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As someone who has worked on NASA contracts pretty much my whole career, you're quite right. Starship is still extremely unproven. If you look at the history of rockets, mayyyybe 1 in 5 that make it to an orbital launch debut (which is like 1 in 50 paper rockets) in turn make it to commercial rollout.

The author's claim that the potential benefits of Starship are not understood by NASA is cringeworthy naive. Everyone at NASA is rooting for SpaceX but they have been burned many times by the promises of the next shiny rocket: DC-X, VentureStar, NASP, Ares, SLS, hell even the shuttle despite its "success" only fulfilled a small fraction of the desired results.

Makes me wonder how old the author is.

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> The author's claim that the potential benefits of Starship are not understood by NASA is cringeworthy naive.

> Makes me wonder how old the author is.

The author works for JPL.

> Starship is still extremely unproven. If you look at the history of rockets, mayyyybe 1 in 5 that make it to an orbital launch debut (which is like 1 in 50 paper rockets) in turn make it to commercial rollout.

How many of these had 10+ prototypes fly and had a dedicate launch site near to complete?

How many had a working next generation engine for there first and second stage?

How many were designed by companies that had already developed the largest rocket in the world?

> burned many times by the promises of the next shiny rocket: DC-X, VentureStar, NASP, Ares, SLS,

Non of those were even remotely close. DC-X was a sub-orbital technology demonstrator. Even had it been successful it would have been nothing more. NASP is another technology demonstrator.

VentureStar was far, far away. Comparing it to Starship is just not accurate. It was basically almost delusional to think it would ever happen. And many people even back then were very skeptical of a SSTO Spaceplane. And beyond that politically it getting the needed funding was also not gone happen.

Ares, SLS are basically just warmed up shuttle concepts. These are designed to keep contractors employed, not to solve the problem. They no potential to solve anything.

>The author works for JPL.

As a software person. JPL employs over 5000 people. The vast majority of them don't have knowledge of the sort of systems and business dynamics relevant to the matter of NASA using Starship.

> The vast majority of them don't have knowledge of the sort of systems and business dynamics relevant to ...

If experience from private sector is any indication, that's usually question of caring. It's not hard to gain such insight from the inside - but you need to walk around a bit, talk to people outside of your team, and most importantly, pay attention.

Jeez dude, these were just random programs off the top of my head to illustrate industry distrust of launch vehicle promises. My comment wasn't meant to initiate a debate but offer the perspective of someone who is quite literally writing proposals about launch vehicle selection for NASA missions. But hey, you can read Wikipedia, so...

In any case to those reasonable out there, don't worry. If SpaceX can prove reliable launch to orbit and deliver on their promises, change will come. It's kind of silly to write articles about how everyone should change the way they operate NOW because change is coming. Of course it's coming, everyone accepts it's likely, and things will move quickly once it does and is proven. What more do the fanboys want!?

> Jeez dude, these were just random programs off the top of my head to illustrate industry distrust of launch vehicle promises.

What you are insinuating is that people are unable to difference between a suborbital technology demonstrator and powerpoint vehicles and multi-billion $ projects that are deep in development.

And non of the projects you mentioned would have a comparable impact to Starship. Maybe VentureStar but that was at best decades away.

You can just throw out some random projects and use them to justify non-action.

If VentureStar had actually seriously gone forward the same kind of almost the rethinking would have been necessary. And even if it in the end didn't happen, it would have been valuable to do.

> perspective of someone who is quite literally writing proposals about launch vehicle selection for NASA missions. But hey, you can read Wikipedia, so...

So making bad arguments can be justified from authority. Good to know.

> It's kind of silly to write articles about how everyone should change the way they operate NOW because change is coming.

There are many years of lead time, choices are only gone go into actual products and missions year from now.

Now is exactly the right time to start planning and rethinking approaches.

When Commercial Cargo was made, much of the need private industry didn't exist. And yet they did it, because they were locking forward and adjusted their operations.

Back then there was massive critic of NASA even from win NASA itself that this was a bad idea and it was never gone work. And that is what kick started the New Space movement.

That kind of thinking is what is needed. Plan projects now and get them rolling that could take advantage of the capabilities in a few years.

> What more do the fanboys want!?

Putting yourself as the reasonable authority and then ranting about 'fanboys' makes you look silly.

The auther of the article works for JPL, but I guess he is a 'fanboy'.

Man, there you go again, trying to turn this into a debate where we pick apart everything the opponent says line by line. What a waste of time. Take care, good luck with your mental health.

There you go again, responding with insults rather then arguments. A debating in a forum that is about debating articles about technology shocking.

Apologies, my last sentence was unprofessional and unhelpful. I was not at my best in that comment.

My other points stand, though. Everyone in the industry that's paying attention knows that Starship, IF it delivers on its promises, will change the game. It's a strawman to say those in industry are ignorant of this. Yet we've heard Starship-esque promises many times before, spoken with just as much fervor and certainty as displayed by your friend the JPL blogger.

I don't perceive this as a forum for ruthless debate but rather sharing ideas in an atmosphere of cooperation. Debate closes off context and undermines trust, which in turn limits communication bandwidth severely and often destroys it entirely.

The act of debate can most certainly be productive, but in an open and unbounded forum where the ruleset of "debate" - and thus its goals - are undefined, competitive framing has a consistent tendency to devolve into semantics and entrenchment of positions rather than productive insight.

Of course, you're free to pick my statements apart further, if you find that productive. But I will spend my time elsewhere.

> Ares, SLS are basically just warmed up shuttle concepts

Not really. They were started before SpaceX proved the idea of reusable boosters. They are a safe Plan-B, using engines and concepts that were already available. It’s a shame they decided to improve upon the existing hardware and took much longer than initially expected, but that’s what life with rockets used to be before SpaceX showed rapid iteration is a better path.

Also, Congress would be very upset with a bunch of failed launches, but that’s also how iterative development works.

> They are a safe Plan-B

I was the Plan-A back then during Constellation. And SLS was also Plan-A.

> Not really.

I would argue the forced existing hardware into those project to continue to employ the same contractors.

Using a single stick solid rocket booster for your human launcher might be one of the worst ideas in the last 2 decades of rocket history.

Not surprisingly the congress person from that state was heavily involved funding Constellation.

> It’s a shame they decided to improve upon the existing hardware and took much longer than initially expected, but that’s what life with rockets used to be before SpaceX showed rapid iteration is a better path.

There were other viable paths even back then. Not to the level of SpaceX but there were others.

NASA did a whole bunch of studies and these studies pretty much universally showed that the current SLS designs was flawed and a booster that looked like a modern Saturn V was the far better solution.

There were even considerations of having it be privately developed.

Turns out NASA can make as many studies as they want, congress basically over-ruled them and forced them to use all the existing contractors and facilities and thus they were forced into current SLS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...

> I was the Plan-A back then during Constellation. And SLS was also Plan-A.

It makes sense for it to use the well known approach as Plan-A when the options don’t exist.

> NASA did a whole bunch of studies and these studies pretty much universally showed that the current SLS designs was flawed and a booster that looked like a modern Saturn V was the far better solution.

New developments based on new components, however Saturn V-like, are a risk. I have read a couple studies back then and, while I am not overly enthusiastic about the approach adopted, it offered minimal development risk.

The only novel idea of Ares was putting people on top of an SRB, which was cheap, but abandoned when they realised the vibrations would kill the crew.

Back then, SpaceX was science fiction.

> It makes sense for it to use the well known approach as Plan-A when the options don’t exist.

Not when Plan A has well known well document problems.

> New developments based on new components, however Saturn V-like, are a risk.

Restarting production for RS-25 has risk. Using solids boosters for human space flight has risk.

The idea that magically the picked design has no are significantly less risk is questionable.

In terms of risk to human on the rockets the other designs out-performed the current design and they were cheaper.

> The only novel idea of Ares was putting people on top of an SRB, which was cheap,

I recommend you go back and check out how much Ares 1 cost. It was literally the opposite of cheap. It was a gigantic money pit for a non-commercially competitive rocket that was incredibly risky for human.

> but abandoned when they realised the vibrations would kill the crew.

Maybe the single worst rocket design ever. Despite the issues there were others metnioned.

However the whole Constellation program got canceled because it was horrifyingly badly executed and a bad plan in the first place.

> Back then, SpaceX was science fiction.

By the time SLS was designed they were not. And just because SpaceX doesn't exist, doesn't mean you couldn't do much better then Ares or SLS.

Uhm, I think you're simultaneously doing a discredit to past rocket development and giving an easy pass to the mess that is SLS with this statement.

It's just shoddy project management and prioritizing collaboration with as many big donar aerospace companies as possible as opposed to what works. There is playing it safe and then there is just being complacent. The SLS is complacency personified.

> Uhm, I think you're simultaneously doing a discredit to past rocket development and giving an easy pass to the mess that is SLS with this statement.

Not at all what I intended. Congress is to blame for some of the mess, NASA for the rest. They had shuttle parts and tools and the SLS is certainly not the best that could be done with those.

But, remember, NASA can’t really do much unless Congress gives them the money.

It seems a little unfair to compare a program with flying test vehicles and production already in progress, with flying Powerpoints that got cancelled because you can't make a cryogenic hydrogen tank out of scrith.

This would be true perhaps if this wasn’t SpaceX. They already moved the goalpost with Falcon

And I don’t think the author wrote what you said. His main point was that not one of NASA’s powerpoints even as much acknowledges that something like Starship might come round. The new constraints by Starship are a game changer.

Past success does not guarantee future success. And when you're dealing with space travel, which is inherently expensive and extremely dangerous, then you can't afford to buy into any hype.

If it was just 'hype' why did NASA select them for HLS?

They had all the data and they officially declared it was very doable and that SpaceX had a path to get there.

So its ok to plan for it but pretend it only exists for that one thing they contracted if for, and ignore if for everything else.

> So its ok to plan for it but pretend it only exists for that one thing they contracted if for, and ignore if for everything else.

No one here is saying "NASA should ignore Starship for everything else".

I'm saying that NASA isn't "failing to understand" Starship when they don't push all their chips to the middle of the table on Starship. You can't use the fact that NASA was willing to make a $2.9B bet on Starship as evidence that they should have been willing to go all-in on Starship.

It'd be like saying if you wager me $1,000 on an outcome, then you should also be willing to bet your house on it. That's not how risk works!

Would I personally like to see NASA continue to evaluate and select Starship for future programs? Yes!

Would I personally like to see NASA start kick off early concept-phase work for payloads that would be enabled by Starship? Yes!

Do I think that NASA decided not to completely re-orient everything that they do around Starship right now means they don't understand Starship? No! Of course not! It means there's too much risk right now around doing that.

The point is that you have to start to think differently.

Not just have the same circle of programs, selecting a launcher and on.

You need to fundamentally rethink how you approach space.

And there is little evidence of that happening, specially from a leadership standpoint.

Sure. And my point is that, for an organization like NASA (which is basically our government's "approach to space") "fundamentally rethinking how you approach space" is basically saying: "fundamentally transform everything about how the organization operates".

Which, if Starship delivers on its promises (and I'm quite optimistic and hopeful that it will!), then NASA will have to fundamentally transform everything about how the organization operates.

But that's a huge transition to make on the back of a program that hasn't proven its key value proposition yet. I'm happy for NASA to wait the extra 2-3 years for Starship to prove that it can deliver on its promises, before NASA commits to a reorganization and restructuring at such a fundamental level.

If NASA commits to such a restructuring now, and in 2 years we learn that Starship's economic dream fails to materialize and the program ends up as an improvement (but an ordinary one) over Falcon 9. NASA how has to unwind all of that organization restructuring and program development. It seems...wise to me for NASA to wait a handful of years to see Starship prove itself before committing to such a transition.

> But that's a huge transition to make on the back of a program that hasn't proven its key value proposition yet.

The article agrees! Author's point, as I read it, is that if NASA does not plan for the transition now, then by the time Starship "has proven its key value proposition", both NASA and its usual contractors will be out of the game, as a new breed of private companies takes over most of space activity. The author doesn't expect NASA to bet on Starship, but rather to at least make some internal noises and initial movements towards that transition - but he failed to find any indication of that for the past 2 years.

Exactly, the could keep a small budget aside already to do feasibility studies, along the lines of “instead of 50T a year, what and how do we approach the ability to shift 100,200T etc, to the moon?”

> "fundamentally transform everything about how the organization operates".

Its more about starting to thinking on how to do that. And initiate some trail projects that take a different approach.

At the moment, in most parts of NASA its simply ignored. That Starship launch system got funded is more of an accidental byproduct of the HLS.

If they were trying something genuinely new - like falling out of orbit and making a propulsive upright landing of a wingless booster - then some skepticism would be justified.

But what's new in Starship?

Propulsive landing of an orbital stage is pretty new.

(You can make an argument for Soyuz's just-before-landing rockets, but it wouldn't be a fair one.)

Okay, I'll grant you that. Not a huge step from what they already do, but it is a step.

Given the uncertainty around heat tiles (and the impact on rapid turnaround) plus the sheer size of the rocket, it seems like a huge step to this ignorant observer.

Orbital flight vs suborbital flight is a bigger step then you might think. For orbital flights the vehicle is traveling at least 28,000 km/h where as to reach 125 miles above Earth, a suborbital vehicle only needs 6,000 km/h. This can dramatically effect the survivability on reentry. Orbital and sub orbital flights are very different.

> Propulsive landing of an orbital stage is pretty new.

It is, but those are largely separate features. Each half of that combo has been done, and combining them doesn't cause any massive engineering conflicts.

No one has, to my knowledge, de-orbited a spacecraft ready to launch again immediately, which is where Musk thinks Starship is headed. That’s a big jump.

That is, yes, but jumping that hurdle doesn't really matter if the landing is propulsive or not.

> But what's new in Starship?

The planned recovery mechanism (the aerodynamic fall, with a very late righting maneuver and landing) is still quite new. They've successfully tested it once (which is great!), but the Starship concept really hinges on that being an extremely high reliability maneuver.

I would argue that, until SpaceX can demonstrate that landing maneuver is high reliability, that the Starship concept isn't proven.

I say this as a massive fan of Starship, and someone who is extremely excited by the promises of Starship of they come to fruition.

They can take the mass penalty of performing a large re-entry burn to reduce heat-load and land falcon9-style. It would mean _much_ less mass to orbit, but the cost savings of reusing the vehicles would still be there.

Except that one of the Starship's big new things is refuelling in orbit.

Nitpick: the booster does not achieve orbit. If it did it would need a heat shield like the upper stage.

What's new in Starship? Rapid turnaround. Catching the returning rocket with the launch tower. A durable heat shield that needs zero refurbishment for back-to-back flights. The sheer number of engines on the first stage and the volume of engine production needed for that. Orbital refueling. The landing flip maneuver.

There is a lot of new stuff in Starship, and not all of it is proven yet. Personally I think the biggest remaining risk is the heat shield. I'm no expert, but my speculation is that there will be several reentry failures, and refurbishment will limit turnaround speed for a long time. I've also heard a lot of people saying that orbital refueling will be very difficult. I'm also worried that landing failures will wreck the ground support equipment. And I think it's very unlikely that the reliability of the whole system can ever be good enough for the airliner-like earth-to-earth passenger service that SpaceX has proposed.

All that said, I'm very much in agreement with the article that NASA needs to radically change their future plans, because while Starship is not completely proven, it is clearly derisked to the point where it's going to be revolutionary, even if some of the above risks prevent the total potential from being realized. HLS was the first time NASA showed that they realize this, but they are still doing tons of stuff outside HLS that makes little sense in a Starship world.

Even for some reason Starship can not return in its early development, it still triumphs SLS by a wide, wide margin.

Rapid turnaround is not demonstrated. Nor is it even, in fact, planned, in any real sense. I.e., to be clear, there is no evidence that they have any idea how to achieve rapid turnaround of a Starship orbiter.

(Superheavy is a different story.)

All this turns on the design of the heat-shield tiles. Those we have seen are basically the same as on the shuttle. Each individual tile needs a great deal of personal attention before and after each use, including squirting in some goo that will boil off on the next flight. Many will need to be replaced, each flight.

So, turn-around time is weeks, minimum. More probably a month or two, or three.

It is conceivable that a future version of Starship will have a heat shield that needs less attention. Maybe a fabric shroud in place of tiles, over most of the hull, will turn out to be practical. If that happens, it might get possible to turn around a re-entered Starship faster. But that will require entirely new development not obviously begun.

I will be happy to be proved wrong.

Despite all of the above, even without quick turnaround or even re-usability, Starship is obviously overwhelmingly superior in every conceivable way to Artemis/Ares. NASA has the unenviable chore of trying to unload that turkey on some commercial contractor to get out from under the obligation to pour ever more treasure down its gaping maw, endlessly. If NASA succeeds in selling it at a penny on the dollar to Marietta, and leaving Marietta to try to find someone, anyone willing to pay for even a single hull, we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

I don't think that the heat shield is the same as the shuttle's. The tiles are tougher and attached in a different way, and the underlying steel structure can stand more heat than the shuttle's aluminum could.

Orbital refueling is required for HLS and depends on rapid turnaround so SpaceX and NASA must have some confidence that it can be achieved without a radical redesign.

There are differences from the shuttle's tiles, but they are much more similar than different.

Rapid turnaround seems at this stage more an aspiration than a designed feature. It was the same with the shuttle. In that case it was never achieved at all, even with decades of experience.

Turnaround and reuse are desirable, particularly to minimize cost, but not strictly necessary for a successful mission.

The tiles on Starship are much more uniform than on the Space Shuttle, so they are cheaper to produce and less complex to replace.

That mainly affects cost, not turnaround time. And there are anyway many unique tiles, particularly around fins and on the nose cone.

> His main point was that not one of NASA’s powerpoints even as much acknowledges that something like Starship might come round

That's just not true, though. NASA awarded the HLS program solely to SpaceX as a Starship lander. The Source Selection Statement of that program (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...) discusses the benefits and drawbacks of Starship in good detail.

It seems wild to claim that NASA doesn't acknowledge that Starship might come around, when they're paying SpaceX specifically for the Starship program, for moon landings with Starship in 2024 (I think we all know that date will slip, but that's the official plan).

Author mentions HLS contract, but their argument is that it's not taking any advantage of economies offered by Starship. It's like a 10th century trader took an offer to use modern long-haul trucks at a fraction of what they pay for horse and cart transport, but failed to update the business to take advantage of the improved range, speed, reliability and cargo capacity.

The argument is potent particularly because space mission architectures are designed primarily around constraints of the space launch systems, so choosing Starship as the launch vehicle seems to merit a large expansion in scope, if not total redesign of the program.

Maybe not everyone. JSC community strongly opposed much of the ISS rework (they were designing something that required 40 hours of spacewalks a week), opposed Shuttle C (which seemed completely illogical given the work base), and as far as projects like DC-XA... I was in Bldg. 30 watching its amazing flight and when it caught fire and fell over, the combined contractor and MCC staff cheered and broke out in applause.

Perhaps it's changed, but not sure how relevant many of them would be in a Starship world.

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