If Gateway Is A Pup Tent Then Starship Is A […]
Today @NASA Dep Admin Jim Morhard @jmorhard said "The Gateway is not the ISS. If ISS was a Marriott hotel then Gateway would be a pup tent." OK. If Gateway is going to be a pup tent in 2024 then what is the @SpaceX #Starship which is aiming for a 2022 landing? The Denver airport? pic.twitter.com/E9N6P5Du5D
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 31, 2019
A tour bus. A luxury 4WD RV.
And Starship Mk1’s propulsion module was just Roll-Lift’ed to Boca Chica’s Phase 1 pad for tests next week.
https://youtu.be/GpkX2QXLwFY
https://twitter.com/SpacePa…
While SLS’s SRB suppression margins look weak, possibly reqiring an Onion requal or SLS mold line change. At the least a waiver for Artemis 1.
https://twitter.com/ChrisG_…
Is that referring to the noise from ignition of the SRBs?
The pressure wave, but yeah. They’re going back to the wind tunnel, and if they can’t mitigate it they may need to requal Orion or change SLS’s outer mold line. Either is a PR and schedule nightmare.
In this context what exactly do you mean when you refer to the mold line?
As much as I like my local airport, I hope that’s a bad comparison. During construction, DIA was massively behind schedule and over budget. And now that they are in the middle of major renovations, that’s behind schedule and over budget. With luck, Starship won’t be. (And, no, despite the conspiracy theories, the cost overruns at DIA had nothing to do with underground habitats for the reptiloid aliens from Planet X. They did most of the construction for themselves.)
Sadly being behind schedule and over budget for airport “renovation” is neither uncommon or unusual globally. The usual culprits is the folks planning the “renovation” low balling the cost estimate and using optimist scheduling to get the “renovation” started in the first place, IMO.
And it’s 50 miles from Denver (or something). I wonder who owned the land out there before the airport moved in next field over. Reptilioid aliens? I guess I haven’t ever done a reading on that but it seems odd.
Not to mention it is one of the ugliest buildings ever constructed.
Let’s just say that the road extending from I-70 to DIA probably could have been much shorter and much straighter than the 10+ miles it is. I will leave it to your imagination why it isn’t!
You totally miss the point. Seriously. Its a big tent that is widely known. Try and stay on topic.
… then Starship is another nail in NASA’s coffin.
If Musk can succeed on anything even close to his planned schedule, then NASA might just wrap it up as an engineering and development organization. Basically the bureaucracy and politics will have rendered NASA obsolete-which it appears is already the case based on the last 15 years. Maybe NASA will be able to buy tickets and send its astronauts along with the wealthy public.
NASA may seem to be overshadowed by Starship very soon, but NASA is not obsolete, at least not yet. NASA needs to re-imagine itself as an enabler of space tech and surface technologies. Don’t forget, SpaceX has said a number of times they want to be a transportation company, and not a mars or lunar base company. They want to leverage other companies to enable surface activities. NASA is in an ideal position to do that, if they could only see it.
Yes, NASA will need to reinvent itself for the Starship era when exploration crews will consist of 30-40 scientist astronauts and a Moon Base will have a 100 or so scientists astronauts working on the surface. You could also imagine a much larger rotating ISS replacement with a crew of 40-50 scientist astronauts. In short the current NASA astronaut corp of 44 mostly pilot astronauts is going to have to be expanded with an emphasis on science astronauts. Again, it’s about a transition from the dog sled based “Little American” era in Antarctica to the era of McMurdo Sound and South Pole Station made possible by the development of cargo aircraft like the C-47 and C-124.
Meanwhile this solves the problem of what to do with the current ISS when it’s abandoned. It will be easy for Starship to return the modules to Earth for display in a museum on the return trips as it supports its successor.
And Senator Shelby should be happy as this could mean a lot more jobs for Huntsville then the SLS could ever provide it, especially if the astronaut corp is transferred there to make room for the huge expansion of Mission Control that will be needed to support the 300 or so astronauts that at any given moment will be working in space.
Alternately, Mission Control could be transferred to Huntsville out of the danger of hurricanes and the new expanded astronaut corp would stay at JSC.
I really don’t have problem with the hotel/pup tent comparison. All comparisons have some problems.
My main problem with Gateway is the cost/benefit.
The Starship is really a cruise ship compared to the Orion which is just a rowboat. But the good thing about the Starship is that if NASA really wants a Gateway it could replace the “pup tent” SLS Gateway with a Starship Gateway with 3 or 4 Bigelow BA2100 modules in the same number of flights. The SLS Gateway has a pressurized space of around 90 cubic meters. The Starship Gateway would have a pressurized space of over 8,400 cubic meters. Now that would be a Gateway. Or alternately they could put those BA2100 modules on the Moon for a base.
Yes, when Starship goes into service the entire nature of space exploration will change. Think of replacing dog sleds with C-47 transport aircraft.
I think that this image of the Starship docked to the Gateway says it all!
https://images.app.goo.gl/g…
I thought the largest diameter Gateway modules are 15 ft. The smaller modules are 9 ft. Orion is 16 ft. Starship is 30 ft. So while this image looks good, I think both Gateway and Orion are too large in comparison with the Starship, especially since perspective has Starship closer to the viewer. The larger Gateway module is nearly the diameter of the Starship in this view and Orion is more than half the Starship diameter in this view.
If Gateway is a Pup tent, then Starship is a Class A Motor Home. Possibly a Class B or C, which are still vastly superior to a pup tent. A Motor Home or Travel Trailer will take note of a tent camper, and of course will not encroach on its space. They will have their own spaces to camp in.
I’d say that it depends on where you are standing. If you look back from 2119, I’d say that a pup tent and the Starship are about the same thing.