Congressional Reaction To HLS Announcement
Chairwoman Johnson Statement on NASA’s Artemis Human Landing System Award
“I am disappointed that the Acting NASA leadership decided to make such a consequential award prior to the arrival of a new permanent NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator. The decision to make the award today also comes despite the obvious need for a re-baselining of NASA’s lunar exploration program, which has no realistic chance of returning U.S. astronauts to the Moon by 2024. While work continues on the upcoming Artemis-1 mission, it will be critically important for the new NASA leadership team to carry out its own review of all elements of NASA’s Moon-Mars initiative to ensure that this major national undertaking is put on a sound footing.”
Keith’s note: My question at the NASA press event: “Senator Nelson has been a staunch SLS supporter since day one. If NASA really used the capability of SpaceX Starship architecture to its fullest sustainable extent this could easily set forth a path to reduce the need for SLS launches. Sen. Nelson’s confirmation hearing is next week. If Sen. Nelson says that this procurement decision should be revisited is NASA prepared to re-do the initial procurement to pick more than one HLS contractor? And if Congress needs to enact changes in law to accomodate a procurement change has NASA given thought as to how that would be accomplished?”
Jurczyk: “We have no plans to change our architecture for lunar landing missions. We did this procurement with a competition etc etc and made selection and we are moving forward we have no intent to revisit the selection.”
so did congress want Nelson to go through the whole source selection review and sign off on it? that undermines kathy L as head of HEO to make the hard decisions. I would assume NASA floated this decision by Biden and others in his staff and they were okay. given Nelson serves at the pleasure of Biden then seems like he is not critical to this announcement. his job is now to push on congress to actually fund HLS cause it was clear from the source selection that the paltry amount HLS has gotten so far tied their hands and they had to beg Elon to rethink his pricing plan to help work with the constrained budget. the question for Johnson and others is what is the point of SLS/Orion and Gateway that they have funded if not to put boots on the Moon. if they want to slow roll that and stretch the milestones beyond 2024 that is one thing and doesn’t impact today’s decision. if per usual SLS/Orio/gateway is just slush fund for the space lobby then why did they even throw a few pennies at HLS? It is time to return to the Moon and so far Starship seems the viable and cost effective option.
“I am disappointed that the Acting NASA leadership decided to make such a consequential award prior to the arrival of a new permanent NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator.”
It’s almost like she’s upset that somebody in a temporary leadership role is actually showing that leadership.
It’s entirely possible that the decision was made in order to head-off opposition by the future Administrator.
I don’t really see that. The Administrator isn’t allowed to interfere with the selection process. He could decide if they were going to select one or two bids, but with the current budget selecting two really wasn’t an option. He could also decide to call the whole thing off and say NASA was going to develop HSL itself (with the usual NASA process of contracting out the work while retaining full management control) rather than as a private-public venture. But since the contracts aren’t in place yet, the new Administrator could still do that.
I’m also not sure Representative Johnson’s stated concern makes sense. Yes, the 2024 landing date isn’t going to happen, and yes, given the budget (which she is substantially responsible for) NASA’s going to have to rethink the whole schedule for the Artemis II and later missions. But knowing who’s going to build the lander, and more importantly, how much it’s going to cost, will have to be a major part of that rethinking. A selection before the review seems like something they’d have to do regardless of who is the Administrator.
Although I’m somewhat of a SpaceX fan; I’m surprised the Dynetics lander proposal didn’t win the award. The National team design is somewhat of a kludge. SpaceX will have to optimize and probably re-design their huge vehicle for the task at hand. These are interesting times.
Here’s the source selection statement…
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/…
and below is an updated version of the new Starship HLS vehicle. Circumferential landing thrusters below the cargo deck, big landing legs, etc.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
The Dynetics bid was more expensive than SpaceX’ “by a large margin”, and they were over mass (as in, they would have had to reduce the vehicle’s mass during development to be able to launch it.) At this stage of a project, you’re expected to have a large, positive mass margin. So their bid’s technical merits were described as “marginal” by the reviewers.
It also isn’t clear how much, if any, redesign work SpaceX will have to do. Starship development seems to be very much a design as you go process. The prototypes they’re currently flying don’t have things like the final landing gear or heat shields for reentry. So it’s not so much that they’ll have to redesign it to remove the heat shield, they’ll just have to not add them to design of the lunar version. The landing gear will have to be different, but they don’t currently have a final design, so I’m not sure how much redesign is required.
Although I didn’t expect this selection, now that we’ve seen how NASA evaluated the bids, I don’t see how NASA could have made any other choice. They barely have money to fund one of the bids (and at that, they’ll probably have to rephase and stretch out SpaceX’s proposed budget), so they definitely couldn’t fund two. The lowest cost proposal was the one which was rated highest in terms technical merits and management.
Based on what was said during the press conference and the rendering I don’t expect lunar version of Starship to return to Earth. All indications are it will just return the astronauts to Orion for the return trip to Earth.
The render shows no fins so that indicates that it’s not intended to return to Earth and if that’s true no heat shield is required.
The question then is what will they do with it after it returns the crew to the Orion.
As the lander will be reused for several missions after the first tests, possibly, where will it happen? They will bring another spaceship with fuel to the moon, or bring the lander back to LEO to refuel? Am I loosing something? Or this is not settled at all, will be decided after?
It isn’t clear what they’ll do, and they may not have decided. But a Starship can’t go from LEO to the lunar surface and back to LEO. Returning it to LEO for refueling isn’t an option. They may not be planning to reuse the HLS Starships. Or they may be considering refueling in lunar orbit. For all we know, they might even be thinking of a second landing and leaving the Starship on the surface of the Moon. Just the pressurized volume and power supply would make a nice infrastructure contribution to a future lunar base.
Thanks, the key is the capability to return from moon to LEO. The size of Moonship gives a lot o flexibility at this point in the project. Could it transporting less cargo and crew be considered in order to carry more fuel to return to LEO? The use of the Starship as a template by SpaceX is smart for lowering development costs and even contribuiting for the Starship development itself. But in the long term, cuting the upper third of the Moonship and making it a lighter, more practical and easier to refuel lander could make more sense. The Moonship will bring an enormous capability to bring cargo and living volume to Moon’s surface, after half a dozen landings it will look like an overkill more and more. As it is now, the moonship is simplier and cheaer to develop, comparing to the other bidders, which are actually a show case of how space is hard, we’re used to try to make the most of extreme and costly systems. In time, after stablishing a sustainable system, it will be easier so simplify even more.
I don’t see any point in returning a lunar Starship to LEO. It can be stationed at Gateway (or simply in high lunar orbit before Gateway exists) and refueled by a Starship tanker there for another landing mission.
Here SpaceX says, “A lunar optimized Starship can fly many times between the surface of the Moon and lunar orbit without flaps or heat shielding required for Earth return.”
MAY 01, 2020
NASA SELECTS LUNAR OPTIMIZED STARSHIP
https://www.spacex.com/upda…
I see, but it will take several Starships going to the moon to refuel the Moonship, complicating the process.
SpaceX is the cheapest
SpaceX is the only fully reusable option
SpaceX is the only option actually building hardware
SpaceX is up to 10x the payload to the moon.
SpaceX is up to 10x the passenger capacity to the moon.
Think about it. It’s a no brainer
The Starship variant used for lunar landings would (probably) not be reusable. That would require additional refueling in lunar orbit, and that doesn’t seem to be part of the plan.
I would think a concern would be the inability to inspect the vehicle after each mission. I suppose some things could be done with cameras, but it wouldn’t be as thorough of an inspection as you can get on the ground. In the future when there is robust on-orbit servicing capability then it might be considered.
I’m curious to hear what the ∆V capacity is of a fully-fueled Lunar Starship. Could it go from LEO to lunar orbit, land, and return to lunar orbit without further refueling and with meaningful ∆V remaining? Could they offload fuel to a lunar-orbit depot to minimize landing weight, then pull fuel back into Starship to support the next landing run?
If it helps, I just posted this to the comments on the relevant Ars Technica article.
The dry mass of a Starship with no payload is 120 tonnes. The fully fueled wet mass is 1320 tonnes. That would take 12 tanker flights, but let’s assume that. The specific impulse of a vacuum Raptor is 380 seconds. That gives a delta v of 8.93 km/s.
The trans-lunar injection burn from a 500 km low Earth orbit is 3.06 km/s. That trajectory has the spacecraft approaching the Moon at 0.83 km/s. From there to a direct landing on the surface requires a delta-v of 2.52 km/s. So the minimum delta-v for a one way trip from LEO is 5.58 km/s. The delta-v for a return trip is the same, so that’s 11.16 km/s. So Starship, even fully fueled and without any payload, can’t make a LEO to lunar surface and back to LEO round trip.
Interestingly, a fully fueled Starship with 30 tonnes of payload could manage a LEO to lunar surface to Earth, with a direct entry at Earth without stopping in LEO (delta v of 8.8 km/s.)
Can´t they aerocapture into LEO to reduce the delta-V needed even without heat shield? Also the Lunar version might be much lighter. IMHO I would expect them to create 2 or 3 versions, cargo to get 100t to the Moon and stay there, lighter HLS lander and a tanker to refuel in NRHO.
With enough passes, they could aerobrake stop in low Earth orbit. But it would probably take a year and many passes through the Van Allen belts. You wouldn’t want to do that with a crew on board. And it isn’t clear what you’d do with the vehicle once it was back in low Earth orbit. There have been some suggestions that, if Starship could do a round trip (LEO to lunar surface and back) with crew, then SLS and Orion would be unnecessary. But it doesn’t look like that’s possible.
Yes, the lunar Starship would be lighter, without the fins and the heat shields. But we don’t know how much lighter, so we can’t evaluate what that would do to the delta-v budget.
It could be reusable if they plan on refueling it with a Starship tanker in high lunar orbit (where it needs to drop off the crew after the landing part of the mission anyway).
Here SpaceX says, “A lunar optimized Starship can fly many times between the surface of the Moon and lunar orbit without flaps or heat shielding required for Earth return.”
MAY 01, 2020
NASA SELECTS LUNAR OPTIMIZED STARSHIP
https://www.spacex.com/upda…
That might be possible at some point. But there aren’t any facilities in lunar orbit for inspection or the sort of maintenance required to turn around a Starship. I know Mr. Musk has talked about things like turning Starships around like airliners, and eventually flying the same one three times a day. But I think that’s going to take a decade wroth of experience and evolution of the design, if not longer. So I suspect a lunar Starship, at least for the next decade, will take more than refueling between flights, and the facilities for that don’t exist.
Hated to break it to you. The National Team design was the one that most resembled the NASA reference design. However they try to shrink the initial design down to fit in a 5 meter diameter payload fairing resulting in a 2 person vehicle with a 10 meter ladder to the Lunar surface. The shrinking was a hedge against the New Glenn entering service late.
AIUI Dynetics messed up by deleting the drop tanks and replaced them with bigger integrated propellant tanks. That increase the dry Lunar landing mass of the vehicle that required drastic weight reduction measures later in development and operations.
Both the National Team lander and the Dynetics lander barely have enough room for a crew of 2. Bigger Lunar sortie crews later need basically a new bigger vehicle design. More than a 2 person crew is needed for anything more than a flag and footprints mission.
Well, at least she is obviously right about the “no realistic chance of 2024” part
More like 2030, if we are being honest
So… Starship is there in lunar orbit, a ship fully outfitted to carry astronauts… but it was sent there empty of people so that another spacecraft could be used to carry people to it… so said people are then transferred to this Starship to land on the moon… and then after they walk around and stuff, Starship goes from the moon back to the other ship so that those people can be transferred so that… oh, wait… then there’s that Gateway thingie… Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
It will be interesting to see if Space X optimizes the LS-Artemis design so as to exploit the larger architecture’s removal of its need to TEI, reenter at 36K fps, and land on the Earth’s surface. I could imagine such a path whereby a stripped down SS config just happens to allow deep-space testing of SS subsystems (Raptor turn-around servicing at Gateway…eventually?? A strerch indeed) while not having to sweat deep-space reentry challenges until later. Yes, such a scheme would contradict the assembly line econ-mantra but I don’t see it as beyond all possibility.
But your point is taken…especially if they plan to return them to Earth regularly for between-flight maintenance. Then we’ll see beyond doubt which emperor is missing his clothes…which makes the selection that much more surprising.
Exactly my reaction – it’s like sending the Queen Mary to pick up two guys sitting offshore in a dinghy in order to ferry them to shore and back, all the while claiming with the straightest of straight faces that the maximum capacity of your system is the two guys. (not to mention that the dinghy costs 3 times as much as the ocean liner and sinks after one trip)
But Todd, the Queen Mary has minimal pork on board. And the dinghy is carrying a huge amount of pork in addition to those two guys. It’s the pork that forces everything in this scenario to levels of ridiculousness.
But Homer, making sense would eliminate the use of SLS/Orion, which is mandated by Congress. The space pork must flow.
The Martian helo, Crew 2, and Starship 15 are all exciting events this week, but the most important may be on Wednesday when congress interacts with new NASA head Nelson and we find the future direction of SLS and Starship.
Did SpaceX publish a mission profile of any sort?
Not really. A few hints here:
https://www.spacex.com/upda…
OK…
The first two paragraphs do indeed limit the Optimized Starship (a most non-Elon name) to Lunar orbit and Lunar surface. No mention of return to LEO. And the tail still houses atmospheric and vac engines.
I wonder how many launches form Earth are needed to support first and second landings…