[JumpCrisscross]

> Is starship on schedule?

Difficult to say relative to current Artemis timelines, which have to date been mainly delayed by Orion. They're currently looking on schedule to perform an orbital propellant transfer in 2026. That likely means a commercial launch before the end of next year, which is crazy.

How that relates to HLS is up in the air, and probably will be until the end of next year.

[verzali]

Yes, but in the original schedule on HLS Starship was supposed to have done the prop transfer in Q4 2022, an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2024, and the actual thing in Q1 2025.

Of course that was always wishful thinking. I'm sure SpaceX has their "real" schedule somewhere, and maybe NASA has one too (at least from what I've heard, it is likely they have an unofficial idea of it somewhere).

[JumpCrisscross]

> in the original schedule on HLS Starship was supposed to have done the prop transfer in Q4 2022, an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2024, and the actual thing in Q1 2025

Now do Orion and ML2.

Artemis is behind schedule. Nobody debates that. Currently, the bottleneck is with Orion. SpaceX just massively de-risked the Starship platform with IFT-11. If IFT-12 validates Block 3, we should wait until the end of 2026 before trying to revëvaluate.

[verzali]

Why? The question is whether Starship is on schedule or not. Orion or ML2 aren't holding back Starship. Waiting until the end of 2026 does nothing with regards to the initial schedule.

[mmooss]

> Difficult to say

It's not difficult to say. They are behind schedule and everyone, not just Duffy, is talking about it and have been for awhile.

I don't care - beyond how getting to the moon will help future space exploration - and risk is high when developing new tech, but I also don't care about SpaceX. It's very possible Starship won't work out; that's risk and I'm sure SpaceX and NASA people understand that. Why must people on HN defend SpaceX at every turn, like a PR agency. Does anyone point out a genuine, significant, negative about Starship? Why might it not work? What are the risks?

I think more competition is great and hope they reopen the contract. Private industry competing on what is now prosaic space technology, such as orbit and even the moon, is great. Let NASA do the cutting edge stuff like flying to Europa or looking back to the beginning of time or investigating climate change. (Notice that private industry still can't land on the moon reliably - 56 years after NASA demonstrated it.)

[electriclove]

It would be great for there to be more competition. But the reality is that SpaceX is in a different league - why focus on knocking them when there isn’t another alternative ??

[mmooss]

> the reality is that SpaceX is in a different league

They aren't delivering, so maybe not. People on HN state the SpaceX talking points like they are reality. It's an Internet mob; there is no room for any serious examination of the issue.

[BHSPitMonkey]

Even if the bet on Starship fails to pay off, the existing Falcon 9 program is both (1) the dominant launch vehicle in terms of sheer quantity, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of missions and (2) the only system with a reusable first stage. Dragon routinely ferries humans to and from the ISS (and other trajectories) and no one blinks an eye.

How do you square that with "not delivering"? I don't doubt that China could surpass them in the next 5 years, but nobody else is realistically close to doing so.

[mmooss]

They aren't delivering Starship, at the least, not in time. That's what this discussion is about.

As I said, people here will do anything to promote SpaceX.

[electriclove]

I'm all for anyone making progress. Is another company doing similar things more quickly? Dig into what Starship is and you will see how ambitious their goals are.