Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by consumer451 51 days ago
The issue is cadence. SpaceX is the king of cadence with Falcon 9, but if it takes >10 Starship Tanker launches to get all that excess mass of Starship HLS to the moon... prior to boil-off of the Starship HLS... holy crap, this is really hand wavy.

Even SpaceX will have a really hard time launching ~10 Tankers in the time required. What are the lower and upper bounds of that time required? Nobody knows. But, if it's less than many weeks, it's gonna be tough. That's ~weeks of HLS on orbit, getting refueled, with boil-off occurring.

SpaceX has many things correct, except for the vehicle size and design, as far as HLS goes.
2 comments
hparadiz 51 days ago
If they manage to get 100T to the moon I don't really get why you wouldn't just leave the whole thing on the moon for materials to convert to habitat. Better off sending a smaller craft back with just life support and a heat shield. The Saturn V took 50T to the moon but they send only the LM down and when it came back up they basically ditched a ton of gear so they could bring moon rocks back. But it was still basically a tiny box with about two tons of propellent to get them back to lunar orbit.

So anyway the math is weird to only get twice that payload but require 10x more propellent.

link
kevin_thibedeau 51 days ago
That's why BO will ultimately be landing before SpaceX gets the chance and likely after the Chinese.
link
consumer451 51 days ago
I don't know about the CCP program at all. However, Blue's HLS plan for winning the USA race to the moon is far simpler than Spacex's plan. Even at Blue's relative glacial pace, that is actually possible. Starship is designed for atmospheric entry to Mars. Ain't no atmosphere on the moon. Wrong design for the moon.

I am a huge space nerd, therefore I have a lot of respect for SpaceX, and I have been hating on Blue for years. As weird as it is, Blue might actually beat SpaceX to the moon. Just the real chance of that is crazy, and if you look at the logistics, there's a real chance.

In the long term, aside from HLS, Stoke Aerospace has the coolest design. Late mover advantage.

link
kevin_thibedeau 51 days ago
Landing Flash Gordon style with exposed ascent engines on an unprepared dirt and rock surface is not a recipe for success regardless of the gravity involved. Until they come up with some Marston matting style deployable landing surface, their system will never work. Furthermore, Apollo 15 was tilted 10° with a relatively squat design to the LEM. A skinny tower would not have survived that.
link
hparadiz 51 days ago
It's supposed to handle up to 8 degrees but there's lots of locations at the south pole with < 2 degrees of slope.
link