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Comment by joak | Hacker News Reader

Are non-reusable rockets the future?!

Why don't we just stop Artemis program?

What's the point?

It spreads money, jobs, and expertise around the country. The goal of the program is not to be the most nimble, reusable, most cost-effective way to space.

This page illustrates that it is very successful at the true goal: https://www.nasa.gov/content/artemis-partners

I think NASA missions are ideated, planned, and executed on the scale of 10-20 years. The first re-launch of a booster by SpaceX happened just over 5 years ago, in March of 2017.

The Delta Clipper flew and landed successfully already back in the 90ies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

It was cool but apparently the highest it went was 3 km. Not the same as landing from a nearly orbital speed.

Reusable rockets optimize for cost while sacrificing total launch capacity. They need to reserve fuel to land. They don't get to put all of their fuel into launching their payload. They're great if you're doing commercial launches and making margins. They're less great if you're trying to launch a large mass a long distance.

SpaceX is betting on in-orbit refueling for getting Starship anywhere but low Earth orbit. They have yet to demonstrate that capability, even between two Dragon capsules. So the Starship is not a guaranteed vehicle for any missions NASA wants to run.

To keep all the people employed in all the states where parts are produced.

To build an in orbit refueling station as a gateway to the moon and mars to accelerate public and private interplanetary infrastructure. The reuse of parts minimizes cost which is crucial to the survival of a for profit entity. Public work doesn’t have a profit motive and can choose to focus on lift capacity and building the non economic stepping stones to vastly accelerate things we as a society consider key stepping stones for some broader purpose.

I don’t want nasa to be wasteful per se, but choosing to focus on heavy lift and the gateway and base infrastructure seems like a wise focus of engineering talent and money. If they were planning thousands of launches of SLS then fine.

Decades of trying to get help from private sector, as a result NASA stagnated, and China took the lead

As a result, the only option for NASA to compete with China is to take back the role of leader with public money and public R&D with public and state funded universities

It was a mistake to seek help from Musk, Bezoz and that Virgin dude who wants to create space tourism

But SpaceX, at least, is successful, and NASA is behaving like it’s 1982.

Let’s ask a different question. SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc areis not currently going to the moon. Would SpaceX be having this much trouble if it went to the moon? What would a SpaceX moon launch look like?

SpaceX would have failed if they didn't receive the billions of government subsidies

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su...

Calling a contract to provide services a subsidy is intentionally disparaging.

SpaceX is developing a version of its Starship intended to land astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS

Blue Origin worked on a "Blue Moon" lander and later teamed up with LockMart, Northrop-Grumman, and Draper on the ILV lander proposal.

Building space refueling and seed moon base infrastructure has such a huge startup cost that it’ll be nearly impossible to make it profitable, which is critical to a for profit company. NASA has no profit motive thus they can fund the basic infrastructure for interplanetary travel and colonization dramatically improving the economics for everyone and creating incentive for everyone to use it. Final note we should have redundant heavy lift capability independent of private companies as a national security goal. The only keys to interplanetary space being in Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos hand should creep us all out.

Final note, in real dollars these programs of NASAs are a blip on the federal budget. All the hand wringing bothers me since it’s not proportional to the scale.

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