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Comment by DarmokJalad1701 | Hacker News Reader

> Can you imagine if to make a sightseeing trip to another city you had to stop in the middle of the highway and then make 14 round-trips with a second car to fill your first car back up?

If the alternative was throwing away and building/buying a new car for every trip? Absolutely.

They said the same about landing a first stage booster - impossible and pointless to attempt. And it just happened for the 400th time yesterday.

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False dichotomy - the mission profile dictates the refuelling station and all that, but it never was the only option. Somehow we've decided we needed to be able to do lots of trips to the moon for Artemis, but it's not clear to me that it's such a precious golden oportunity and warrants this spending/impact on the environnenent.

We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we? How come we need one now? We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single trip program?

The mission itself is nonsensical. The problems are stemming from the SLS, I'll find a link to a relevant source.

The Apollo missions landed two crew members in a tin can with extreme limits on what weight they could bring with them in either direction.

A single trip launch will always be constrained like this due to the tyranny of the rocket equation.

A modular mission system with multiple launches is the best way to expand capabilities and enable things like landing larger payloads for more advanced or long-term missions.

There's never going to be long-term crewed missions to the Moon. It has no scientific value. Even the little exploration we did in the '60s and '70s were a dubious proposition. There's not that much we could do by sending people that we couldn't do by sending robots.

If you think there's no value to returning to the moon, building a base, etc. then fine. But you keep moving the goalposts of what you are taking issue with here.

I didn't move any goalposts.

1. Starship is never going to be usable for a Moon mission.

2. There's little scientific value in Moon missions.

3. There's never going to be long-term missions to the Moon.

I maintain all three simultaneously.

IIRC, the expected return payload for this is lighter than Apollo. In no small part because they're dropping all their return fuel and their entire return vehicle into the Moon's gravity well, rather than leaving it in orbit. Subjecting themselves to extra abuse from the good ol' rocket equation.

One of many wacked-out things about the plan.

The vehicle that returns to Earth is Orion which stays in NRHO and does not bring its fuel to the lunar surface.

Return payload constraints are probably from using Orion as the return vehicle. Mass to the surface is much higher than Apollo since that is launched separate from the crew.

I thought the return vehicle was a to-be-developed direct-return vehicle from both SpaceX and Blue Origin (both got contracts, and supposedly both's versions will fly)?

[EDIT] Apparently there are multiple plans involving even more spacecraft, because why not I guess? It's as you describe for Artemis III, but then gets way more complicated with Artemis IV, involving more spacecraft for some reason.

As far as I know all of the known Artemis mission profiles only use the lunar lander to shuttle from NRHO (lunar orbit / gateway station location) to the lunar surface and back. All crew return is planned to be done with Orion for now.

NASA has optioned an additional lander from Blue Origin but that would be taking the same role as SpaceX's lander, shuttling from lunar orbit to the surface and back to lunar orbit.

> We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we?

No. We did it by throwing away ~98% of the vehicle on the way there.

> How come we need one now?

Because building a new gargantuan tower and tossing that majority of it into the ocean/deep space every time we need to go the moon is not sustainable.

> We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single trip program

Yes. Because again. The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing.

And why do we need to do all this? This is the thrust of my point.

Making trips to the moon sustainable is pointless and nonsensical.

Edit0: good read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40410404

>The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing.

We can also, you know, not. We could put that money to something here on Earth instead of burning it up.

The money is not "burned up" - it is spent right here on Earth. It's paid to extremely skilled engineers, technicians and scientists.

The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity. It did so for Apollo. It will again in the future.

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

>The money is not "burned up" - it is spent right here on Earth.

If the idea was not clearly conveyed then let me try again: the money is spent building things that are intended to be destroyed (in order to fulfill their function, but nevertheless), when it could be spent building things that are intended to last.

>The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity.

I've heard this refrain several times. Please name a technology that was developed for the space program and that would have otherwise not been developed.

And yet the boosters are not being reused. They're just making brand new engines for every launch. If we're generous they're being dismantled and recycled.

They were talking about Falcon 9, which is absolutely being reused.

Alright, if we're talking about Falcon 9, I don't know what the cost savings are for a reusable rocket, or if there are any. If someone has that data, feel free to provide it.

There are a lot of variables, but very roughly, the Falcon 9 has cut launch costs in half compared to its competitors.

> As of 2024, SpaceX's internal costs for a Falcon 9 launch are estimated between $15 million[186] and $28 million,[185] factoring in workforce expenses, refurbishment, assembly, operations, and facility depreciation.[187] These efficiencies are primarily due to the reuse of first-stage boosters and payload fairings.[188] The second stage, which is not reused, is believed to be the largest expense per launch, with the company's COO stating that each costs $12 million to produce.[189]

From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Pricing

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