Elon Musk's SpaceX Wins Contract To Develop Spacecraft To Land Astronauts on the Moon (washingtonpost.com) 119
NASA on Friday selected SpaceX to build spacecraft that would land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission, according to a source selection document obtained by The Washington Post. From the report: The contract marks another major victory for the hard-charging company that vaults it to the top tier of the nation's aerospace companies and solidifies it as one of the space agency's most trusted partners. 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. NASA had originally chosen all three companies for the initial phase of the contract, and was expected to choose two of them to build the lunar lander. In other major programs, NASA has chosen multiple providers to foster competition and to ensure it has redundancy in case one can't deliver. But in choosing SpaceX alone, it sent a message that it fully trusts the growing company to fly its astronauts for its signature human exploration program -- Artemis, a campaign to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.
One small step for man... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, I've seen renderings showing an outside elevator, and there's always the Looney Tunes strategy of a telescoping ramp, but I'm waiting to see what solution SpaceX comes up with.
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Yeah, I've seen renderings showing an outside elevator, and there's always the Looney Tunes strategy of a telescoping ramp, but I'm waiting to see what solution SpaceX comes up with.
I love the look of the Starship, but I'm almost convinced if design would have permitted it, it would have looked like a typical Loony Tones space rocket. To which, I would have given a double thumbs up.
Re: One small step for man... (Score:2)
Elon Musk has admitted that he asked the engineers to sacrifice a tiny bit of aerodynamic efficiency to get a cooler looking pointy nose.
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I'm too lazy to find it, but Elon has given a nod to Tintin and Buck Rodgers before.
One small JUMP for man... (Score:2)
... I'm waiting to see what solution SpaceX comes up with.
Astronauts with rocket packs! Jump off, and fly down!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org] ...actually, that might not be any heavier than the elevator...
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Obviously, it would be a slow ramp [youtube.com] -- they love the slow ramp.
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Yeah, I've seen renderings showing an outside elevator, and there's always the Looney Tunes strategy of a telescoping ramp, but I'm waiting to see what solution SpaceX comes up with.
Bugs Bunny will paint some stairs and walk down. Then when Elmer gets about halfway down, Bugs will erase the lower part of the stairs and draw a pond with snapping crocodiles.
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Yeah, I've seen renderings showing an outside elevator, and there's always the Looney Tunes strategy of a telescoping ramp, but I'm waiting to see what solution SpaceX comes up with.
Elevator [twitter.com]. I'm not sure what I'm looking at in that picture, but they mocked up for NASA how it would work.
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I'm thinking a really long ladder [youtube.com]...
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Once they start lunar tourism in earnest, I expect a combination harpoon-zipline. Or maybe bungee jump?
1 small step for man-One giant stumble for Biden (Score:1)
Fortunately moon gravity is low.
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Sorry, there's a word for anyone who thinks Tesla's setup is going to carry people.
SUICIDAL.
Their propulsion system is an "all or nothing" affair.
One glitch, and you get to play "I am a meteoroid"
The only sensible choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Both Dynetics and 'The National Team' could only land a couple people and maybe a rover. They were essentially publicity stunts. Starship was the only option that could actually deliver the supplies needed to build a persistent moon base.
We also have no urgent need to put boots on the moon. Selecting multiple multi-billion dollar contractors to ensure timely delivery would have been a massive waste of money.
Worst case scenario: SpaceX screws the pooch, Starship never flies and NASA is a few years behind on their entirely unnecessary PR trip to plant flags and high five on the surface of the Moon. This isn't a Covid vaccine. We don't need multiple teams working on a solution in parallel to ensure we have a working solution.
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Starship and Dynetics should both have been chosen. Dynetics for scouting locations and Starship for delivering mass cargoes for base building and delivering fuel to orbit once fuel manufacturing is up and going.
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Dynetics's design have negative mass allocation. They may be able to land but they can't off Moon.
Re:The only sensible choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Some other possible reasons for selecting SpaceX besides bang/buck:
1. Even if Artemis is cancelled, this will fund development of the vehicle that NASA would really like to see fully working.
2. It's also possible that if SpaceX makes sufficient progress fast enough, the public may not let Congress cancel the program.
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Either someone with power at NASA discovered some balls, or SpaceX made a *very* convincing Starship presentation.
Choosing the unconventional approach, not choosing the consortium of defense contractors, and choosing just one proposal aren't very typical of modern NASA.
Re:The only sensible choice (Score:4, Informative)
According to the statement from NASA:
SpaceX’s Total Evaluated Price of $2,941,394,557 was the lowest among
the offerors by a wide margin. Blue Origin’s Total Evaluated Price was significantly
higher than this, followed by Dynetics’ Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly
higher than Blue Origin’s
Seems like Dynetics was significantly higher than the significantly higher bid
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Re:The only sensible choice (Score:5, Interesting)
This part right here is just mind blowing:
two airlocks providing redundant ingress/egress capability, each with independent environmental control and life support capabilities that can provide a safe haven for crew. Additionally, SpaceX’s design allows for the sourcing of excess propellant, which will provide crew with a large reserve supply of life support consumables in the event of a contingency event
If I'm reading that right, SpaceX is proposing that the O2 tank can be used to augment the life support, and that either airlock can be used as an emergency shelter if the main cabin is having issues. One even envisions a Martian-esque scenario where the astronauts ascend from the lunar surface in an airlock.
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Can't wait (Score:1, Insightful)
For the idiots to start arguing why going to the moon is a bad idea simply because Elon Musk is involved.
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Which would be ironic since Elon Musk thinks going to the moon is a bad idea. I don't know how they'll resolve that paradox.
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I don't know how they'll resolve that paradox.
Elon loves money.
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Money, as he uses it, is a means to an end, to do the things he really wants to do.
I don't think he actually even gives a damn about the money, in and of itself. Look at how close he runs his companies to the margin so he can finish all these projects before he's...well, dead.
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Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how they'll resolve that paradox.
Elon loves money.
Ya. That's why he put the last of his PayPal sales money into the forth and final attempt, if it failed, to lauch Falcon. It didn't fail and the rest is great history. The rocket companies who love money use the "cost plus" system of charging NASA for their one-off rockets. That led to the $500M per launch costs. Musk ate their lunch by getting launch costs down to $60 each with reusable boosters which SpaceX can build for $26M each. Now, with Startship, ALL of the rocket is reusable and made with inexpensive stainless steel, not some expensive esoteric spun carbon fiber stuff. Musk claims its operation launch costs will be around $2M per launch.
Meanwhile, in other news Blue Origins replicated its 1st launch for the 15th time yesterday, which added the novelty of having pseudo customers walk into the capsule, set on its seats, and then walk back out before the actual launch. Which, in reality, made the 15th launch essentially identical to the previous 14. The pseudo customers high fived each other for their successful capsule walk.
That extremely low level of innovations is probably why SpaceX won the Lunar Lander contract over Blue Origin.
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Which would be ironic since Elon Musk thinks going to the moon is a bad idea. I don't know how they'll resolve that paradox.
Perhaps, but getting (back) to the moon allows SpaceX to experiment with and field-test things more locally before using them on the much longer and isolated trip to Mars. So he may ultimately see it more as an incremental developmental stepping stone. Also, as someone else pointed out, there's the money.
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Perhaps, but getting (back) to the moon allows SpaceX to experiment with and field-test things more locally before using them on the much longer and isolated trip to Mars.
While NASA pays for it and probably provides research of their own to SpaceX.
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Perhaps, but getting (back) to the moon allows SpaceX to experiment with and field-test things more locally before using them on the much longer and isolated trip to Mars.
While NASA pays for it and probably provides research of their own to SpaceX.
Space-X changed from a company with great ambition but no successes, to the premier player in the industry, when they started working with NASA.
It really seems to be a winning combination.
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Perhaps, but getting (back) to the moon allows SpaceX to experiment with and field-test things more locally before using them on the much longer and isolated trip to Mars.
While NASA pays for it and probably provides research of their own to SpaceX.
That's pretty much how things have always worked with NASA and it's not necessarily a bad thing.
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As opposed to the conventional approach, where NASA pays, shares their research, and some contractor builds something NASA uses a few times then puts in a museum.
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It should also be remembered that a Lunar base can make a Mars trip a LOT easier. If nothing else, moving rocket fuel from Luna to LEO requires a lot less deltaV that moving rocket fuel from Texas.
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Unfortunately it's not likely SpaceX will be using much fuel from the moon. They've already designed everything to so they can make their fuel on Mars. Not much CO2 on Luna.
Now, moving I-beams and solar panels from the moon to anywhere in the solar system is a lot easier than moving them from Texas, which is why we should be working on building industry on that conveniently placed pile of resources.
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Even if you have to fly the C up to orbit, using H and O from Luna will save a fuckton of money for the long term. Now, if going to Mars is going to be like the Apollo Program (six flights, pat ourselves on the backs, and done!), then it's not worth the bother....
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There's not much hydrogen on the moon, and the stuff that's there is extremely valuable to make water. We might make a bit of hydrogen fuel on the moon when we're getting started, but it's much better to redesign your engines to burn something that's actually abundant.
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I do.
"Investigate" and "let's burn all that shit!" are two different things.
Also:
I mean, I guess it *was* the second sentence of my post...
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No CO2, but LOTS of oxygen. And oxygen is 80% of Starship's propellant mass.
The regolith is 40% oxygen by mass, and NASA has already had Sadoway develop a preliminary "magma refinery" to extract oxygen from molten regolith, with steel and other metals as a useful byproduct.
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Don't get me wrong, I think industrializing the moon is exactly what we should be doing. I said so in my original post. Oxygen and aluminum from the moon make a good chemical fuel, and just oxygen by itself is an okay ion thruster fuel. There's also lots of stuff to make solar panels and structural materials.
At some point someone will make moon oxygen available in LEO, and SpaceX might even use it, but for the near and medium term their fuel strategy is completely centred around Mars.
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SpaceX seems completely uninterested in developing the moon, but there's several other groups who very much are. And that makes sense - SpaceX is looking at the essentials to colonize Mars, and fuel production on Mars will be absolutely essential.
But Mars fuel production is only relevant for the trip back - they still need to refuel in Earth orbit to get to Mars. If Musk can refuel an oxygen tanker from an independent refinery on the moon instead of having to haul it up in several trips from Earth, that's
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If there's someone selling LOX for a decent price in earth orbit, I imagine Musk would buy it. Starship launches are going to be pretty cheap though, and Musk has a timeline.
SpaceX is focused on the fastest way to Mars. After they get their million colonists set up, regular passenger service will be established with ion propelled liners built and fuelled using moon resources.
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Sure he has a timeline - that's why I'm not surprised he's ignoring the moon himself. But his timelines tend to be... optimistic. And moving a million people between planets is a major project.
If you want to do that in, what, 50 years? That means launching 40,000 colonists within a few month window every other year. At 50 people per ship so they have a little elbow room (about 1/10th the space per person as on the ISS), that's 800 ships within a few months. Around 9 ships per day. Plus however many car
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You're assuming making LOX, in industrial quantities, on the moon is free. It would require quite a bit of R&D just to get started, then you have to build and maintain a large permanent presence there, including a *lot* of solar panels or nukes, plus a sizeable mining operation. But if you think you can do it on Musk's timeline, do it. You'll get rich and meaningfully advance humanity's capability.
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The moon is a great place to mine aluminum and oxygen for rocket fuel. But nothing SpaceX builds uses aluminum as fuel.
Dust on solar panels isn't that big a problem. The NASA rovers didn't have much provision for clearing dust because they weren't designed to last long enough to need it. And they didn't: all of them lasted way, way longer than designed. Perseverance is nuclear powered because its power demands are too high to be realistically satisfied with solar. The big problem with producing fuel on Mars
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Saving an *enormous* amount of energy, and eventually money, on fuel for missions to the rest of the solar system. In addition to any nobler endeavors, there's going to be a new gold rush for the asteroid belt in the forseeable future.
Escape velocity from the moon is 2.4km/s versus Earth's 11.2km/s. Which translates to requiring almost 22x as much energy to get free, BEFORE the rocket equation adds an exponential multiplier for overhead.
Plus, on the moon you have no atmosphere, and thus the option to even
Re: Can't wait (Score:2)
Not really - the method of landing on the moon is entirely different. I guess you get some early work on shielding and habitation, but itâ(TM)s not that much in the grand scheme of things.
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Funny)
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That was the funniest (and, remarkably, the most insightful) comment I've read all week. Thank you, Sir or Madam.
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Re: Can't wait (Score:2)
Bad ideas can still fund the development of equipment necessary for accomplishing good ideas. Musk isn't going to turn down $2B he doesn't have to pay in order to get Starship flying.
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Going back to the Moon is a bad idea, but it has nothing to do with Elon Musk's involvement.
In fact, IIRC, Elon thought it was a bad idea, but is probably changing his tune because he can cash in on NASA funded manned projects.
What is fucking stupid is going back to the Moon to establish a semi-permanent human habitation. There is nothing scientific or economically compelling about doing research on the Moon. The money sucked on this Moon shit is money that won't be available for attempting a manned missi
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You may not already know this but musk is Rich rich. Also the Fed can print as much money as it likes and do whatever they want with it.
Money isn't a problem.
We should do this because the Chinese might. We're the best right? We'd like to stay on top. The money will go to engineers and scientists and they will develop some cool shit along the way. Plus, you know China will if we don't. Are you a Commie?
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On the contrary, the Moon would be a good place to test technologies for asteroidal mining. Find out what works that short distance from Earth before we commit astronaut teams to a year-long flight.
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There's lots of long-term economic potential for the moon. It's an excellent source of oxygen for rocket fuel (80% of Starship's propellant mass), and can produce steel, and possibly aluminum, magnesium, and titanium as a byproduct. All of which will be useful for developing orbital infrastructure. All deliverable to Earth orbit for about 1/22nd the energy cost, *before* exponential increases from the rocket equation.
Mars in contrast has no economic potential whatsoever. So far as we know, there's *noth
The Key (Score:5, Insightful)
is that of all of the companies involved, SpaceX is the only one to have actually built a man rated spacecraft in that last thirty years. Let that sink in a bit. With the old space contractors, all of the people who designed the STS and earlier are long retired. There is an entire generation of aerospace engineers in the US between STS and Dragon 2 who never had the opportunity to design and construct a man rated spaceship.
Lockheed and Boeing have made rockets, satellites and probes sure. But their man rated capsule will be at best 2 years behind SpaceX's and probably more at this rate.
Blue Origin for all of their talk has yet to put anything in orbit. New Shepherd is a toy. Their big boy rocket engine is behind on development and nobody has heard anything about New Glenn. When announced New Glenn looked to be a serious rival to SpaceX with a bigger payload. Except it doesn't exist. And by the time it does it wont be competing with F9, or even FH. It will compete with Starship which wont really have competition.
I'm not a SpaceX fanboy by any stretch but right now they and Rocket Lab are the only shops around that are actually getting shit done. Everyone else is either an old player stuck under the weight of their own culture or they are a never was and lack a real product. I'm really surprised that after 5 or so years of non stop getting their asses kicked the rest of the industry still hasn't managed to get their act together and provide real competition.
Re:The Key (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm really surprised that after 5 or so years of non stop getting their asses kicked the rest of the industry still hasn't managed to get their act together and provide real competition.
Because there was no financial incentive.
Lockheed Martin made $63B in revenue last year. Boeing at full production makes like $100B a year. Earning another $850m/year in revenue and probably terrible margins just isn't worth winning.
SpaceX is still regularly raising cash from investors to fund its development efforts. (They raised another $350m yesterday) They are pretty vocal that they've lost a lot of money on Dragon2/Commercial Crew.
All of the old players are perfectly happy letting SpaceX "steal" their businesses that they have very little interest in actually maintaining. The only reason Lockheed and Boeing even had experience with the Space Shuttle is because Rockwell International sold the shuttle service contracts to them because the contracts were so little profit.
The reason SpaceX is winning contracts and getting shit done is because they ultimately aren't profit driven. They're driven by "What do we need to build a Mars Colony." Obviously cash is important to that goal but neither Boeing nor Lockheed are interested in founding Space Colonies. So unprofitable stepping stones to that goal won't interest them.
One more [Re:The Key] (Score:4, Informative)
....I'm not a SpaceX fanboy by any stretch but right now they and Rocket Lab are the only shops around that are actually getting shit done.
You missed Virgin Orbit. They also successfully made it to orbit [cnn.com], and are definitely not an "old player stuck under the weight of their own culture."
Not heading for the moon, I don't think. But still, they are "actually getting shit done".
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Blue Origin for all of their talk has yet to put anything in orbit.
Let that sink in for a moment. They've launched the same amusement park ride for the fifteenth time now. New Glenn? They should change their name to "Blue Origami" because it's still a paper rocket.
Musk is a jerk, but he gets things done eventually (Score:1)
Musk often puts his foot in his mouth, and says stuff that gets him in trouble... However he does have a really good track record on getting things done.
Tesla, Space X and Boring Company really all were big pipe dream companies where attempts in the past created vaporware or got out maneuvered by the more traditional company.
Musk for the most part seems to help drive these companies to actual tangible products that have been and are being used.
Re:Musk is a jerk, but he gets things done eventua (Score:5, Insightful)
Because HE wants it. Because he believes that we need to stop being an Earth-only civilization, and he's willing to part with ever dime he ever makes in order to do it.
Most people are too focused on the next quarter to consider changing the course of human existence wholesale. Some people can't focus on anything but.
Re:Musk is a jerk, but he gets things done eventua (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple did alright with Jobs, who wasn't much into technical things.
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Jobs had the sense to let the technical people do their thing and he supported them with the people skills side of things.
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Apple is a co founder of ARM.
AFAIK under the regime of Jobs.
M1 is an ARM chip.
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Like our previous discussion about type safety and annotations you are again wrong. ARM was founded in the UK, you might want to go read the wiki article, apple was an early investor, that is if you count five or ten years afterwards as early.
> AFAIK under the regime of Jobs.
And that means you are going to lick jobs arse now ? The guy was an areshole to everyone you have obviously been brainwashed by corporate america into worshipping ceos, thinking they make the
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Yes and jobs did all the work, Beats me why they employeed thousands of engineers. We wouldnt want to pretend that one person takes all the glory would we ?
> Also as I recall he is the one who talked Wozniak into designing the Apple 1 and going all in on the company giving up their day jobs AND hired the first CEO who kn
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Says the person who completely ignore sthe workers and thinks all the credit and pay should goto the ceo.
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"Jobs had the sense to let the technical people do their thing and he supported them with the people skills side of things."
This might be true, but it is does not follow the convention of having relevance to the comments preceding it.
Re:Musk is a jerk, but he gets things done eventua (Score:4, Insightful)
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Boring a dream company ? Theres nothing revolution about buying second hand tunnel boring machines and then building tunnels for the same cost as everyone else.
Re:Musk is a jerk, but he gets things done eventua (Score:4, Insightful)
SpaceX has a track record of getting stuff done. Tesla announces things, starts selling them to customers and five years later there is still no sign of delivery. The Boring Company has only managed to build a very average tunnel with half baked transport system. They are now talking about 12 people carriages, if only they could link them together into some kind of train they might be on to something.
So I don't think Musk is getting stuff done, it's something about SpaceX specifically.
Yeah Tesla is a total failure. (Score:2)
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I see a lot of Model 3 and Model Y on the road, Also the Model S and X. There seems to be a good sense that Tesla is able to deliver. I am not sure if you have been living in a bubble for the past 5 years.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't let it go to your head, Elon (Score:1)
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SpaceX will probably send half a dozen test missions before they do the NASA demonstration mission. I wouldn't put it past Musk to have some guys on the moon to film the NASA mission landing.
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Fair enough. He probably would have done it if he hadn't won the contract. Now that he has, he'll make sure the test landings are unmanned and the cameras are shut off.
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So what if htey are lower than say Boeing, they are both parasites on the tax payer.
Theres a famous quote from a NASA dude that the price per launch after switching to spaceX is higher than when they used the shuttle, and for far less payload, and its not even human rated and this is AFTER inflation.
> So what does that make The National Team and Dynetics?
What makes you think there cant be more than one t
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Odd. I read a NASA report that NASA launch cost from SpaceX is 1/19th of what Space Shuttle price tag, adjusted for inflation.
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Take the lunar lander thats $3b. Is that 1/19th of what it cost Apollo in equivalent monies. I have no doubt it would cost B a few billion but i highly doubt it would cost them $60B
Or how about Musks tunnel in LV, for $52M. Does it really cost other tunnel contracts for the same distance $9B ? Of course not.
Or how about his claim for 150mph cars in the tunnel but they actually now do 35 which is hardly different do any oth
Unmanned mission first... (Score:2)
to land the "barge".
A Moon Base is Necessary (Score:3)
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OK, you're welcome to stay on Earth until we have a "self sustaining Moon base for a year". In the meantime, the rest of us would appreciate it if you would refrain from telling us what to think or do.
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OK, you're welcome to stay on Earth until we have a "self sustaining Moon base for a year". In the meantime, the rest of us would appreciate it if you would refrain from telling us what to think or do.
Ouch! Ok, let me put it this way. A Moon base is necessary if you are planning a mission to Mars and you want it to have a reasonable chance of success. People will probably die on the way there without the experience of a Moon base. If you are willing to take that chance or if you are not planning a mission to Mars, feel free to ignore my suggestion.
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Its like watching two dorks argue about proper light saber handling...
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Self-
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You're not going to be making electronics or drugs on Mars anytime soon.
Depends.
mRNA drugs are done with DNA printers, not even the size of a small fridge.
Penicillin if you would need it, grows in fungi.
Plenty of drugs are just extracts from herbs/plants.
Many drugs can be made via bacteria in bio reactors.
Regarding electronics, sure they would not be able to build a fab from scratch but programming ASICs or FPGAs should be easy. Probably, magnet memory might be an important thing on Mars.
There are a lot of
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I would say useful, but not necessary. But since NASA is funding this, it also pays for SpaceX's Mars development, which is a big win for them.
I hope they bring some Dogecoin with them (Score:1)
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2, Funny)
A "functioning" psychopath with a person cult following using people in a small remote metal delayed bomb to pose and brag and compensate his childhood trauma...
I predict 8 dead astronauts.
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You did not include the 6 blind passengers.
I mean, not the blind ones, but the blind ones, you know?
won because they offered to allow NASA to pay late (Score:2)
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The article?
In a document explaining NASA’s rationale for picking SpaceX obtained by The Washington Post, NASA said it wanted “to preserve a competitive environment at this stage of the HLS Program.” But it added that “NASA’s current fiscal year budget did not support even a single [contract] award.” As a result, SpaceX updated its payment schedule so that it now fits “within NASA’s current budget.”
You mean... NASA chose a contractor that delivers? (Score:2)
Since when was NASA in the habit of hiring companies who actually do what they were paid to do?
I don't know how many times in my life I've seen contracts doled out to Lockheed and Boeing and probably Harris and all those types of companies... for the express intended purpose of advancing space travel.... and since the Space Shuttle... which was truly a magnificent space craft even it was truly a miracle it could fly after being built by those crooked companies...
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Baffled? Have you read the evaluations yet? As far as I can tell, what happened was that SpaceX submitted a stellar proposal, covering all the topics that NASA wants to hear, like contingency plans, redundancy, etc. Oh yeah, and 100 tons of cargo vs 850kg. That's 100,000kg. All while they've been actively working on a spacecraft and engines (which their bid was based on) without it being for NASA, and which will probably reach orbit by the end of the year. The others were more expensive, but they submitted
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In the report itself, Dynetic's lander was sited for negative weight. It may land on Moon, but it won't ascend away from it.