NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos

gpt said:

View attachment 146802

Wow. I knew NASA's expectations of orbital propellant transfer this Spring were unrealistic, but I still expected it to happen before year-end in 2025. Pushing that out to >2026 means even an unmanned HLS landing demo can't really happen before 2027 at the earliest, and 2028 more likely (as there's also the intermediate step involved of developing, testing, and deploying the orbital propellant depot). Then, Artemis 3 is really NET 2029 - and that's assuming the first-ever unmanned demo of HLS lunar landing, loiter, and liftoff completes without any major problems and achieves all test objectives. Perhaps Artemis 3 realistically isn't likely to fly until 2030... This is 'Elon Time' we're talking about
@iewgnem @Xiongmao @taxiya good call

Click to expand...

That just sound like he's not optimistic Starship can even make orbit with useful payload this year, which looks reasonable considering what happened today with V2, lol

Whatever they do, they should probably do before 2028, because if Trump gets deposed, Elon might not have a good time.

As someone who's watched both nations' space programs pretty closely since 2022, I'm quite confident that the Chinese program with Long March 10 can land before NASA's Artemis program... if it still exists by that time. The rhetoric from Elon and Musk has been going to the direction of Mars, for which there are barely any benefits in the short-medium term.

iewgnem said:

Whatever they do, they should probably do before 2028, because if Trump gets deposed, Elon might not have a good time.

Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking too. The only thing holding up US launch cadence v.s. China (and even Russia) has been those Starlink launches, and Falcon 9. Should the democrats win in '28 and take regulatory revenge on Elon, the US space industry falls behind permanently.

While Blue Ghost worked out well, I'd be sweating if I worked at Intuitive Machines. That's 0-2 and for similar reasons.

This is the second time that a U.S moon lander fell off sideways. U.S superpower status starting to show cracks-- moon lander, starship explosion, F35 issues and other things.

peekaboo said:

That's what I'm thinking too. The only thing holding up US launch cadence v.s. China (and even Russia) has been those Starlink launches, and Falcon 9.

Click to expand...

Just found this great graph by Ken Kirtland on X to illustrate my point. SpaceX is single handedly holding up the US's superiority in space launch.

iewgnem said:

That just sound like he's not optimistic Starship can even make orbit with useful payload this year, which looks reasonable considering what happened today with V2, lol

Whatever they do, they should probably do before 2028, because if Trump gets deposed, Elon might not have a good time.

Click to expand...

Musk should stop shitposting on Twitter and mess with Federal employees and focus more efforts on what he is good at.

siegecrossbow said:

Musk should stop shitposting on Twitter and mess with Federal employees and focus more efforts on what he is good at.

Click to expand...

Marketing, which is shitposting on Twitter these days, is the only thing he is good at, he's just shitposting about the wrong things these days.

If he was any good at rocketry he wouldn't have first demanded they build the failed Falcon Heavy, which turned out to be so expensive Elon wanted it canceled but can't because they already signed contracts, or fired the designer or Merlin and Raptor for disagreeing with him on thrust, only for IFT-1 to blow up forcing them to throttle down and be unable to reach orbit, or refused to install flame diverter for IFT-1 and blew up the pad, or demanded they use stainless steel for Starship which basically ate up 90% of payload. SpaceX is entirely carried by Falcon 9, and Falcon 9 was designed by people Elon has since fired in the belief he know better.

People just think Elon's good at rockets because rockets is something very few people understands.

peekaboo said:

View attachment 147364
Just found this great graph by Ken Kirtland on X to illustrate my point. SpaceX is single handedly holding up the US's superiority in space launch.

Click to expand...

The more important detail is China's launch rate has been, up to late 2024, before start of mega constellation deployment, while US numbers are almost entirely Starlink.

Considering China has multiple mega constellation in the pipeline, factories that builds those constellations just finished construction last year, more than half a dozen new launch pads just finished or will soon finish construction, and the Sea Launch complex alone expanding to support 100+ launches a year, this is just the mid 2010s Tesla battery gigafactory all over again.

Regarding the commercial lunar payloads launched alongside/attached to IM-2.

Intuitive Machines river failed falling over after landing.