Delivering payloads to orbit is the whole point. Let's compare Starship to the 60-year old technology everyone most likes to compare it to, the Saturn V. That craft put a payload into orbit on its first flight. No wasting time fooling around with partially successful suborbital demos. Starship/SuperHeavy just had it's sixth flight. On Saturn V's sixth flight, it sent Apollo 11 to the moon.
For Starship HLS to land astronauts on the moon (now slated for 2027, but there's no way that will happen), SpaceX will need to orbit a Starship tanker, then orbit a series of Starships (a number in the "high teens", per NASA) to fuel the tanker, then orbit Starship HLS (Human Landing System) to receive fuel from the tanker, then fire Starship HLS into a translunar trajectory, then drop it into lunar orbit, where it will dock with either Artemis 3 or with the Lunar Gateway, from which astronauts will transfer, then deorbit and descend to the surface, then lift off, achieve lunar orbit, and dock again to deliver astronauts for the return trip. (After which, the fuel-depleted Starship HLS will be abandoned, not reused.) That's an awful lot of capabilities that have yet to be demonstrated!
Even if NASA had 10 Saturn V's and 10 Apollo era LEM's also in storage it wouldn't mean squat. It would still mean that NASA and mankind still would be at the same dead end Apollo faced in 1972. We still have sealed bags of Moon rocks we haven't touched yet from the 1st Apollo missions.
Going back to the Moon in the 2020-30's is NOT about doing a re-enactment of the Apollo landings objectives of planting a flag, taking selfies and grabbing a few rocks. That is NOT mankind's next great leap forward.
Without being able to land 100's or 1000's of tons of equipment on the Moon there is nothing happening beyond doing the Apollo did. During this phase of Lunar exploration, finding ice water in the deep craters at the south pole seems to be the real objective but that is only phase 1.
After finding that Ice...Phase 2, would be building the infrastructure to access and process that ice would be next. Not know exactly what is in those craters, how to attack the processing the ice is an unknown. No matter how you look at it, that phase also is a project that also requires 1000's of tons of equipment. After that there would be additional phases of 3, 4 and 5. Guess what that will require?
Then you can't ignore the reality of using an expendable SLS 2 stage rocket that costs $4 billion every launch is not the right tool for this job. It doesn't have the capability that the Sat V had, it is only a 2 stage rocket. And we've already burnt what, $20 billion on R&D for SLS?
Face the cold shower reality of physics and the cold shower reality of a realistic working budget. Ares has already spent 10's of billions and that didn't include any kind of lander. NASA painted themselves into a corner. They only had 1 card to play.
SX was building their Mars lander with Starship. NASA called SX to bail them out because there is no other option for a lander. I mean what was NASA going to do, ask Blue or Boeing to build one? I mean Blue hasn't been able to put anything into LEO after 25 years. A lunar lander? Haha, 15 years sounds reasonable. As for Boeing, in 2024 a crew capsule isn't really anything new considering we have been building capsules since the early 1960's but Boeing can't get it done.
NASA, "Hey Elon can we use Starship as a lunar lander?"
Elon, "Sure, but understand we're not delaying out Mars lander project to build your Lunar lander."
NASA, "Okay but we need to tell the public and the media that is will happen sooner."
Elon, "sure but we all know if I land anything on Mars everyone will forget about going back to the Moon."
NASA, "Of course but this is how the game is played".
So taking that into account, please explain what the problems are with SX's Starship again? A fully reusable system is a massive challenge but what other options are there that we're all missing? Also what other option besides orbital refueling is there?
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram