This is really huge news. Starship has in about 18 months gone from a Elon standing next to a steel grain silo duct-taped into the shape of a rocket, to all the eggs in NASA's moon basket. The thing I kept thinking - and I have to believe was considered within NASA - is given the rapid progress SpaceX has been making along with the delays in Congressional funding, SLS, BlueOrigin's other projects etc ... if NASA hadn't selected SpaceX there was at least some chance they'd go ahead and do their own private Moon landing mission before NASA's, a massive egg-on-face moment.
There are still major risks with the Starship program so I don't think anyone should be 100% confident they can pull this off, but the massive side benefit is if they do NASA will have proven out a generic system, fully reusable and with orbital refueling, that can with minimal modification cost-effectively send humans to Mars and much of the rest of the solar system as well. A Model T or 737 in space. The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now.
If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment and give the JFK speech, "We choose to go to Mars in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"
To me that's the real takeaway here: this is implicitly a huge NASA bet not just on the Moon, but Mars and the rest of the solar system. Finally.
> There are still major risks with the Starship program
To expand on this: I think it's reasonable to assume that the stack will reach orbit just fine and be a functional rocket.
The big risks are related to recovery. Starship will require in-orbit refueling to go to the moon, so (rapid) reusability is somewhat of a hard requirement.
Superheavy (the first stage) is huge and will land directly on the launch tower instead of using landing legs - to reduce turnaround times. This is innovative and completely unproven. And a RUD would at the very least put the launch tower out of commission for a while.
Starship (the second stage) will also have to survive the high velocity reentry in a good condition and nail the crazy landing maneuver. SpaceX heat shield tiles and the general aerodynamic and thermal properties of the rocket are an unknown for now.
Musk recently said that Starship will probably require "many test flight" to achieve successful reentry and landing.
On top there have been quite a few reliability issues with their new Raptor engine, which need to be ironed out.
I'm sure SpaceX will figure it out, but there are a lot of risks lurking in the development program.
All this makes the choice to go for SpaceX more impressive for the usually so cautious NASA.
But the payoff would be enormous. If the re-usability works out, Starship can completely change the game for the launch market and lift capability.
Will SpaceX be as generous with its IP as NASA was in the 1960s and 1970s? The original moon landing yielded huge technological advances, many of which made their way into commercial applications. Tesla may instead hoard these advances to increase the networth of Elon Musk.
> The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now.
IIRC, in the Iliad Artemis helps out Ares (which is kinda the Greek version of Mars). Probably just a coincidence (I'm sure Artemis was chosen because she's Apollo's sister), but fun nonetheless.
why is going to mars even remotely high on the list of humanities priorities? it seems like people think its cool and then try to have their cake and eat it to by claiming its somehow important. im pretty sure for at least a very long time its just cool.
My biggest worry is whether SpaceX can keep up its momentum without Musk driving it. It's not unreasonable to think he could behave badly enough to end up in jail or removed from a leadership position.
“If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment“
Howard Stern had a great line in the 90’s about marijuana - “Every time you speak to these guys who dedicate their lives to legalizing marijuana, they go, “Hey dude, you can make rope out of marijuana.” I go, “Dude, don’t we have enough rope in this country?”
——
Every time I hear talk of spending billions on Mars, I ask “Dude, don’t we have enough red dirt in this country?”
The biggest news IMO is that there's only a single winner. There was a lot of pressure to make Commercial Crew a sole contact to Boeing, and it now appears that Boeing is going to deliver Starliner two years later than SpaceX delivered Crew Dragon. So going with two winners saved NASA's bacon. It's surprising to see them only choose a single winner here. Yes SpaceX may be considered a safe bet, but ten years ago it was Boeing who was considered the safe bet. Things change over years.
It's risky to select just a single winner, but I can't help but think this is the appropriate response to Boeing's pressure. It sends a clear message that the typical "old space" tactics will no longer be tolerated and that if these companies want to remain in the game, it will need to be by way of their competitive merit.
I have to say, I am completely skeptical of Blue Origin's ability to do anything in a reasonable amount of time and that they will amount of anything but Bezo's hobby. At least until they change their approaches.
That said, it's a very secretive firm with an unknown amount of progress.
Why in the title (not reflected in HN title) is it "Elon Musk's SpaceX" rather than just "SpaceX"? I could imagine the distinction being relevant if he had just taken the helm and this was the company taking some new direction because of it (e.g. "Patrick Gelsinger's Intel"), but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given Elon Musk has been the CEO since its founding.
Even the subhead betrays how weird this journalistic formulation is: "The company beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, a defense contractor". Like, ok, who is the CEO of Dynetics? Is it just some "public person" standard - because readers will say "Oh, that guy!"? Or is it because they're the majority shareholders in their respective companies and they do this for any company with a singular majority stake?
It is trying to make the article meaningful to the average person (which most people here are a fair way off being.)
The average person knows who Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are, because they are two of the richest men in the world–and Musk is prone to saying controversial things too, which helps stick him in people's minds. They might not remember who SpaceX are (even if they heard about Crew Dragon, they might just think that's NASA). They very likely have no idea who Blue Origin are.
Musk and Bezos are household names, even among the hoi polloi. The average person has never heard of Patrick Gelsinger, or of David A. King (CEO of Dynetics)
This [0] is also an interesting piece. SpaceX won a contract for logistics services to the lunar gateway but not much has happened on that front yet. Here is an excerpt from the article:
"NASA, in a statement provided to SpaceNews April 14, said it has yet to formally authorize SpaceX to proceed on the Gateway Logistics Services contract because the agency is studying the overall schedule of the Artemis lunar exploration program, of which development and use of the Gateway is just one part.
“An agency internal Artemis review team is currently assessing the timing of various Artemis capabilities, including Gateway. The goal of this internal review is to evaluate the current Artemis program budget and timeline, and develop high-level plans that include content, schedule, and budgets for the program,” the agency stated.", from [0]
Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the Gateway and going directly to the moon instead?
I doubt they'll cancel Gateway. They have already awarded contracts for its manufacture and launch, and they have international partners (Europe, Japan, Canada) committed to manufacture and launch components as well.
What might get cancelled however, is Dragon XL. I'm sure SpaceX is going to ask to change the contract to replace Dragon XL + Falcon Heavy with cargo Starship. Now that NASA is relying on Starship for HLS, it is going to be hard for them to say "no" to Starship for Gateway cargo as well.
> Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the gateway and going directly to the moon instead?
You don't assume the humanity doesn't need a Moon orbiting outpost, do you? Insisting that all materials and devices have to go to Moon or Earth with no intermediate point sounds, shall I say, interesting.
It's obviously time to stop burning all that money on SLS, which costs over $2 billion per flight because it's not reusable. The sunk cost fallacy only hurts more the longer you run with it.
Is this even a problem anymore? I mean, we just threw hundreds of billions behind all sorts of congress-critter pet projects - what's $10 billion (or even $100 billion) for a few moon landing missions?
More news from livestream: this contract covers two landings. A test landing and a single crewed landing. A new competition is opening immediately for subsequent landings.
SpaceX will have a huge leg up on the competition for the next competition, but if the Senate ponies up with more cash we might get two companies selected for the next contract like was desired for this one.
That seems pretty unlikely. "We did it twice, want to buy a few more landings?" vs "give us a cost plus contract, we haven't done it once, also like commerical crew, give us significantly more than the people that already did it". I'd bet on spacex. Who wouldn't?
Everyone thinks Elon was pumping Doge as he keeps saying Doge is going to the moon soon, he was, but this is what he was really talking about the entire time.
Considering SpaceX got by far the smallest award for the initial bid [0], it's great to see NASA choosing something new in an industry where entrenchment is so prevalent. It's a big disappointment that we haven't seen more from Blue Origin since the initial bid. Hopefully, the established players will take a step back and understand why SpaceX is completely dominating everything they do in this space.
Starship doesn't fit the original mission very well, so I wonder if this could be the start of a pretty big (and in my opinion necessary) overhaul for Artemis. I can't find the document, but I know NASA was pretty set on preferably a 3 but possibly a 2 stage lander and weren't sold on Starships reusability and using the same vehicle for cargo and human missions.
Starship is far more capable than anything else out or even anything on a drawing board, and NASA accepting it for human flights to the Moon signals a lot of confidence in SpaceX and Starship. Hopefully, NASA uses it to its fullest potential.
"In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)"
That's good PR, mentioning that Bezos owns WP when it is completely irrelevant, in order to foster a feeling of openness and honesty, while the real bomb in that sentence is that spaceX beat the team of the dinosaurs (Northrop, Lockheed)
My bet is that in the next couple of years we're going to see SpaceX start to move into in-orbit infrastructure: habitats, refueling depots, servicing stations, orbital assembly yards and so on, all the way up to massive mining systems.
Having infrastructure in orbit for say, refueling, reduces potential costs for certain space activities significantly and nobody else really has a good story for lifting the mass needed to build that stuff. Heck, spent Starships might even make decent core components for some of these facilities. Why deorbit them and shipbreak them after their serviceable lifespan when they could be kept up in orbit and comfortably house a dozen humans?
I think among all the people commenting here, I'm the only person who doesn't pay for washingtonpost. I'm surprised that the paywal business model works.
"Blue Origin's Total Evaluated Price was significantly higher than [SpaceX's], followed by Dynetics' Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly higher than Blue Origin's."
I always thought that if NASA chose another company, by the time they sent astronauts back to the moon they would be greeted by a small group of SpaceX colonists. There really is no competition at this point. Bezos is a joke when it comes to the Space Race in my opinion, he should stick to what he's amazing at like selling groceries and things on Amazon.
> Bezos is a joke when it comes to the Space Race in my opinion, he should stick to what he's amazing at like selling groceries and things on Amazon.
I seriously disagree. I think Bezos is on a different trajectory than SpaceX and isn’t as concerned with quick iterations. He gets a lot of hate from Elon fanboys but I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and can afford to play the long game.
I have a genuine curiousity (because I can't seem to find it in the news reports). The contract is going to the starship design. What exactly are they planning to take that requires such a large ship? The lunar landers were tiny because the Moon has such a small gravity well. For that payload capacity, I assume you would have most or all of a habitable lunar base.
> What exactly are they planning to take that requires such a large ship?
NASA didn't ask for such a big ship, and would have accepted a smaller one. But if SpaceX bids a big ship, they can't say "no" to it just because it is bigger than they thought they needed.
For the first few landings they probably won't even use most of the capacity. But I'm sure NASA will get to work coming up with ideas of things to do with it.
One option is to have a much bigger crew.
Another option is cargo such as lunar rovers, lunar base modules, ISRU demonstrators, etc. (I wonder if SpaceX will design a slightly different variant optimised for lunar surface cargo delivery.)
I think we are all curious about that. NASA didn't plan for this. Its a lucky break that SpaceX 'over-delivered' to an absurd degree.
There must be people inside NASA that are over the moon about this. You can now fly a full geology lab to the surface of the moon. You can take a big rover. You can do all sorts of crazy things.
You can just land one of these on the moon and leave it there as a whole moonbase. One Starship is comparable to ISS.
NASA will have so many options, its gone be interesting to see what they and SpaceX come up with for the interior.
Won't happen in my lifetime but how long do you figure until you can look up and realize there are millionaires racing teslas on the moon every weekend (like yacht races)? 30 years? 40? Definitely under 50.
Don't get me wrong as I love the science of it all but what do we realistically expect to come out of being able to go to the moon more easily in the near future? I know it's a stepping stone but it has to support itself the first hundred years or two.
[+] [-] themgt|5 years ago|reply
There are still major risks with the Starship program so I don't think anyone should be 100% confident they can pull this off, but the massive side benefit is if they do NASA will have proven out a generic system, fully reusable and with orbital refueling, that can with minimal modification cost-effectively send humans to Mars and much of the rest of the solar system as well. A Model T or 737 in space. The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now.
If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment and give the JFK speech, "We choose to go to Mars in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"
To me that's the real takeaway here: this is implicitly a huge NASA bet not just on the Moon, but Mars and the rest of the solar system. Finally.
[+] [-] the_duke|5 years ago|reply
To expand on this: I think it's reasonable to assume that the stack will reach orbit just fine and be a functional rocket.
The big risks are related to recovery. Starship will require in-orbit refueling to go to the moon, so (rapid) reusability is somewhat of a hard requirement.
Superheavy (the first stage) is huge and will land directly on the launch tower instead of using landing legs - to reduce turnaround times. This is innovative and completely unproven. And a RUD would at the very least put the launch tower out of commission for a while.
Starship (the second stage) will also have to survive the high velocity reentry in a good condition and nail the crazy landing maneuver. SpaceX heat shield tiles and the general aerodynamic and thermal properties of the rocket are an unknown for now.
Musk recently said that Starship will probably require "many test flight" to achieve successful reentry and landing.
On top there have been quite a few reliability issues with their new Raptor engine, which need to be ironed out.
I'm sure SpaceX will figure it out, but there are a lot of risks lurking in the development program.
All this makes the choice to go for SpaceX more impressive for the usually so cautious NASA.
But the payoff would be enormous. If the re-usability works out, Starship can completely change the game for the launch market and lift capability.
[+] [-] beambot|5 years ago|reply
I'm glad that Elon is remaining "conservative" in his financing of SpaceX to avoid the quartly Wall Street song & dance.
[+] [-] tmpz22|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwertyoowiyop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jk7tarYZAQNpTQa|5 years ago|reply
IIRC, in the Iliad Artemis helps out Ares (which is kinda the Greek version of Mars). Probably just a coincidence (I'm sure Artemis was chosen because she's Apollo's sister), but fun nonetheless.
[+] [-] robbiep|5 years ago|reply
Going to be interesting
[+] [-] medium_burrito|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fukmbas|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] the_cat_kittles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Causality1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiahura|5 years ago|reply
Howard Stern had a great line in the 90’s about marijuana - “Every time you speak to these guys who dedicate their lives to legalizing marijuana, they go, “Hey dude, you can make rope out of marijuana.” I go, “Dude, don’t we have enough rope in this country?”
——
Every time I hear talk of spending billions on Mars, I ask “Dude, don’t we have enough red dirt in this country?”
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|5 years ago|reply
That said, it's a very secretive firm with an unknown amount of progress.
I'll believe in Blue Origin when I see it.
[+] [-] AndrewGaspar|5 years ago|reply
Even the subhead betrays how weird this journalistic formulation is: "The company beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, a defense contractor". Like, ok, who is the CEO of Dynetics? Is it just some "public person" standard - because readers will say "Oh, that guy!"? Or is it because they're the majority shareholders in their respective companies and they do this for any company with a singular majority stake?
Just seems like a weird tic to me.
[+] [-] skissane|5 years ago|reply
The average person knows who Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are, because they are two of the richest men in the world–and Musk is prone to saying controversial things too, which helps stick him in people's minds. They might not remember who SpaceX are (even if they heard about Crew Dragon, they might just think that's NASA). They very likely have no idea who Blue Origin are.
Musk and Bezos are household names, even among the hoi polloi. The average person has never heard of Patrick Gelsinger, or of David A. King (CEO of Dynetics)
[+] [-] FredPret|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|5 years ago|reply
Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk are very well known public figures.
[+] [-] pixl97|5 years ago|reply
He is more well known for Tesla.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] marsven_422|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _Microft|5 years ago|reply
"NASA, in a statement provided to SpaceNews April 14, said it has yet to formally authorize SpaceX to proceed on the Gateway Logistics Services contract because the agency is studying the overall schedule of the Artemis lunar exploration program, of which development and use of the Gateway is just one part.
“An agency internal Artemis review team is currently assessing the timing of various Artemis capabilities, including Gateway. The goal of this internal review is to evaluate the current Artemis program budget and timeline, and develop high-level plans that include content, schedule, and budgets for the program,” the agency stated.", from [0]
Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the Gateway and going directly to the moon instead?
[0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-delays-starting-contract-with-spa...
[+] [-] skissane|5 years ago|reply
What might get cancelled however, is Dragon XL. I'm sure SpaceX is going to ask to change the contract to replace Dragon XL + Falcon Heavy with cargo Starship. Now that NASA is relying on Starship for HLS, it is going to be hard for them to say "no" to Starship for Gateway cargo as well.
[+] [-] perl4ever|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)
[+] [-] Tepix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avmich|5 years ago|reply
You don't assume the humanity doesn't need a Moon orbiting outpost, do you? Insisting that all materials and devices have to go to Moon or Earth with no intermediate point sounds, shall I say, interesting.
[+] [-] maxharris|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilroy123|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alupis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluthru|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|5 years ago|reply
SpaceX will have a huge leg up on the competition for the next competition, but if the Senate ponies up with more cash we might get two companies selected for the next contract like was desired for this one.
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_isms|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterBiggs|5 years ago|reply
Starship doesn't fit the original mission very well, so I wonder if this could be the start of a pretty big (and in my opinion necessary) overhaul for Artemis. I can't find the document, but I know NASA was pretty set on preferably a 3 but possibly a 2 stage lander and weren't sold on Starships reusability and using the same vehicle for cargo and human missions.
Starship is far more capable than anything else out or even anything on a drawing board, and NASA accepting it for human flights to the Moon signals a lot of confidence in SpaceX and Starship. Hopefully, NASA uses it to its fullest potential.
- [0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human...
[+] [-] 4gotunameagain|5 years ago|reply
That's good PR, mentioning that Bezos owns WP when it is completely irrelevant, in order to foster a feeling of openness and honesty, while the real bomb in that sentence is that spaceX beat the team of the dinosaurs (Northrop, Lockheed)
I don't know how I feel about any of this
[+] [-] bane|5 years ago|reply
Having infrastructure in orbit for say, refueling, reduces potential costs for certain space activities significantly and nobody else really has a good story for lifting the mass needed to build that stuff. Heck, spent Starships might even make decent core components for some of these facilities. Why deorbit them and shipbreak them after their serviceable lifespan when they could be kept up in orbit and comfortably house a dozen humans?
[+] [-] skissane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dxxvi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isinlor|5 years ago|reply
It's somewhere around lipstick market worth of ~10B dollar per year.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|5 years ago|reply
"Blue Origin's Total Evaluated Price was significantly higher than [SpaceX's], followed by Dynetics' Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly higher than Blue Origin's."
https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1383125840184115203
[+] [-] hourislate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edgyquant|5 years ago|reply
I seriously disagree. I think Bezos is on a different trajectory than SpaceX and isn’t as concerned with quick iterations. He gets a lot of hate from Elon fanboys but I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and can afford to play the long game.
[+] [-] mvirani|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottrogowski|5 years ago|reply
Edit: There is this: https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2020/10/28/lunar-living-nasas.... I wonder whether NASA will now try to include it on one of the two missions.
[+] [-] skissane|5 years ago|reply
NASA didn't ask for such a big ship, and would have accepted a smaller one. But if SpaceX bids a big ship, they can't say "no" to it just because it is bigger than they thought they needed.
For the first few landings they probably won't even use most of the capacity. But I'm sure NASA will get to work coming up with ideas of things to do with it.
One option is to have a much bigger crew.
Another option is cargo such as lunar rovers, lunar base modules, ISRU demonstrators, etc. (I wonder if SpaceX will design a slightly different variant optimised for lunar surface cargo delivery.)
[+] [-] nickik|5 years ago|reply
There must be people inside NASA that are over the moon about this. You can now fly a full geology lab to the surface of the moon. You can take a big rover. You can do all sorts of crazy things.
You can just land one of these on the moon and leave it there as a whole moonbase. One Starship is comparable to ISS.
NASA will have so many options, its gone be interesting to see what they and SpaceX come up with for the interior.
[+] [-] jccooper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Microft|5 years ago|reply
[0] also see: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-selectio...
[+] [-] ck2|5 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong as I love the science of it all but what do we realistically expect to come out of being able to go to the moon more easily in the near future? I know it's a stepping stone but it has to support itself the first hundred years or two.