Space Exploration

Are NASA's future missions and budget justified?

  • It's worth the time and expenditures

    Votes: 223 66.0%

  • Complete waste of money

    Votes: 41 12.1%

  • We need to explore, but not at the current cost

    Votes: 74 21.9%
  • Total voters
    338
#2,001
#2,001
CagleMtnVol said:
If you are referring to the lunar lander that is from Blue Origin the company founded by Amazon creator Jeff Bezos. They are developing their own rockets like the New Glenn that would be used to launch the lander.

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They have a nice facility up on KSC. Haven't launched anything yet to my knowledge, but the facilities are nice.
 
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#2,002
#2,002
Matt2496 said:
I was referring to the Starship-esque lander concept by SpaceX.

I'm wondering if they're going to construct a brand new 1st stage booster, or if they're just going to use falcon heavy.

Edit (This one):

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It will be using a reusable first stage called Super Heavy under development that would be 230 ft tall and 30 ft diameter and would feature 37 Raptor engines.
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#2,004
#2,004
I think I figured out at least part of the reason I am so fascinated with the SpaceX engines landing themselves.

It's the first "spacey" thing we have done, that is really different than anything else. It harkens back to those early B and C level alien movies of aliens touching down on earth. They landed upright like this.

All our earlier stuff was fire and forget type that just crashed down into the ocean. That's pedestrian. Even the shuttles when landing landed like a plane. That's pedestrian. We dont have any other system that works like the reusable engines of SpaceX.

It's rather simple and basic but it holds a lot of truth for me.

I think another thing is the dissociation between take off and landing. When it takes off it looks like one thing, when it comes back it looks different. Which says "something happened". Which is intellectually easy to understand but on the coolness side it's crazy to think about. Imo.

The last thing is that it's also automated. And they are a lot bigger than you think.
 
#2,005
#2,005
Matt2496 said:
Will that thing launch on a falcon heavy? Also, Starship or whatever it is will not have the delta V to get to the moon. It will either need an extra kick stage, or be refueled in LEO, which would require more than one launch.

The artist's rendering doesn't show any heat shield tiles, so I guess it won't be returning through the atmosphere like a normal Starship would.
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It is too big for Falcon Heavy.

This Lunar variant of Starship is not meant to return to Earth so anything necessary for that (heat shielding, fins, etc) won’t be present. From what has been released so far there will also be a new Depot variant Starship that will transfer the fuel to the Lunar Starship once it reaches a parking orbit. That Depot Starship will also need to be filled by multiple Tanker Starship launches prior to the Lunar Starship launching.

More in-depth info here: NASA Selects Blue Origin, Dynetics, SpaceX for Artemis Human Landers
 
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#2,017
#2,017
LouderVol said:
weird how it isn't packaged up.
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They were storing it just up the road so it didn’t have far to go. Here is a recent video that gives some perspective on the layout of the current launch facilities and rocket factory and just how many things are happening at once.

 
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#2,018
#2,018
I believe they are just waiting on the FAA permits for the 150 m hop test. Gonna be cool, the 150 m water tower hop test was bad ass.
 
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#2,021
#2,021
Orangeburst said:
Are those motors really that advanced? They are small.
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If I remember correctly Super Heavy (the reusable first stage to launch Starship) with have like 30 Raptors. It is hard to fathom how freaking huge Super Heavy and Starship is going to be when stacked. The Raptor is also supposed to be rated for 1000 flights, but that seems like a crazy lofty goal to me. It also has a specific type of fuel flow that has only been tested a few times since the 60s, so they will be pretty cutting edge tech when launched successfully.
 
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#2,023
#2,023
During the race to the moon the US chose to go with 5 powerful engines while the Russians went with an array of 30 or so smaller ones for the first stage.




images-1.jpegimages.jpeg
 
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