I expected NASA to choose 2 providers. I would have done that if I were in their shoes.
Instead, they choose SpaceX alone.
This also gives them major cash infusion for their Starship development program, which their Lunar lander will be based on. Basically, Lunar lander is a modified Starship designed to land on the Moon.
My understanding is that the Starship program is fully-funded already; the NASA cash is just the cherry on top for SpaceX. Which is why their bid was so low compared with the others.
Congress didn't give NASA the funding it originally wanted for Artemis, which is probably the reason why they went with only one provider.
>My understanding is that the Starship program is fully-funded already
Where does that information come from? SpaceX just raised another round of money. I keep seeing things about how profitable the organization is, but it looks like the operations are shareholder subsidized. Rockets are expensive, I don't think this stuff is profitable yet.
Musk is very aggressive about raising capital to accelerate scaling up. That Musk is raising sheds no light on profitability. He'll raise even with fat margins if he thinks it's the fastest path to his goals.
There's no question F9 has been deep into profitability for ages. Most people estimate they're operating at about 10% of the cost of their competitors now on a per flight basis.
Just from general announcements around this. As you mentioned, they just raised a round of funding which will probably be used for Starlink and Starship. Another big chunk of change came from Yusaku Maezawa for the Dear Moon project.
SpaceX is a private company and doesn't disclose its financials so there's way to know for sure; that's why I qualified my statement with "My understanding is".
Also their launch business (Falcon 9) is massively profitable already, there have been public statements by the company on this matter.
Starship being largely privately funded does not mean it's profitable.
One can exist without the other.
From NASA's perspective it's irrelevant whether the funding for Starship is coming from extra margin on Falcon 9 launches, or from outside investors putting money into SpaceX.
If they pick two they have to pay two. Look at commercial crew. Boeing is clearly a laggard but as they deliver NASA will pay them - because NASA picked them (and SpaceX).
I also expected the competition between two (or more) contactors to be the choice, but with BO just now approaching human test flights, I can understand why they selected SpaceX to move forward if they could only fund one system.
And what about ULA? They're a very serious contender here - have a human spaceflight program, and pretty strangely nobody ever seems to give them credit for the massive list of successful launches they have under their belt.
Maybe because they're not run by Musk or Bezos? How strange to put so much faith in a few eccentric billionaires - one of which is clearly building rockets as a pet project.
You are seriously misinformed. ULA is just a launch company. They don't have a human spaceflight program.
First of all, ULA doesn't have that many more launches then SpaceX and by the end of this year, SpaceX will overtake them.
ULA has a perfect record of launches, but they started out with legacy mature vehicles that had failures before ULA was formed (by the military).
They don't get as much credit because they often launched for 300M+ while also getting almost a 1 billion in subsides every year for most of their history.
> pretty strangely nobody ever seems to give them credit for the massive list of successful launches they have under their belt.
Not sure what you are talking about. Everybody seriously interest in space knows about ULA. The CEO Tory Bruno is well known personality on twitter and regularly post on reddit.
And if you want to argue ULA is its parent companies, these were in the HLS competition. Boeing had its own proposal. However, despite them having a human space flight contract, their proposal was judged to be of very low quality. They were remove in the first round.
Lockheed Martin the other ULA parent was part of 'National Team'. However NASA identified a number of problems with their Accent Stage and that was part of the reason the 'National Team' was not selected.
> Maybe because they're not run by Musk or Bezos? How strange to put so much faith in a few eccentric billionaires - one of which is clearly building rockets as a pet project.
ULA practically speaking was part of both Dynetics and Blue Origins National Team.
Why you insist on talking about ULA even while they were not part of this competition at all is a mystery to me. That is why nobody brings them up, because they literally were not in the competition.
They were included indirectly. The Dynetics bid proposed ULA's Vulcan Centaur as the baseline launch vehicle with SLS as an option. The Blue Origin bid baselined New Glenn but included Vulcan Centaur as an option.
So both other bidders proposed a ULA rocket either as the primary or back-up launch vehicle.
ULA has never designed a crew spacecraft. They're just launching it.
The Starliner is a Boeing product.
Not sure your point here? Is that supposed to be a negative thing? Both companies have a massive amount of aerospace experience going back decades.
And yet why did NASA chose SpaceX over dynetic, which is full of old companies?
SpaceX is an 18 years old company who developed the Falcon 1, Falcon 9(with further 4 iterations), the first Dragon, Dragon 2(with Cargo and Crew variant). They also achieved reusability with supersonic landing, an industry first.
Boeing mismanaged their Starliner program to the point that they failed their test flight due to program mismanagement and now have to wait years before they can relaunch Starliner, and thus SpaceX was able to start their commercial crew contract first. Boeing also drastically mismanaged the SLS program. As it is years behind schedule and cost billion of dollars.
Lockheed Martin? I don't know much about except the constant controversy surrounding their F-35 program.
I'll have to say this: decade of experience means not much if you're slow, inefficient, and do shitty jobs.
It's not like SpaceX lack decades of experience either. They have industry veterans too, not just fresh graduate from schools. One of the reasons that they were able to get anywhere in the early days was because they have folks who knows the space industry and able to work with the military.
Fair enough, I'm not fan of the F-35 program either. Although it's not entirely Lockheed's fault... the mandate to have a one-size-fits-all aircraft for all branches of the military was doomed to fail from inception. The military knew it, and I'm certain so did Lockheed and all their contractors. Congress didn't want to hear that though... thinking it would lead to costs savings (oh, how hindsight is 20/20).
At a minimum, there should be two competing designs - built through flight testing (if not built to completion and maintained in conjunction to avoid any future safety groundings that stall USA human space flight capabilities). It's nutty to put all eggs into SpaceX's basket.
I also hardly believe saving money on such an important mission is important at all. Getting people there and back safely is paramount to saving what amounts to rounding errors in today's spend-happy congressional budget.
At a minimum, there should be two competing designs - built through flight testing (if not built to completion and maintained in conjunction to avoid any future safety groundings that stall USA human space flight capabilities). It's nutty to put all eggs into SpaceX's basket.
I am sure that the starship program will have the most test flight of any spacecraft development program. I have the uttermost confident in them.
That said, I agreed with you that we shouldn't put all our eggs into SpaceX's basket, no matter how good they are. We just don't have insight in NASA's thinking here, only guesses.
I also hardly believe saving money on such an important mission is important at all. Getting people there and back safely is paramount to saving what amounts to rounding errors in today's spend-happy congressional budget.
What gives you that impression? It seems like NASA gave all the money to SpaceX alone, which is 2.9 billion dollars. The only way that there would be more money is if NASA gets a bigger budget for their lunar program, which would making awarding more than one competitors a more viable option.
People often cite the extraordinary cost per launch of missions such as this, and how SpaceX can reduce that cost (allegedly) via reusability, etc. I just don't think saving a few bucks on a mission of this importance is worth-while. I'd, personally, much rather return to the moon first, and then figure out if reusability even makes sense later on (if we are to continue going to the moon with any sort of regularity).
After all, SpaceX's goal with Starship isn't to do NASA's bidding, it's to push a private company to Mars.
> The only way that there would be more money is if NASA gets a bigger budget for their lunar program
Which is quite sad. $2.9 billion to go to the moon, and hundreds of billions for congress-critter pet projects in the last few "stimulus" packages. We really cannot find more money to throw behind such important achievements?
People often cite the extraordinary cost per launch of missions such as this, and how SpaceX can reduce that cost (allegedly) via reusability, etc. I just don't think saving a few bucks on a mission of this importance is worth-while. I'd, personally, much rather return to the moon first, and then figure out if reusability even makes sense later on (if we are to continue going to the moon with any sort of regularity).
A reusable rocket must be more robust to do what it do while also being much more difficult to accomplish. It's also how we increase safety, which will happen with rapid reusuability.
A reusuable rocket cannot afford to cut corner like an expendable rocket.
Just because a rocket is more expensive doesn't mean it's safer.
The fact that SpaceX is launching more rockets than everyone else means it will be a safer vehicle due to rapid increase in flight experience. More flights mean we iron out more flight.
> A reusable rocket must be more robust to do what it do while also being much more difficult to accomplish. It's also how we increase safety, which will happen with rapid reusuability.
> A reusuable rocket cannot afford to cut corner like an expendable rocket.
I don't buy this logic, and seems rather hand-wavy. Soyuz and it's launch vehicle are not reusable, for instance, and still holds the safety record for launch vehicles.
> Just because a rocket is more expensive doesn't mean it's safer.
Of course not. But a pressure to drive the per-launch cost downwards will indeed lead to shortcuts being taken. We won't actually know how safe the vehicle is until it's launched successfully a great number of times.
> The fact that SpaceX is launching more rockets than everyone else
That's just factually incorrect.
> it will be a safer vehicle due to rapid increase in flight experience
I'm not so sure that's how this works. Starship was never considered as a lunar-bound vehicle - and whatever lander module they're going to build will be a brand new design, designed by folks who've never built a lander before (pretty much all space agencies/corps are in this boat right now). There's no way launching satellites into LEO or even visiting the ISS (also in LEO) builds any sort of experience for landing on the moon.
> They're not cutting corners here.
NASA certainly is, by having a single design. We'll have no idea if it's even a good design - with no reference for an alternative.
One thing is for sure though... the lander will look like it's out of Star Wars and will have some silly name.
Soyuz as a rocket just had a failure in 2018. Russian Space program had massive issues with reliability. Soyuz as a capsule has a fine safety record but most capsules have a good record. Lets remember that somebody in the Soyuz manufacturing drilled a hole into it and hid the fact, this was only noticed when ISS had a pressure lost.
> Of course not. But a pressure to drive the per-launch cost downwards will indeed lead to shortcuts being taken. We won't actually know how safe the vehicle is until it's launched successfully a great number of times.
SpaceX Falcon 9 even reused is fully certified for humans, for the highest level of NASA Science payload and for all military missions. Those are three very difficult to gain certifications.
Falcon 9 even reusable has already launched more then most rockets in history and is overtaking even the Ariane 5 shortly.
SpaceX knows more about these things then anybody in the world. Re-usability and the certification for it have been worked out.
> I'm not so sure that's how this works. Starship was never considered as a lunar-bound vehicle
Wrong. Starship was always designed to be able to land on Moon, Mars and Earth.
> and whatever lander module they're going to build will be a brand new design, designed by folks who've never built a lander before
The engine and control structure are the the same no matter where you are. Its not a brand new design, its Starship slightly updated.
> There's no way launching satellites into LEO or even visiting the ISS (also in LEO) builds any sort of experience for landing on the moon.
No but landing on earth does.
> NASA certainly is, by having a single design.
Congress is cutting corners and NASA does the best it can.
>> The fact that SpaceX is launching more rockets than everyone else
>That's just factually incorrect.
Well, depending on how you interpret it. It appears that in the first six months of 2021, SpaceX is accounting for around 25% of all orbital launches. So it's not more than everyone else combined right now. But it may be (by a slim margin) more than any other launch provider taken individually.
You still seem to misunderstand. Yes ULA is LM+Boeing.
However the Starliner has nothing to do with ULA. Its simply a Boeing project.
Just as the Orion is LM product.
ULA does not do anything with the Starliner except launch it.
LM in space domain had massive cost overruns with Orion and just recently had another major fuckup that requires them to do another 6 month work on it. Only because Boeing with SLS is performing even worse do they not get as much criticism for their terrible execution.
> At a minimum, there should be two competing designs
Simply because they didn't bid on that contract. The bidders were SpaceX, Dynetics and the Blue Origin-led "National Team" (BO, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper).
Boeing also bid on the original contract, but was kicked out of the competition at an earlier stage. Their bid was rejected because it didn't address key requirements in the contract solicitation.
A senior NASA manager, Doug Loverro, is accused of reaching out to Boeing and trying to help them amend their bid to avoid it being rejected. For a NASA staff member to offer help to one of the bidders is illegal, and due to that, Loverro was forced to resign from NASA, and is now under criminal investigation. He justified his actions on the belief that without Boeing in the lander procurement, the lander was dead. I guess today's announcement just proves how wrong he was.
One reason that comes to mind is that it would be a totally new use case for Dragon capsules. SpaceX had originally planned them to use propulsive landing on return to Earth, but abandoned that plan in lieu of more traditional water landing returns. To land on the moon (and Mars) they will need to pick up where they left off and continue with the propulsive landing plans, albeit in a much lower gravity environment.
I don't think they are planning to use Dragon capsules for Moon landings. They want to use their new Starship and probably equip it with some extra rocket engines near the top of the spacecraft so when landing it won't kick up dust and rocks into Moon orbit and beyond (yes, that would happen with the rocket engines at the bottom because Starship is so big!)
That assumes the potentially chaotically turbulent, expanding blast of exhaust gas propelling these rocks only imparts a single instantaneous linear impulse. It's possible some rock fragments might be kicked up from the surface, and then accelerated laterally away from the landing site by the gas cloud.
Perhaps? Delta-v from the surface of the moon to orbit is about 1.6 km/second, though debris from a landing would be approximately instantaneous thrust, which doesn't allow insertion into an orbit.
