https://spacenews.com/nasa-evaluation-sees-spacex-lunar-land...

> as its success can aid to unify a fragmented Species--polarized by petty distractions and affairs

I don't think just giving more people access to internet will be enough to unify fragmented species. Better ways of educating people will help, but just giving them access to information is like giving mosquito nets to impoverished people, they use it for fishing and pollute water with anti-mosquito compounds which breeds more resistant mosquitoes and make fish scarce. Just look at anti-vaxers and 5G conspirationists. They have access to all the information they want.

I think I can break down your post into individual arguments, but just know I don't entirely disagree with your assessment, its just that I think your conclusion is far too pessimistic.

> I don't think just giving more people access to internet will be enough to unify fragmented species.

Economic inclusion is the reason I believe it has the greatest potential, primarily on-boarding those that have been excluded from the current economic system. Read this [1] and tell me you don't see the downside to marginalizing such a large segment of the World's population and their Human Capital and how the rest of the World suffers as a result.

Education via MOOCs and other online avenues is what scales the most, thus having Educational resources available to them is critical, and for that you will need, among other things, Global connectivity.

Its sobering to think that because of China's soft-power Imperialism certain parts of Africa have greater access to 4g than they do running water is a reality, but this has to be accepted and it can serve as a foundation to build better standards of living and Education alike.

Simply dumping equipment is not sufficient, nor is a blank check from NGOs I agree; luckily the West has a long History of having people who will put themselves in harm's way (Doctors without borders) to help those less fortunate that can act as leaders to teach them how to replicate these models and build their own infrastructure to suit their environment and address the problems they encounter. Justin Wren's work [2] is an awesome example, albeit perilous in its own way, of what can happen when this pans out.

> Just look at anti-vaxers and 5G conspirationists. They have access to all the information they want.

I agree this an a-symmetric battle, and they seem to be hyper-focused on specious and superfluous positions, based on outright fallacious arguments to justify their positions, but ultimately I'd rather have them able to make that choice than to rob them of their agency if given a choice. 5g conspiracies are insipid, however, I believe anti-vax'ing parents should be liable for any damages or costs associated to exposing their children and anyone else they infect in arbitration that extends to punitive and well as financial damages.

The court system may currently be 'responsible' for that role in Society, but I'm not averse to exploring other ideas that can be mediated.

1: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/28/the-shadow-superpower/

2: https://fightfortheforgotten.org/

> If SpaceX gets Starship flying I think we'll see SLS outright cancelled

Doubt it. The US government won't dump SLS and the jobs that come with it, and probably the military/NASA will veto relying on a company that Elon Musk can send tanking with a simple stupid tweet.

I think increasingly, NASA (and by extension Boeing) needs to worry about SpaceX doing this without them; which I'm sure would be majorly embarrassing. It will sure make for some really awkward political debate about budgets in the next years.

Starship is being designed for Mars trips. Landing on the moon should be well within it's design parameters and could probably be considered as a nice stepping stone for actually getting to Mars. Not to say it's going to be easy but it involves the kind of problem solving they are in any case doing and it seems they have a plan and a vehicle that looks like it is getting closer to working as advertised with every prototype they do (every 6 or so weeks).

It's also intended to be reusable, mass produced, and cheap to operate and reuse. And to top off the list of arguments, Elon Musk likes to pull stunts like this.

I think Space X money comes in large part from NASA, so I don't see how they could do it without them.

SpaceX did 13 launches in 2019: 4 for NASA, 6 for commercial operators, 2 for SpaceX, and 1 for the Air Force. NASA launches are higher paying though. NASA has also provided cash in the form of the commercial crew/commercial cargo development programs. The new Artemis program (and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program) are similar.

SpaceX had been developing Starship entirely with internal funds. It likely would have continued, perhaps at a slower pace or with different outcomes than NASA wants.

Thanks for the information.

there was just an article about how the russian space company roscomos can’t compete with spacex. the underlying reason is the defense department of russia is getting outspent by the american government

Not really the case. NASA Commercial Crew is likely not paying them lots of money as they bid super low and had years of delay.

I think Space X money comes in large part from NASA, so I don't see how they could do it without them.

Hence Starlink.

Also other commercial launches.

However, I believe SpaceX can do without NASA _launches_ (rockets or spacecrafts), not without NASA _money_ - not yet.

Congress could cut out the middleman.

Doesn't Space X need much of NASA's infrastructure to launch? Like Kennedy Space Center, etc?

Boca Chica in south tr as is a private launch site for Starship.

I suspect bass communication platforms might be needed, but not launch sites.

So it's all about the bass...

Mars has a singular advantage over the moon (at least for Starship): it has a atmosphere that can be used for aero-braking and it can be used to create metholox). Landing on the Moon will require more fuel.

Getting to Mars also requires fuel. So does getting back. Also, the moon's gravity is a bit less than on Mars (around 40% or so). And taking off without an atmosphere also means less drag.

Mars and Moon are not that different in terms of the fuel you need. Taking of on Mars is not really the problem.

> Mars and Moon are not that different in terms of the fuel you need

Only if you assume no unnecessary accelerations.

An embarrassment? SpaceX is a credit to NASA, since it was NASA that paid for development of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

And American customers, not Musk, should take credit for Tesla?

The embarrassment to NASA is they continue to waste an ocean of money on SLS, when Starship is a hundred times better an investment.

Ace in the hole is a strong word. Starship's progress is breakneck by the standards of any aerospace program, but they've still got another booster (Super Heavy) to develop. Then they'll need multiple launches to get the vehicle into orbit and refueled before it can perform a TLI.

Superheavy is the easier project. Elon Musk is focusing on the hardest problem first.

I've seen a lot of people claim this. But it reminds me of what was said about the Falcon Heavy before its development got underway. That rocket turned out to be much more challenging than expected, despite being "just" an iteration on Falcon 9.[1]

That said, I watch progress on Starship with interest and optimism.

[1]https://www.defensedaily.com/developing-falcon-heavy-rocket-...

I am simply referring to Elon Musk's claim. He got experience in both rocketry and automotive manufacturing. If he said it's hard, I believe him.

He could be wrong yes, but I don't know anything about making cars or build rockets.

Heavy is easier than Starship because Heavy uses standard technology, but Starship is very innovative.

It's the easier one to design -- but actually building it requires a production line that cranks out one of the most complicated rocket engines ever designed for cheap (it'll need over thirty engines in final configuration, though the first launch may be with "just" 20 or so).

Easy and rocket engineering don't really go together. I imagine it will still be a challenge.

The Lunar Starship is pretty weird. If Orion is late, yes it can probably land people on the moon from the Earth's surface. But it can't come back without its heatshield. If you need it to come back with people as well, then it's no longer the Lunar Starship, but just regular Starship. Even if SLS slips, that's still probably quite a shift for all involved, unless SpaceX is already doing Apollo 8 style missions in 2 years.

The answer might actually be "Delta Heavy". Orion can launch on Delta Heavy, so if Lunar Starship can get people back to LEO, they can land using Orion. But then, why not just use Starliner or Crew Dragon to get people to/from LEO, then use Lunar Starhip LEO-Moon-LEO?

Isn't a spaceship landing on the moon and coming back without human help the real achievement of the 21st century? Has it happened before? It should be harder to do it without humans than with humans in theory.

It's much easier to do it without people for a simple reason: Risk. You can do it without concern of getting it back so you can push the limits til you tune it out. If they had to land with people spaceX couldn't have ever figured out self-landing rockets.

Imagine writing a program and you couldn't debug it fully because if it crashes someone would die. Autonomous spacecraft always were the 'easy' part, humans are the hard part.

In the Apollo program lots of people died for the cause, as they felt that it's worth the risk. But it was still probably easier to do it with humans, as they were able to do more compex tasks than computers.

In what you write, achieving the high safety of the mission itself seems the achievement to me, and not putting humans on it (just like we have self driving cars already, it was a great achievement, but now it's time to get them working with high safety. After that putting a human in them is a trivial step).

> In the Apollo program lots of people died for the cause, as they felt that it's worth the risk.

Lots looks to be 4 or 5 depending on how you count.

3 were killed due to a fire in the pure O2 atmosphere during testing of Apollo 1.

1 was killed while working with a high pressure water line on ground support equipment.

1 to be lunar module pilot was killed flying a fighter jet trainer between Cape Kennedy and Houston.

Not to take away from their sacrifices, and not to play down the amount that we've become more cautious, but I think it's an exaggeration to say that lots of people died.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

> killed flying a fighter jet trainer

It's unfair to pin that on the Apollo program. Flying fighter jets is very dangerous, and pilots are put through a lot of rigorous training to handle it. Many died in those jets in routine flights, which that one was.

Hence op said “4 or 5” depending what you include.

Actually, Apollo program was a show of oneupmanship after Russians' successes. Sending actual humans was not necessary for successful mission but it was necessary to show superiority and bind USSR's resources.

USSR has already landed a robotic mission (Luna 9) couple of years before and sent pictures from the Moon (https://www.space.com/35116-luna-9.html)

From purely technical standpoint it would be much easier to develop comparable robotic mission. Most of R&D was to develop stuff that would not be necessary for robotic mission.

That of course, is only purely technical standpoint. Sending a bundle of motors, sensors and wires to Moon is nowhere as rewarding and prestigious as sending actual humans.

From the link you sent it seems that Luna 9 didn't come back, that's why I wrote going and returning spaceship. From the movie about the Apollo mission it seemed that the humans had to learn a lot of real engineering and physical training as well, and just being able to push a ,,go back'' button wouldn't have been enough for the mission to be successful.

Also sending a human without being able to return at least theoretically wouldn't have been ethical.

Well, yes, it did not come back. But it also took a tiny fraction of Apollo development costs.

I think I read an article that described that humans were given tasks that would normally be given to computers just to keep them occupied. For some task it was just convenient as humans were already on board. Some tasks were given so that astronauts were in control of their lives, otherwise they could just as well be performed from the ground.

If you think about it, there is only 2s round trip time for signal from Earth to Moon. If the only thing astronauts do is sit in the cockpit, flip switches, type commands and maybe handle some kind of steering, the same thing could just as well be performed from Earth. There could of course be possibility for communication disruption but at the same time, with no actual people on board, less fallout from possible problems.

Hm, 2 second delay loop earth-moon is unforgivably slow to perform landing procedures. Heck you can't ride a bicycle with anything longer than 0.1sec or so?

I would not say it is unforgivably slow.

When it comes to landing things like keeping attitude and slowing down for touchdown are easily automated. Keeping attitude is what all rockets are designed to do. Slowing down for touchdown is also quite simple when you get precise distance to ground measurement and a human on Earth can point a relatively flat piece of ground to land on.

SpaceX booster landings are difficult because of couple extra requirements. First, it is in Earth gravity and dense atmosphere and from high speed. Second, boosters are very long necessitating perfect stability at landing. Third, they use what is called "suicide burn" which means that boosters basically coast until almost end where they break very hard with basically nil margin for error. But this is in the name of efficiency because every kg of fuel saved on landing as many, many more that could not be taken to orbit.

In other words, booster landing is very dynamic process.

Compared to that landing on Moon surface were pretty simple and with relatively large margin for error.

Landing on Moon surface could be done without large dynamic component like suicide burn. The craft can leisurely hover over the surface and touchdown with barely any speed. This is comparable to cheap quadcopter landing --keep your attitude straight, descend slowly loosing speed until it is zero at zero distance to ground.

The first moon landing, they had 15 seconds of fuel remaining.

3 astronauts in a fire and another in a training jet crash?

I guess there were probably other, non-astronaut deaths in the Apollo program, workers getting electrocuted or falling from gantries at contractors' manufacturing plants, but even if so, it's not renowned as an example of unsafe work conditions.

The Apollo program was a stunt. You can say that it took a man to land on the moon, because NASA wasn’t capable of building a robot to do it.

But the Russians were able to achieve this a few years later with their moon rover. Although it was more of a dumb luck gravity drop, and hope you don’t land on a cliff, and topple over and die.

Then, the Chinese were able to do it, with an even more sophisticated robot, that was able to make automatic landing decisions like a human. This is the ultimate moon lander.

Given the choice between humans vs. robots, I’d take a robot any day, to land myself on the moon. You don’t have to worry about pesky humans making emotional life or death decisions in the heat of the moment, and jeopardizing your mission.

The Russians soft-landed a robot on the moon before Apollo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_programme

NASA also landed Surveyor.

Of course, me too, that's why I don't see the huge deal of a human being put on the spaceship after the necessary level of safety of the robot has been met. 50 years ago it was a huge deal, now I see it only as great engineering.

Exactly. Check out the dismal success rate of the Luna programme[0]. It would have been a lot harder if they couldn't accept such a level of risk. SpaceX's cheap rockets have this same advantage.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_programme#Failed_missions

> the real achievement of the 21st century?

Depends on how you look at it. It could be the achievement of powered, controlled flight. The Wright Bros invented the process of a directed research and development program, consisting of a series of prototypes each designed to solve a particular problem, and then combining them all into a successful solution.

The Apollo moon shot adhered to exactly this process.

It works so well it's part of the common wisdom and people overlook how revolutionary it is. Before the Wrights, people tried to develop the end solution all in one go.

We have already sent robotic probes to the moon and brought back bits of soil [1]. We did so in the 20th century. There are certainly challenges to doing it with and without humans, but in my opinion, in today's world requiring much higher safety factors for human flight, a robotic mission is probably substantially easier.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16

Apollo 11 was the previous year, that's why I thought that it's easier if a human can help with controlling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

It was easier at that point, because computers were in their infancy so it was helpful to have a human in the loop doing things the computers couldn't. Nowadays (and pretty much since the 80's) computers have been more than powerful enough to handle the task.

In 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16

We have quite a few autonomous vehicles that have been made into meteorites due to small programming errors. They popup in the news from time to time with nothing more than a shrug and better luck next time.

You have one fatal shuttle mission and NASA doesn't launch another one for 3 years. So the risks aren't remotely the same.

No. You're missing the added complexities of supporting human life in spaceflight.

2024?? I’ll eat my shorts if that actually happens.

The beauty of the Starship design is that if it works, it makes landing and taking off anywhere we want to go incredibly easy. You don't need a special lander module, complex docking manouvers, to replace disposable heat-shields, or anything. You land the Starship, and launch it again -- as is, no moving parts.

Earth's atmosphere and gravity are much heavier and stronger than either the moon, Mars, or even Mercury. If you have the regulatory controls to re-enter and land on earth safely, it's trivial to do it on any of those destinations.

It's still an incredibly hard challenge, and not might not work. But if SpaceX successfully reaches orbit and lands on earth with the Starship, landing on the moon and coming back is going to be an absolute cakewalk.

It's the revenge of 1950's pop sci fi; gleaming (stainless steel), tail landing rockets thundering around the solar system. A fully fueled Starship can get anywhere in the solar system fast. Refueling in orbit is the key.

the cool part is, eventhough it needs refueling in orbit it is still cheaper by an order of magnitude than all the other options... some guy on youtube calculated an upper estimate of the cost to about 2000$ per KG - if i remember correctly.

Imagine dozens of consecutive unmanned launches boosted into orbit by the same 2-5 Boosters each with only a payload of fuel meant for the large tank of Starship.

I think the issue is less about building such a rocket system, and more about actually testing and certifying it to NASA's modern standards for carrying humans.

See the constantly stretching timeline for developing the Crew version of the Dragon capsule, despite the fact that SpaceX already had a working and tested rocket and pressurize capsule before they started on the crew version.

I'm optimistic that SpaceX can make some rapid progress here, but I wouldn't bet on the timelines holding for any of these human spaceflight projects.

Mars is hard. Enough atmosphere to burn you, but not to easily slow you down. Landing on the Earth and the Moon are both easier (as I understand it).

It depends - any atmosphere is a huge boon as long as your spacecraft can do aerobraking in any form. You can use it to change your orbit, capture into orbit from an interplanetary trajectory or even change the plane of your orbit as it was envisioned for some mission profiles of the Space shuttle or Dyna-Soar.

There are nice tables at Project RHO illustration how much delta-v you can save by aerobreaking when traveling between Solar System bodies:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable...

You loose all of that for an airless body like the Moon. In this case it's not that big of an issue as moon is close & has a low gravity. If Mars was airless, it could be much more of an issue, as you are coming much more quickly from an interplanetary trajectory & there would be more gravity to handle during landing than on the Moon.

If you have enough delta-v to land on a hypothetical Mars without an atmosphere you've got enough to slow down for a gentle atmospheric entry that wouldn't burn you up.

In terms of technical design creating a lightweight craft that can aerobrake to land on Mars is harder than the heavyweight craft that could do an airless powered landing. But once you factor in the booster requirements suddenly the atmosphere is making your job easier overall.

It's kind of a blessing in disguise that we live in the heaviest terrestrial planet in the solar system. It's like learning how to climb by starting with the most difficult mountain. You don't need as much energy to escape the gravity of the other planets and moons, and therefore can take less outlay of fuel with you for the return trip.

>> You don't need a special lander module, complex docking manouvers, to replace disposable heat-shields, or anything. You land the Starship, and launch it again -- as is, no moving parts.

Can anyone comment on how Falcon 9 knows where it is? Is GPS part of the game? Because they dont have that on the moon or Mars.

I don't know the full story, but I know that for detecting the ground during landing they use radar (which was why they made sure the two falcon heavy cores didn't land at the same time).

Creating a gps (like) network on mars with a bunch of satellites might actually be an option before landing. SpaceX appears to be already developing that capability in the starlink satellites for the DOD [0].

[0] https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/04/06/t...

The thing with a GPS network is that you need fixed ground stations receiving the signal to know the satellites' precise orbital parameters, and thereby know exactly where they are. So you'd need to land at least one Starship to get a "gps" network working.

I mean... wouldn't any method of determining the orbital parameters work? Stellar tracking, determining position based on known ground reference points via cameras, etc.

It's not like these are dumb birds, they can sit there for awhile collecting data to figure out their orbit, and then communicate that to the lander before it attempts to land.

Yes, you can determine it via other methods, but the accuracy won't be very high.

Don't know about Falcon but I know with Dragon one mechanism is viewing the star field.

On the Moon there's no atmosphere or erosion, so pattern recognition vs a known Lunar surface should work. Same should work to some extent on Mars.

IIRC the recent Chinese landers used LIDAR and feature matching during the terminal phase.

As for spacecraft navigation in general you are using star/sun/earth trackers (depending of where your spacecraft operates) to detect your orientation. This is important to correctly point solar panels to the sun, radiators, cameras and sensitive instruments away from the sun and directional cameras to Earth.

As for detailed absolute position in space, AFAIK this is usually done by ultra sensitive radio signal ranging back on Earth.

But other means could be used, eq. taking picture of your target or other bodies you can resolve and then tracking their magnitude/size and position, possibly over time, to calculate where exactly you are in the Solar System so that you are seeing what you are seeing.

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