Elon Musk had woe after woe so imagine a system like skyhook with high speed docking, an even higher speed sling shot launch, and not losing the energy that was transferred in the sling shot move. I don’t see it.
Does this look real? Watch Space X land on a barge. Ever been out on the ocean in a ship? Imagine a moving barge anchored and a rocket landing vertically on it. That is not a real landing = cgi. The real one reportedly crashed and broke up like a cracker hit with a sledge hammer.
Landing a rocket vertically on an anchored barge?
Landing system for helicopter on ship deck.
”’’’
SpaceX Starship Woes Has NASA Worried About Artemis Moon Landing Delays
Passant Rabie
8 months ago
June 9, 2023 at 3:55 pm
SpaceX’s Starship could end up delaying humanity’s return to the Moon as NASA waits on the company’s lander to be ready to touchdown on the lunar surface, according to a space agency official.
On Wednesday, Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development, said that the Artemis 3 mission, designed to land astronauts on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, would likely be pushed back to 2026 instead of 2025, SpaceNews reported.
“With the difficulties that SpaceX has had, I think that’s really concerning,” Free said during a joint meeting of the National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board.
SpaceX is under a
$US2.89 billion contract to use a lunar lander version of its Starship rocket in
landing humans on the Moon by late 2025 as part of NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, and then
again for Artemis 4 in 2028, under a
separate $US1.15 billion contract signed last year.
Before it can land humans on the Moon, however, Starship has to carry out an uncrewed mission to the lunar surface first, which also involves launching tanking vehicles to Earth orbit so that they can fuel the vehicle prior to its journey to the Moon. “That’s a lot of launches to get those missions done,” Free is quoted as saying in SpaceNews. “They have a significant number of launches to go, and that, of course, gives me concern about the December of 2025 [Artemis 3 launch] date.”
NASA has a second option for a commercial lunar lander, namely Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, but that’s slated for Artemis 5, which won’t happen until 2029.
SpaceX’s
Starship launched for the first time on April 20 for a less-than-perfect test flight. About four minutes after liftoff, Starship exploded in the skies above the Gulf of Mexico. A few of the rocket’s engines failed in flight and the two-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle was forced to self-destruct; that said,
it took the rocket 40 seconds to respond to the self-destruct command, in what was yet another troublesome aspect from the debut launch.
Despite its untimely explosion, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk still deemed the test flight a success and anticipated that Starship would be ready to
fly again in a “couple of months.” At the time, NASA Administrator
Bill Nelson expressed confidence in SpaceX’s ambitious timeline during a hearing before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
It may have been that NASA’s sentiment recently changed after SpaceX showed little to no progress on the launch of Starship more than a month after its orbital test flight. SpaceX still needs the green light from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has
grounded Starship pending an ongoing investigation into its botched flight. The
FAA is also battling a lawsuitrelated to the botched launch, which prompted a coalition of conservation and Texas-local non-profit groups to sue the administration over its approval of SpaceX’s Starship activities in Boca Chica. SpaceX
recently filed to fight alongside the FAA in this lawsuit.
The space agency is on a tight timeline for its Artemis program, fearing that China may take the lead in landing on the Moon. China recently announced that it is targeting 2030 for its own crewed landing on the Moon, aiming to establish its own presence on the lunar surface to compete with NASA.
NASA has been relying more on its commercial partners as of late and that can sometimes lead to delays outside of the space agency’s control. SpaceX has been successful in
delivering astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, while
Boeing has fallen behind with its CST-100 Starliner program designed for the same missions.
The space agency’s private partnerships are designed to save NASA time and money, although it can come with its own bout of launch vehicle anxiety.“‘’’
SpaceX’s Starship could end up delaying humanity’s return to the Moon as NASA waits on the company’s lander to be ready to touchdown on the lunar surface, according to a space agency official. On Wednesday, Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development, said that the...
gizmodo.com.au
Hmmmm …… NASA did not use Space X current plan… How did Apollo astronauts transfer from CSM to the lunar lander… look at the video for multiple docking too.
Discover the role of engineering, ingenuity and technology in getting a man on the Moon.
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk
Japanese pull off unmanned soft lunar landing updated in 2024 No power from solar panels.
hahaha lot of unmanned lunar landings …. Hmmmm 50+ years ago reported moon walking like michael jackson. MC Hammer can’t touch this…. Elon Musk is going to end up MC Hammer broke. Who is going to make the new space suits? Idea Just borrow the ones out of museums. Micro meteors.
