SpaceX Starship docking system readies for moon missions in tests with NASA

[Admin]

Ahead of the Artemis 3 lunar landing mission, hardware from SpaceX's Starship was used to simulate dockings with NASA's Orion crew capsule. The two will rendezvous above the moon.

SpaceX Starship docking system readies for moon missions in tests with NASA : Read more

 

[CommonSenseNow]

Being they haven't figured out how to launch one without blowing it the hell up....I would say that, as usual, the fanboy hack blogger wannabe is jumping the gun.

 

[Mergatroid]

This is awesome. I can't wait to see this system in operation.
Being the largest rocket ever produced by humanity, and the fact it's using all newly designed engines and fuel systems, it's no surprise they are having some issues getting it all working.
Musk seems dedicated to this (good for him) however, and I fully expect to see it working in the next 1 to 2 years.
Once is is working, all the naysayers can eat crow.

 

[Atlan0001]

What I want to see beginning for the space frontier is the tooling to make tools, progressively to make tools, ever more of them ever widening. A construction facility to make construction facilities, progressively to make construction facilities, ever more of them ever widening. And a mining base on the Moon. What is not even on drawing boards yet after fifty-one years that I know of. Every thing is still square one, has not moved an inch off square one, after fifty-one years. Clapping hands about too long a future, still, running on a treadmill, including running a funding treadmill, going absolutely nowhere except to eventual inevitably infinitely untenable costs, retreat (again), retrenchment (again), and finally extinction.

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

It is important that they tested the docking as the active agent:

This dynamic testing demonstrated that the Starship system could perform a “soft capture” while in the active docking role.

Docking to the new space station they need to be the active agent. But before that they will do propellant transfer in low Earth orbit, so Starships need to be able to dock with each other.

A construction facility to make construction facilities, progressively to make construction facilities, ever more of them ever widening. And a mining base on the Moon. What is not even on drawing boards yet after fifty-one years that I know of. Every thing is still square one, has not moved an inch off square one, after fifty-one years. Clapping hands about too long a future, still, running on a treadmill, including running a funding treadmill, going absolutely nowhere except to eventual inevitably infinitely untenable costs, retreat (again), retrenchment (again), and finally extinction.

Why would anyone want to mine on the Moon now that it will be cheap enough to lift to Earth orbit - and land on Moon if necessary (with Starship, say)? It won't be economical.

Large scale construction (and production) facilities will make sense for Mars colonists and further out in the system. On the Moon, only for science projects (short term, maybe tourists later).

The last part seems to make no sense, since NASA has researched the context of astronaut survival and long travel times for e.g. Mars. And (individual and) population extinction is the life trajectory of all species due to the natural process of evolution. Humans have already gotten 0.3 of the average 1 million years of mammal species lifetime under its belt. We can even hope for 2 million years (or more), since Erectus managed it.

Resistance to extinction is futile, and it's no big deal. Evidently evolution is a sturdy process (has lasted 1/3 of the universe lifetime already, asymptoting towards 100 %). And whether or not humans become a spacefaring civilization for the foreseeable future we will go extinct but life will likely not. Spacefaring may hasten the process since sexual subpopulations need on average 1 crossbreeding per generation to not split into new species, we need e.g. martian colonies to be reachable. Humans are destined to be a an average lifetime local species whether or not we will have descendants colonizing other systems.

 

[Atlan0001]

It is important that they tested the docking as the active agent:

Docking to the new space station they need to be the active agent. But before that they will do propellant transfer in low Earth orbit, so Starships need to be able to dock with each other.


Why would anyone want to mine on the Moon now that it will be cheap enough to lift to Earth orbit - and land on Moon if necessary (with Starship, say)? It won't be economical.

Large scale construction (and production) facilities will make sense for Mars colonists and further out in the system. On the Moon, only for science projects (short term, maybe tourists later).

The last part seems to make no sense, since NASA has researched the context of astronaut survival and long travel times for e.g. Mars. And (individual and) population extinction is the life trajectory of all species due to the natural process of evolution. Humans have already gotten 0.3 of the average 1 million years of mammal species lifetime under its belt. We can even hope for 2 million years (or more), since Erectus managed it.

Resistance to extinction is futile, and it's no big deal. Evidently evolution is a sturdy process (has lasted 1/3 of the universe lifetime already, asymptoting towards 100 %). And whether or not humans become a spacefaring civilization for the foreseeable future we will go extinct but life will likely not. Spacefaring may hasten the process since sexual subpopulations need on average 1 crossbreeding per generation to not split into new species, we need e.g. martian colonies to be reachable. Humans are destined to be a an average lifetime local species whether or not we will have descendants colonizing other systems.

'The High Frontier', by Gerard K. O'Neill.
'Colonies in Space', by T. A. Heppenheimer.
And so on so forth....

Very little will come down to Earth except foods, trade goods, energies in increasing vacuums to be filled, and wealth. Going up, industrial expansion (industries from Earth), expanding opportunity, expanding life, and some early trace salting of environments. Everything sought in frontier expansionism flying in the face of the "usual suspect" naysayers, usual to all history everywhere, who would have life run in place on treadmills to a mass in-turning -- increasingly energy-less -- entropic nowhere but extinction. An ever increasing internal mediocrity. A combustible life increasingly violence and fracture bent.

Homelands have always become internal accelerating expansionist new frontiers from accelerating expansions to external New Frontiers. The Old World always a New World because of expanding outer New World (in this case proliferating space island 'Ark' colonies among other ever widening custom space facilitations) frontiers.