Will Lawyers Delay The NASA 2024 Lunar Landing Goal?
Keith’s note: NASA Public Affairs has issued this statement (you have to ask for it and they are apparently not going to post it on their website for some reason):
“NASA was notified that Blue Origin filed a bid protest with the United States Court of Federal Claims (COFC) following the denial of the protests filed with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) regarding NASA’s selection for the human landing system (HLS) Option A award. NASA officials are currently reviewing details of the case. NASA is committed to the Artemis program and the nation’s global leadership in space exploration. With our partners, we will go to the Moon and stay to enable science investigations, develop new technology, and create high paying jobs for the greater good and in preparation to send astronauts to Mars. As soon as possible, the agency will provide an update on the way forward for returning to the Moon as quickly and as safely as possible under Artemis.”
Spacesuits and Lawsuits Put 2024 Moon Landing in Jeopardy, NextGov
“NASA may not land astronauts on the Moon by 2024 because two spacesuits won’t be ready on time and because losing bidders have protested the lunar lander contract, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday. “The goal is 2024. We have just been held up for 100 days waiting for the protest” filed by Blue Origin and Dynetics to the Government Accountability Office over NASA’s decision to award the contract to SpaceX, Nelson said.. The protest had halted all work on the lander until GAO threw it out on July 30.” … “Nelson said Blue Origin might delay the lunar lander work further with appeals. “We are waiting as we speak to find out if there is going to be a further appeal to the Federal Court of Claims, which is like a federal district court, and then of course you can take appeals from there on to the United States Court of Appeals,” he said. “So there are a lot of blockades that have been put in front of us.”
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sues NASA, escalating its fight for a Moon lander contract, The Verge
“Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin brought its fight against NASA’s Moon program to federal court on Monday. The complaint escalates a monthslong crusade by the company to win a chunk of lunar lander funds that was only given to its rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company’s lawsuit, coming weeks after its first protest over the Moon program was squashed by a federal watchdog agency, could trigger another procedural pause to SpaceX’s contract and add a new lengthy delay to NASA’s race to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024.”
Spacesuits or lawsuits, at the rate SLS/Orion is going, Starship might land on the Moon first. Unless, of course, the FAA wants to run an EIS on Shackleton Crater! Or we can’t get visas for our astronauts from the PRC.
SLS/Orion does not land on the Moon.
The nearest Orion gets to the lunar surface is low lunar orbit (LLO).
Four astronauts transfer from Orion to the HLS Starship lunar lander that shuttles those astronauts from LLO to the lunar surface and then back to LLO.
The four astronauts transfer back to Orion which then heads for Earth. The HLS Starship waits in LLO for a propellant delivery since it’s tanks are nearly dry.
actually Orion can’t go to LLO it can only get in and out of NRHO thus why gateway transfer station was created.
Starship raptor engines would dig a hole if it tried landing on regolith would it not? The same thing when taking off, the engines are almost at ground level I can imagine firing those into regolith.
For the final touchdown they will be using thrusters located higher up on the spaceship which are angled slightly outwards. The same thrusters will be used for the initial liftoff from the surface.
That is for the Human Lander System not the starship those are two different and separate vehicles.
Your question sounded like you didn’t know about the thrusters, but I realize now that you were replying to someone who used the term Starship instead of HLS. The full name I think is Starship HLS, although in the initial NASA announcement in April they called it HLS Starship. I tend to think that HLS is a temporary name anyway, it seems like a pretty mundane name for SpaceX and I would guess it is just a fill-in name for now, sort of like BFR was until they settled on the Starship name.
Yes, I do not recall what Musk has called the HLS version. Did he even refer to it in those Tim Dodd interviews? I would imagine SpaceX has to be thinking about some kind of landing pad for Starship landings on both Luna and Mars as soon as possible.
I asked a similar question here some time ago and got this answer: the initially released renders of the Starship HLS are not remotely representative of the vehicle. The actual flight example will have an entirely different landing leg design with a much larger span, a different shape obvious thrusters at the top.
My question was prompted by my concern that tested Starship leg design seems fit for landing on an absolutely flat surface (a pad) and not on any kind of unfinished or non-planar surface. And I was informed that it would be having a leg design more akin to Falcon 9.
Not sure how this relates to Starships used for non-Lunar purposes, but I imagine the design will necessarily be different enough to qualify it as mostly different vehicle that just shares some technologies and parts.
Whatever it eventually gets called, if it’s done via internet voting, we know what the result will be…. Moony McMoonFace.
SpaceX and NASA are discussing the waist thrusters vs main engines per Musk’s Tim Dodd interview. NASA has also started research using a regolith simulant as to if the mains are an issue.
If you heat regolith enough, it could melt together to become a solid surface to make roads and landing pads.
(That was a development prompt to any robot inventors who might be listening BTW 😉
It was always a stretch, especially once they didn’t get the extra funding they needed. They might be able to land some of the test hardware and do a lunar flyby/orbital mission by 2024, but landing will take longer unless Starship progress ends up faster than expected.
This may help…and this year Starship progress has been put into high gear.
https://twitter.com/theshee…
I am all too familiar with this trick: the project is running behind schedule on multiple fronts, who do we pick to actually blame it on?
Even if it primarily a game of “pass the buck,” it is not a good thing for Blue Origin to be publicly admonished by the NASA Administrator for holding up the agency’s centerpiece program. This reputation of being a sore loser will color appraisals of their future submissions. Hopefully they take the hint and knock it off.
This has been Bezos’s strategy all along: cause enough delay that the whole thing gets canceled. He’s basically throwing a tantrum.
Bezos is the sort of personality who, if he isn’t allowed to be king, will just not let anyone play. I’m not sure that there are any ways to restrain his bitter, resentful and petty ways without opening big cans of worms about civil rights and access to legal remedies.
BlueOrigin staff seem to have found a way – they’ve started heading for the doors. That’ll certainly reign him in.
Well fortunately SpaceX is not waiting on the HLS awards to continue work on SS and SH. Since these are both needed for the HLS Program (modified SS) the appeals and lawsuits should have very little impact in the short-term anyway.
Cheers
Neil
Speaking of…
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
I would think since payment to SpaceX would be by the milestone, a protest that includes a pause would just be a pause in the paperwork. SpaceX can make progress on its own terms and when “unpaused” get paid for the milestones already accomplished. The big loss would be access to NASA’s expertise, facilities and resources, but I don’t know how much SpaceX would need any of that.
That’s the glory of it…they already have access to that since they have not only active ISS contracts but other Artemis contracts as well.
Anyone with a Space Act Agreement contract has access to NASA expertise, and also their tech database.
There are probably limits to using NASA facilities for development and testing activities for paused projects, but they aren’t there yet with HLS Starship anyway. Besides, the demo flight is an uncrewed lunar landing, right? They were already working on doing a fly-by with the Earth-return version of Starship. They can do all of that while the HLS program is paused.
That’s why we space fans like Space Act Agreement contracts. If properly used they can just end-run around many government-related delays and keep moving forward.
Too long of a pause in paperwork could still kick the landing down the calendar though, but the spacesuit issue is the long pole in the tent on the timeline right now anyway.
The 2024 goal was always irresponsible at best, a plan that has a landing (with people) on only the third flight of a brand new spacecraft + lander + associated equipment. Only the second flight of a system with people in it. Would any equipment be flown for only the first time – for a Lunar landing?
Certainly Apollo was a far different animal but then we had a number of tests of the capsule, Lunar Lander, etc. We had far more time to find problems and solve them. Artemis does not have an “Apollo 10 sort of flight for instance. And on Apollo we lost the “Apollo 1” crew (named that only after the fire) and just had the most amazing luck to recover the Apollo 13 crew – the failure happened at one of the few mission points where we had a chance to recover them.
We seem to have learned little from the Challenger and Columbia losses, where we saw that we need the strength to see a problem and stand down until we understand and fix it.
The thing that will delay the 2024 goal is common sense and engineering expertise. The 2024 goal was only established as a Lunar campaign event for Mike Pence.
Astronauts are flying on Orion after only one flight and Orion is getting upgrades on each flight. It isn’t until Artemis 3 that you finally get a full up fully capable Orion with nav aids, docking system, robust prop system. Nobody is complaining about that flight regime. SpaceX will have far more uncrewed flights under it’s belt before crew gets on board.
Plus 2024 was to push the agency out if it’s anemic development in lackadaisical approach to going back to the moon. Did anyone think 2028 was likely with cost plus and NASA owned vehicle plans before pence pushed for 2024 and new BAA approach? Moon 2028 was pipe dream and PowerPoint fantasy meant to talk about going but never really going cause the agency thinks they can skip the moon and go directly to Mars
“SpaceX will have far more unscrewed flights under it’s belt before crew gets on board.”
Was that a Freudian slip? I do believe SpaceX won’t fly crews until it has a number of successful uncrewed flights of its ships under its belt. I also believe SpaceX will have flights going to the Moon well before Artemis gets its act together…if it ever does. BTW, it would be “nice” to see Starliner have an unscrewed flight, period!
stupid autocorrect
I’m getting a RocketPlane-Kistler K1 vibe from Starliner’s perpetual soap opera.
Someone needs to call Sierra Space & tell them to ramp up.
So you think.
2024 was based on the previous president’s cycle.
We bought ourselves 4 more years …
That’s a huge number, and a huge delay, in a project so apparently complex that even moderately-informed folks can’t really grasp causes/ effects.
Back in the Olden Days, I’d wonder about the costs and timeline. I’d wonder: what the hell makes these things so costly? and take so long to complete? But there’d be no way to assess these costs, make some sort of sense. Even accounting for inefficiencies of some government contracting, I’d be left with “well, there’s a lot more to this project than meets the eye”.
The Olden Days are gone. SX showed the world that an entirely new class of boosters – and engines – could come to life in fractional timelines, and at a fraction of the costs we have seen since the dawn of space.
Certainly the embarrassing SLS program is the Poster Child of New Space. What has not happened, though? No uproar. Nothing like “Hey! Wait a minute! What’s wrong with this picture?”
Extrapolation from several projects is dangerous for sure. But where’s the new mood? Where’s the face palm? “Seriously? $420 million? And we have neither a completion date nor a firm cost?”
There are three types of Starship used for HLS:
1) The HLS Starship for placing cargo on the lunar surface. It is a stripped down uncrewed Starship with no flaps, no heat shield, and no environmental control life support system (ECLSS). It has landing legs similar to those on the Falcon 9 booster and a set of landing engines locate high on the hull to minimize the amount of lunar regolith blasted away by engine exhaust. It remains on the lunar surface permanently.
2) The HLS Starship lunar lander for moving crew from low lunar orbit (LLO) to the lunar surface and back to LLO. The SLS/Orion vehicle delivers the Orion spacecraft to LLO with four astronauts onboard. They transfer to the HLS Starship lunar lander to go down to the lunar surface and return in the lander to LLO to transfer back to Orion and head for Earth.
The HLS Starship lunar lander has no flaps and no heat shield but does have landing legs, the special lunar landing engines, and an ECLSS sized for four or more astronauts.
3) The tanker Starship which transports methalox propellant to LLO to refuel the HLS Starship lunar lander. The tanker has flaps, heat shield and enlarged propellant tanks with 1300t (metric ton) capacity. The tanker leaves LLO when its job is finished there and returns to the ocean platforms near Boca Chica.
Musk said they might not need those high landing thrusters. He seems to think using a deeper-throttle version of the Raptors will work. It’s all in flux as they try it and see. Best to have as few differences from the regular Starship as possible.
It appears that Blue Origins does indeed intend to push it further.
https://www.engadget.com/bl…
It’s a shame that they don’t just “get on with it” … build a lander and NASA (or someone else) will use it. Another system to the lunar surface is only better (than 1).
They have another problem; their CONOPS depends on Vulcan-Centaur or New Glenn to launch the National Team’s components, and they’re grounded until Blue gets BE-4 sorted out. Like a dog chasing its own tail, they’re going nowhere fast.
They also depend on SLS to get crew out to cislunar space. That’s expensive even for Bezos, and the limited vehicles available mean it’s likely just not for sale. The only other company that could plausibly do the job in the near future is…SpaceX.
BO might be able to do something if anything had ever come of their biconic capsule ideas, but once again they’re missing opportunities because they haven’t bothered to develop the needed tools.
And a lead engineer for Blue’s HLS program just jumped ship to SpaceX.
(LinkedIn)
https://tinyurl.com/43uzwnxe
Another Blue (and former SpaceX) engineer has also left; to join Firefly. The exodus continues.
https://spacenews.com/firef…
I was hoping to see Lauren Lyons’ name behind that link. I can imagine her stomach was hurting after seeing the nonsense that BO PR and legal were shoveling out on a regular basis. Good for her. I think she’ll make an outstanding COO.
Well it looks like the lawyers, based upon today’s (Monday) news of the BO lawsuit.
And when the lawyers win, the rest of us lose … a zero sum game
To me this whole program is really confusing. I don’t have legal education or experience, haven’t worked many contracts so I can’t really tell what is definable basis or hogwash. The technical angles I’ve not studied that much but I read about a collection of various vehicles of widely different categories from various countries but they don’t seem harmonious like Apollo CSM, LM, and launch vehicle. Interesting to see what will still be around 20 years from now. Analogy of 1940s to 1960s of all sorts of airline transport concepts but what type of category has been sustainable in the last 50 years (twin engine, low wing, tubular fuselage and Mach 0.8).
I hope our legal system finds Besos’ guilty of filing a nuisance lawsuit. It would one thing if Besos actually had any kind of space or lunar experience, in which case perhaps his company would be seen as a bona fide competitor, but he doesn’t. Out of the blue, Blue Origin approached me, asking if I would go to work for them designing lunar spacecraft. I asked if they were actually involved in that sort of work. I can see Space X accomplishments and plans. I do not see the same with Besos’ efforts.
“NASA may not land astronauts on the Moon by 2024 because two spacesuits won’t be ready on time and because losing bidders have protested the lunar lander contract, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday.”
Come on, it’s also because the SpaceX Starship is a notional sci fi spacecraft and not something that has been proven to be viable nor something that has any realistic chance of being operational by 2024. If it does work down the road, it makes SLS and Orion obsolete. If it doesn’t work, Orion has no mission other than to fly in circles around the moon. Either way, it makes no sense for the Artemis architecture.
I guess NASA disagrees with you. They selected SpaceX for the HLS contract, and rating it “Acceptable” on technical factors and “Outstanding” on management factors. That means they (as in the experts who saw proposal with all the technical details), were confident that Starship would be operational by 2024 and that it does make sense for Artemis. I’m also not sure why you call it a “notional” spacecraft, since they’ve built and tested prototype hardware. If that’s notional, then would you also call ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn to be “notional” launch vehicles?