NASA WON'T build a Moonbase without Starship, JAXA the ESA and a better Artemis!

NASA talks about Artemis Base Camp and going to the Moon to stay, but here's why it will never happen without significant changes. But there are solutions! Starship, JAXA and the ESA can make a new and better Artemis!!
#nasa #space #spacex

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NASA's "sustained" presence on the Moon

[wiregold]

"We are capable" sounds like a cheer for a losing football team.

[lowrads]

Stairs seem like a luxury when you consider that the typical astronaut only needs to exert enough force equal to lifting 10-15kg here on earth to go up a rope, pole or ladder. Ramps and winches are probably going to be the easiest option for those in bulky suits. A reinforced hook at the shoulder of a suit is probably the best anchor point for a non-intuitive, ascending or descending mobility option via a cable lift.

[GtDowns]

The Lunar Gateway is a waste of time and money. Spend those billions of $ for surface habitats. If you want to 'test' long term durations in deep space (NRHO) to simulate a trip to Mars, then use a Starship in NRHO since the Starship will be actually used for that trip to Mars. The only reason they came up with the Gateway is when the found out that SLS couldn't actually put Orion in LLO. With this plan, you are immediately in line to cooperate with ESA, JAXA, etc.

[ChaJ]

There are some relatively easy answers to the problems you present:

1. HLS Starship back to LEO - With a stainless steel hull and only needing to slow to get back into LEO, not return to surface, atmospheric skimming on the return would not melt HLS Starship, but instead heat it to within the tolerances it can handle without any additional shielding. If push comes to shove, maybe do more than one skimming maneuver to slow down. Lots of propellant saved and thus a mostly empty HLS Starship should be easy enough to bring back to LEO for the next trip.

2. Starship could haul a large, empty solar ion / plasma electric tug out to LEO. Then subsequent flights could be used to fuel it up. The large tug could be used to move cargo and fuel to various Lunar orbits. While this can't use the Oberth Effect, ion / plasma propulsion is so much more efficient than chemical, it will still be at least an order of magnitude more efficient per round trip and a single tug could haul a massive amount to Lunar orbit before returning to LEO mostly empty. Say you have ion drive engines with an ISP of 5, 000s, something we have working in the lab today. You may see something like 150t of propellant used to move 1, 000t to Lunar orbit over the course of weeks. Maybe bump up both of these numbers, but keep a similar ratio in that it just doesn't take all that much propellant to get into Lunar orbit.

3. When considering ocean landings of the Superheavy booster and a stripped down, one way to orbit Starship with a giant fairing that pops off above the atmosphere, you start to look at very high masses being put into LEO, maybe even up to 250 or even 300 tonnes. You could make a very large mobile base and stick it in a giant payload fairing. The base Starship could be re-engined in space for Lunar operation optimized engines and some sky-crane hardware. Maybe do more regular Starship flights to stock up the mission with radiation shielding, say water for the mobile base, regular mission supplies, and refill the converted Starship second stage so it can later do a sky-crane set down of the mobile base onto the Lunar surface. Then have the space tug in #2 haul this all out to Lunar space. This way once the mobile based is fully loaded and stocked up, it can be very heavy for an extended mission and the sky-crane used to set it down on the Lunar surface will have sufficient propellant capacity to set it down on the surface and then fly back empty to a Lunar orbit it can be later serviced at and used for another mission.

4. With a large mobile base on the Lunar surface, HLS Starship can be stock full of people and supplies for large extended missions on the Lunar surface. It will meet up with the mobile base and everything will get transferred around. Then HLS Starship can fly back quickly, making its stay on the Lunar surface short. This will be important to making HLS Starship cheaper and easier to design and mass produce. At this the space tug could move lots of propellant out to Lunar orbit, allowing HLS Starship to fly out filled to the brim with people and stuff, gas up in orbit, land, fly back to the tug or propellant depot in orbit, gas up some again, even with a full load of stuff from Luna, and then fly back to LEO using atmospheric skimming to be thrifty on propellant used. With such a setup, you could consider making HLS Starship have a high dry mass, in other words extra big and full of pre-built living space for the trip, transfer your people and supplies from a regular Starship that has its booster do a sea landing, allowing it to carry a lot more into orbit, and because you can efficiently move propellant from LEO to Lunar orbit, getting this really heavy HLS Starship onto the Lunar surface and back up again should be easy enough.

[UghIHateTheseThings]

Right on the money. I’m so damn tempted to take a portion of my savings into creating a website and advertisements that would inform the masses about how much more efficiently we could be using our space program and the benefits that would come from it. This video motivated me even more to do that.

[joeker]

The problem with NASA is that they don't "Know" what their cargo delivery rocket will be. NASA wants to believe that Starship will work, but they can't design cargo until it proves it can land on the moon. NASA is still designing payloads that would have fit their original requirements of around a 100 Kg and limited space. I think what NASA will do is keep working on the tech and then once Starship is successful, they will throw it out to the commercial companies for a fixed cost program. Like what they just did with the lunar suits.

[michaelantonio]

We need to retrofit the starship heavy booster to accommodate other spacecraft that is already developed. This will accelerate our development on a lunar surface.

[GadreelAdvocat]

Another way to build a basic base is to build it like a telescopic spyglass with an inflatable Hab inside. Then the outer hard shell can be bolted together to add as another airtight vessel. Cover over with some regolith for extra protection.

[AnimeHumanCoherence]

The confidence is great and I'm hopeful for Starship, but it still needs to prove itself.

[nikolayiliev]

Artemis is just the next money maker ! They maybe never going to use it.

[gamerfortynine]

“Because approximately eight flight sets of heritage hardware were preserved at the end of Shuttle, a new Booster for Block 2 must be developed, certified, and produced on or before the ninth flight of the SLS.”

[mikeburkart]

Saying NASA is capable is like saying Roscosmos is capable. They have both done amazing things but their current "leadership", funding levels, and risk tolerance are so exceptionally low that they are barely functioning as the organizations they were formed to be.

[ZacKurtis]

I've been surprised nobody else made fun of this one. Capable sounds like not happening but we could

[angelarch]

NASA should make a new official announcement: "We might not be wasting everyone's money."

[DurzoBlunts]

while they're mired in bureaucracy I don't think we can have much hope for the program.

[garypelkey]

Angry, I'm surprised you haven't thought of the most obvious, simple and cheapest solution to all of this: Use Starship for the entire mission profile - Earth to Moon landing (with LEO refueling) and then Moon surface to Earth surface direct return. The only problem is refueling the Starship on the Moon's surface. But as you pointed out, generating LOX will not be a problem. And as for the small amount of Methane needed - just bring it along! If I'm reading the delta-V charts right, it'll only require ~25 tons of Methane for the return trip. That will require 'stretching' the Methane tank by less than a meter. Sure, it cuts into payload to the Moon's surface, but so what? Boo hoo, so we only get 75 tons of useful payload to lunar surface on each trip - each trip is going to cost ~1% of any solution involving SLS. So forget SLS, forget Orion, Alpaca, the Toll Booth (Gateway), etc. Starship does it all!

[williamtaylor]

I dont understand why people seem to be set on laying starship on its side. Then cut out the full tanks and motors. Then build up the new open space. My plan is this. Take the loner lander and build one with the lander motors. An put apolo stile legs on it that extend out upon descent for better stability. Cut it down to about 130 feet. Remove the vacuum engine and raptor engines and make that a multi deck cargo hold. When landed build out a new air lock. Between the two levels. Know you have cargo space lower to the ground for Easter uploading and then can be used for other purposes. You use a reusable refillable booster that stays in orbit that pushes these loner habitats into orbit of moon then disconnect and fuse an loner burn back to earth to be refilled and new pay load.

[williamscoggin]

Just like Navy Jets off of an aircraft carrier, they all launch and then top off their fuel from a tanker in the air. Same thing could be done with spaceships with a tanker in orbit, like you say, there is not really a problem. Once the ship its orbit the effect of gravity is much less and it is already going many thousands of miles an hour, so I'll slingshot out from there with a boost will not take a unachievable amount of fuel.

[MrChief]

Excellent overview. Sadly, I feel there is a lack of forward desire around the world, to do this (permanent anything in space). So, I think you're going to get a lot angrier. I know I am.

[k]

Well, you have instead that wonderful Senate Launch System life-support program called the Lunar Gateway. It's the most efficient way to transfer money to the Aerospace Welfare Class.
Apollo 1 caused a deep rethinking at Nasa. But Columbia was lost for exactly the same issues that doomed Challenger - A total collapse of the safety culture, where engineering or the astronauts had to prove something is unsafe for management to change course rather than management requiring a proof of safety before launches or program decisions. NASA is FUBAR.