But SLS also took twice as long as planned to reach first launch and twice as much money as planned. So we get no cutting edge technology and all of the same cost issues that come with new technology.

First, this article is an opinion piece on the matter. Second, there has been zero evidence of it being a political decision. Both the DOD and GAO have done independent reviews of the process used to determine where the command should go, and found that they followed the rules and there was no unfair treatment. He didn't choose Huntsville, Huntsville was the top candidate based off all of the selection criteria. Colorado wasn't even second if I remember right.

The only thing trump did was say stupid things, like usual, that had no bearing on the decision. The only reason Biden might halt the move is seemingly because of now being a crucial time in monitoring space warfare and not wanting any interruptions. It's also not a guarantee biden will make this decision. It's just a possibility.

Adding to the other commenter, the second stage and the dragon trunk are the only major hardware pieces of falcon 9 that spacex doesn't reuse. The trunk blocks the heat shield on dragon 2 so they have to discard it. It burns up in the atmosphere.

On launches without dragon they instead use fairings that cover the payload. Those fairings are jettisoned and descend under parachute until splashing down in the ocean. They fish them out of the water and reuse them numerous times as well.

SpaceX is also building the starship/superheavy rocket which will have a fully reusable second stage. So ideally it'll launch, land the booster back at the launch site, the 2nd stage goes to orbit, deploys payload (cargo doors attached to the second stage), then the 2nd stage will deorbit and land back at the launch site as well. It's also been chosen by nasa to land humans back on the moon in the coming years. First test launch (no landings yet. Just flight tests) is coming up very soon. Possibly attempt this month but could easily turn into next month.

No it definitely does not. The stage that is dropped is guaranteed to hit the ground before the lander. That's simple physics. The top continues to slow its descent while the bottom portion accelerates under lunar gravity towards the ground.

There's not much concern about it landing in the landing zone either. There's nothing to move the dropped stage off course. It's a simple ballistic trajectory. They'll plan a path, drop the stage so it follows that path, then continue their controlled descent which will use a different path to the surface.

This is exactly how nasa does it with landing on Mars. The heat shield is jettisoned and allowed to fall to the surface. It's done in a way that will keep it out of the final trajectory, and landing site, of the rover. There's no risk of it landing on top of the rover either, since the rover has a slower descent.

The main risk with the propulsion stage over a heat shield jettison is that the propulsion stage will still have residual fuel. Their main concern will be making sure it can't send debris flying over vast distances that could cause problems for either the lander or existing infrastructure.

If we get to the point of planning around existing infrastructure then it will likely mean they will have a set landing area. Stages dropped off will likely aim toward a "debris field" where they drop them towards an area far away and not planned for human visitation. Then the landers will land in the landing zone. Where they also will then take off from clearing the way for additional landers.

Yes there are websites/apps. Think they're called spaceflight now or spacexnow. Something like that. I would go to the spacex sub and check out their general discussion thread (should be pinned) and I think they have a list of resources for those kinds of things. In that thread you could also ask where to find it and someone should point you in the right direction.

I do agree that it fits with nasa strategy. Overall this allows them to have more options for sending cool science payloads out into space. Which is what I think everyone in this sub wants to see more of.

Starship is risky but so were all the other proposals. SpaceX had the most technically adept proposal with the best strategy for mitigating risks. That's why they won and the others did not. And they now get help developing it from nasa.

But there's still a big difference between saying "I'm going to help you build your next generation race car so i can use it for the race season" and "I'm gonna use your race car (without helping) to race in the talladega 500, even though you've only ever built a go kart before now"

While I agree that people are being too harsh, there is quite a difference. SpaceX has experience building not one, not two, but 3 separate orbital rockets. One of them that was previously holding the title for most powerful operational rocket (and uses 27 engines on the first stage). So it makes sense that nasa would trust them to be able to develop their 4th rocket that uses 33 engines and is in a less complex configuration despite being a larger rocket.

The contracts were also very different. No one has a working human landing system for the moon. They're development contracts. The whole point is developing something new and having nasa oversight into some of the technical challenges. This launch contract isn't about development. Nasa isn't going to be helping blue origin get new Glenn ready. Instead they are putting faith that this company that has never developed an orbit rocket can develop one of the most powerful orbital rockets. And have it working by late next year.

Blue has experience developing new Shepard which is far different, but also still shows engineering competency and definitely gives reason to believe in new Glenn coming eventually. But it's still very different scenarios than HLS.

This take is laughably bad and shows a real lack of understanding or intelligence. New Shepard may not be an orbital rocket, but you're vastly under stating the amount of hard engineering that has to go into a vehicle like that. Developing rocket engines in and of itself is one of the hardest parts. And the rest isn't much less difficult. Last time nasa tried to get something similar developed, they failed.

This mission doesn't cost a billion dollars either. The class of mission it is in puts it at under 80 million. Blue origin is all but guaranteed to be taking a big loss in money to launch this payload. And despite your paper towel tube, they actually do have a track record of doing complex engineering and a plan to have a partially reusable heavy lift launch vehicle, unlike you.

Lastly, nasa has always, and I mean always, done things through contracting. Saturn v, space shuttle, SLS, all made by contractors. Nasa owned those designs but again, made by contractors. Not to mention even back decades ago they were launching satellites on rockets that they didn't own. This is no different. They also still do things in house.

Your terrible argument is like saying nasa shouldn't by cars from Ford. And instead should build them from scratch rather than giving tax payer money to Ford, a billion dollar company. It's completely ignorant of how things work for one. And for two, it shows a lack of understanding about why nasa would use services rather than doing every single thing in house. It would be a bigger waste of tax payer money to do it your way.

So instead it is more beneficial to nasa to use the rocket developed by blue origin which has near totally been funded by bezos and his money. So i reiterate that your complaints are just laughably unintelligent and, well, pointless.

Work has already started on their designs but im not sure how far along that work is. The goal as of now is having the samples back by like 2033 or so. Perseverance, the current rover, has an undetermined amount of life left. Some rovers have made it 15 years. Other rovers made it about 5. But Curiosity is still going (11 years now I believe) and Perseverance is basically the same design but upgraded so hopefully should get another 10 years out of her easily.

Unfortunately that's just all wrong. The part you took from the second source isn't even about the rotating detonation engine but the detonation pulse jet engine. Maybe the exhaust velocities are the same but I doubt it. And the figures used aren't even the actual exhaust velocities. That's the speed of the Shockwave from the detonation and the speed of the wave from deflagration.

But rocket engines use something called a de laval nozzle. Designed for the flow to speed up to Mach 1 at the throat and then go supersonic out the back. So the exhaust velocity of a typical rocket engine is already in the several km/s range. For example, rs25 has an exhaust velocity of about 4 km/s. Twice that of the figure you used for the detonation engine.

You can't easily just take an exhaust velocity and calculate how long a trip to mars would take. The exhaust velocity is not a limit on how fast the rocket can go. It's more about showing its efficiency. Higher exhaust velocities are more efficient. This is also measured in a term called Isp, specific impulse. Which is why ion thrusters are so efficient. They cam have effective exhaust velocities of about 40 km/s.

With effective exhaust velocity (which I'm not sure 2km/s is it for an rde) you'd at least need the initial (or wet mass, aka fully fueled rocket mass) and final mass (dry mass, mass after burning all propellant) to get the total delta v from the rocket equation. That would give you a rough idea of where the rocket can get you. The more delta v the faster you can get somewhere.

Hitch hiking implies you have no ride of your own. So no, America wasn't hitch hiking for decades. They did for 9 years though while working on building their own new rides. Anything prior to that isn't hitch hiking anymore than carpooling is hitch hiking. There's a vast difference between playing friendly and using more than your own ride, and having no option but someone else's ride.

Not to mention how you imply that we only used rides from them until dragon came online. We still send astronauts up on soyuz despite having dragon. It's just not hitch hiking which you either seem to have accidentally admitted or just were unaware America still uses soyuz.

He used the same premise in the book. He also regrets using that premise because it isn't accurate at all. But at the time I don't think he knew how inaccurate it was or he just couldn't write a better scenario. Can't remember. He's talked about it though.

Definitely should read the book. There's a lot more details that really get you experiencing the struggles in a way the movie couldn't convey. Movie was still solid.

One thing to note is that our current methods for finding exoplanets are biased towards inhospitable worlds. We basically need either very large, very hot, or very quick orbiting in order to see them.

I like to imagine we'll find technosignatures or biosignatures in at least one earth like exoplanet that also sits around a stable star in the habitable zone. We'll never be able to know for sure what's there but it would really hint at us likely not being alone.

Each day they recite what was gifted to them. Each day they get all the gifts of the days before plus a new gift. So, for example, the first day you get a partridge. But on the second day you get two turtle doves and a partridge. So now you have 3 partridges and two turtle doves. Repeat as the days go up. So the total number of any given item will be equal to the number given times the result of 13 minus the day it was given, or Total = N(13-d). So golden rings is 5(13-5) which is 40. Partridges is 1(13-1) which equals 12. Etc etc.

You dont need people to do a sample return. Hence nasa has a plan to do sample return with robots. Starship will very likely be second or even third to return samples from Mars, but will also be very likely to return exponentially more mass when it does. The distance isn't even the big problem when it comes to robotic missions. When it comes to a lunar rover or a Mars rover the ability to travel beyond earth orbit is the easy part. It's the keeping the rover working on the surface part that is hard.

If you can land on the moon, you can land on Mars. It may not be immediately but it can be done. Especially with our vast experience landing payloads on Mars already. Since spacex is contracted to land people on the moon, and that requires being able to land on earth, when that is done it is almost guaranteed to leave us with the capability to land large payloads on Mars shortly after.

If you think taking humans to mars is more than 50 years away then I feel like you haven't been actively looking at all the pieces that are falling into place. We're much closer than 50 years. Probably closer to 20.

You...you do know the moon orbits the earth? So something beyond the distance of the moon from the earth will by definition be on the far side of the moon when the moon passes between the spacecraft and the earth. The sun. Mars. Jwst. All of them are past "the far side of the moon" even though technically the near side is sometimes looking at them face on.

Pretty sure naturally occurs versus man-made is probably a sufficient line to draw. Not to mention jwst doesn't orbit the earth. It orbits a Lagrange point between the earth and the sun. Which makes it in a heliocentric orbit rather than earth orbit.

They'll send them separately as tests but they will for sure partner with nasa for sending crew. No way would nasa not want in on that. And considering nasa will have already had experience using starship for moon landings they will be a lot more comfortable using it for mars landings. It's a win win for both to use the other for those first mars missions.

That's as silly as saying they need a landing pad on the moon before they can even consider landing a starship there. Especially on the south pole with how uneven the terrain is.

Wonder if nasa realizes that?

Or maybe these people understand the challenges better than you and are working towards mitigating them.

Probably. Starship according to nasa won't launch until December at the earliest. So that means January at the earliest. They have to test out a lot of things in earth orbit after the first test. Mostly cryogenic fluid transfer and re-entry testing. Currently they have multiple ships and boosters in the works. So I imagine all of next year will be orbital test flights every couple of months to test out necessary functions for landing humans on the moon in 2025 for nasa.

In 2024 they'll are supposed to do the uncrewed demonstration to the moon. I doubt they will want to send starships to mars near then so as not to make nasa feel like they aren't focused on landing on the moon. I know in the past when working on future projects some at nasa felt they may be distracted from commercial crew.

If they land humans on the moon in 2025 then I could see demonstration missions to mars in the window in 2026. Mostly because they proved starship is safe at that point so any mishaps landing on Mars won't have a big effect on the moon missions. But when it comes to mars that means if they don't do the moon landing until 2026 they'll have to wait til 2028 for the next mars window. That's the earliest I expect a cargo/demonstration mission.

Taking off from the moon to go to mars would take less fuel but ignores the fact that we have to take off from earth first. You either take off from earth and go to mars, or you take off from earth go to the moon and then mars. To skip taking off on earth requires us to build out mining, manufacturing, and ship launching stations on the moon. All monumentally more difficult than just fueling up in earth orbit.

The trip to mars is not safer or easier by building out manufacturing and mining on the moon and then doing cryogenic transfer in deep space. Much safer to use earth resources and cryo transfer in earth orbit where if something goes wrong it can more easily be rectified.

There's a few ways to skin a cat but that doesnt mean they're all equal for the current tech level.

You're wrong. Never did they state humans by 2022. They mentioned demonstration landings without humans as possible in either 2022 or 2024. Then humans to follow before 2030. That was around the start of starship. And again, it was always "best case if everything goes right". So you're both wrong and even if you were right it would be disingenuous at best for acting like a best case scenario was ever thought of as realistic to begin with.

Never said it would create renewables. You pointed out it was a waste because there are children starving now. So clearly you think starving children is the priority and money shouldn't be wasted on other advancements that may have longer pay off times.

I pointed out that renewable energy investment doesn't help starving children now either.

Define quality of life? Do video games improve quality of life? Does faster computing power? Better displays? Do sports improve quality of life? What about astronomy? What about quantum physics? Geology? Art?

There's a lot of things out there that either don't directly improve quality of life or don't improve quality of life at all depending on your definition.

Should we funnel all money related to video games into feeding starving children? Literally a 100 billion dollar business annually. Think of how much that would help starving children. Which is more important? Playing games instead of going outside or feeding starving children? Creating art museums or feeding starving children? Funding space telescopes or feeding starving children? Having YouTube or feeding starving children?

If you can't answer any of those it's because they're stupid questions. If you answer feeding starving children and aren't willing to ever speak out against every other thing then why speak out over this one?

Truth is you will never eliminate every single injustice or bad thing in the world. It's a ridiculously stupid goal to say you can't do something until every other issue is solved or unless it provides some strict utilitarian function defined by something as ambiguous as "quality of life".

It's especially hypocritical when the use case is unknown. How can we know what all may be learned or discovered when we haven't done the thing yet? People could have argued for feeding the poor instead of building out a highway system. Or instead of funding research on electromagnetism. They couldn't have predicted how useful it would be for making life better from a quality of life standpoint. Nor does quality of life capture how important it is for people to dream and be inspired by things. Even if those things have intangible benefits.

The closest thing to that is Elon stating they could land a human on Mars in 10 to 20 years if all goes well back in 2010/2011. There was never a promise to land humans in 2021. Check back in 2031 to make this statement. It'll almost for sure still be accurate. Although if things go well with nasa returning humans to the moon on starship it'll likely only be a few years behind the 20 year prediction.