Lockmart is starting to look to reusability and other launch vehicles than SLS for Orion.
NASA may want to have it for its precious astronauts, but at some point it will be embarrassing when Starship is putting up dozens of people at a fraction of the cost.
NASA could launch their precious astronauts in the F9-Dragon to LEO where they could transfer to a full fueled Starship-HLS. They could decide to do the Artemis missions sooner without having to trust that their astronauts will be safe launching from the ground on Starship with a launch abort tower.
That would be the most practical and cost-effective solution to launching astronauts until NASA became confident enough to use Starship the whole way. The Commercial Crew capsules were originally designed to carry up to 7 astronauts. There’s no reason why they couldn’t put in some extra seats and increase the crew size.
One reason: they don’t have space for the extra seats and life support beyond 7.
I’m talking about increasing the current crew size back to the original seven.
I’m a believer that you could leverage Dragon as the sole habitation / return module. Just have a version of HLS Starship that once on-orbit, ditches its fairing for a set of docking ports that allows you to ass-end dock one or more Dragon w/Service Module and off you go. The rest of HLS Starship ferries supplies or consumables for the Dragon(s). Yeah maybe its too much mass for lunar landing, but you wouldn’t have to duplicate crew habitation.
…But I digress…
Yeah the HLS Starship, does the TLI / Lunar Landing / TEI / LEO insertion then Dragon separates for a “conventional” landing.
But again, I digress….
But would the Dragon have all the instrumentation required for the trip?
An HLS Starship cannot return to LEO for a second rendezvous with a Dragon so the notion of involving Dragons in lunar missions is nonsense. And that’s without considering that Dragons have other jobs to do, that there aren’t very many of them, that SpaceX has no apparent intention of building more, that they take weeks to refurb between missions and that they will all wear out at some point. One simply cannot establish and maintain a significant and economically feasible human presence on the Moon if Dragons are anywhere in the picture.
The only reason anyone, including you, seems to entertain these goofy fantasies about Dragons and Moon missions is because you seem to believe that Starship will either never be safe enough to launch astronauts on or will only be so at some distant point in the indefinite future. Both viewpoints are timorous bunk.
You miss my point entirely. Dragons or something very similar is known how to be built by SpaceX. I suspect that when HLS is built to hold astronauts much similar technology will be integrated into Starship. Why wouldn’t it?
I’ll admit I was being a bit vague, hence the “I digress” bit.
I’m not taking this idea super seriously. Haven’t studied it at all.
I’m curious why you think that an HLS could not preform a “second rendezvous” with a Dragon? I’m assuming it would of course have to refuel first. But it will have to rendezvous and dock with something if it is to be reused to transport between LEO and the Lunar surface since it cannot return to Earth. At least as I understand how it is currently envisioned.
Maybe the current plan is to only send HLS’s to this bizarre NRHO and refuel there? Why send the tankers that far out? As I thought I understood the current architecture the HLS would eventually be capable (after refueling in LEO) to not only transit but land on the Lunar surface and then return to LEO. The NRHO/Gateway business is because of SLS/Orion limitations not because of HLS. As I understand it.
If Moon missions are a goofy idea, you’d better tell NASA.
I see the Artemis III mission as currently fantasized, doesn’t use Gateway. Looks like the HLS Starship is intended to be used once and disposed of.
Okay. This is not my day job. And this is old data (2021) so I do apologize. I suspect we’ll get a flyover of the moon with Artemis II and that’s it….
The current plan is that HLS is left in NRHO after returning the Artemis 3 crew to Orion for the return leg to Earth. That doesn’t constitute being “disposed of” unless it’s deliberately commanded to use whatever propellant remains to enter some kind of solar orbit. I don’t even know if this is feasible. But, left in NRHO, even the first crew-carrying HLS could be reused. Future ones certainly would be.
I was mainly replying to DougSpace but you’re certainly welcome to absorb any perceived oversplash.
Aside from all of the other reasons I already delineated, involving a Dragon in a lunar mission is a non-starter because a crew in an HLS can’t get back to LEO from the Moon. And there is no reason for it to ever do so. HLS is optimized for shuttling between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Orion and SLS can be replaced with a Starship variant that carries a large crew to LEO, refills there from a depot, makes the LEO-to-lunar-orbit voyage, debarks the crew to HLS, then awaits the crew’s return after which it takes them back to Earth using a direct-descent EDL. SpaceX could build such a vehicle before 2030 as it would need only a subset of the capabilities planned for the Mars-bound crew carrier Starship versions.
This all-SpaceX lunar logistics architecture would allow frequent and sizable missions to the lunar surface, something no kluged-up architecture involving Dragon could ever do – nor any cadence-crippled SLS-Orion-based architecture could ever do either.
Some of the components from the Space Shuttle’s emergency abort system could be reused for Starship. For instance, Starship could use the Shuttle’s escape pole to get astronauts out and clear of the flaps, while the astronauts themselves could be shot along the pole by the Pez dispenser.
The pole, being Shuttle hardware, will cost 1.5 billion and take 16 years to prepare.
It would take NASA 16 years and $1.5B to determine a schedule for the pre-planning workshop to determine if it’s feasible.
@ Dick Eagleson
I’m not trying to argue, just curious; why can’t HLS Starship return to LEO? (I’m not saying it’s be useful to do so, just wondering if it’s theoretically possible).
I know it won’t have a heat shield, so can’t re-enter or do high-energy aerobraking, but why couldn’t it do multi-pass aerocapture into LEO? We’ve aerocaptured far more vulnerable orbiters into Mars orbit that way, not only without a heat shield, but with deployed solar arrays.
So far as I know, HLS Starship won’t carry sufficient propellant to do everything else it needs to do, plus ascend from the lunar surface and thence to the vicinity of Earth.
Even if this is not an insuperable obstacle, however, doing what you describe would be, I should think, a rather time-consuming process. Coming back from the Moon, an HLS would be traveling at pretty much Earth escape velocity. As you note, the lack of TPS on HLS disallows a direct descent EDL mode, but the bare stainless structure could withstand a plunge through the edge of Earth’s atmosphere sufficient to brake it into some sort of elliptical Earth orbit. The initial such orbit would likely be fairly eccentric and of a long period. How many such passes would be needed to settle into a usefully round LEO orbit for Dragon rendezvous, I don’t know, but the number could be significant. The whole evolution might take days.
And there would still be all of the other shortcomings of interpolating Dragon ops into lunar missions.
Thanks!!!
I did a back-of-the-envelope calc a few years ago, when wondering if this was feasible. I can’t recall the delta/v I estimated for each pass, but I do recall that the initial orbits took days each, and I got a total of around 16 days, with multiple passes through the Van Allen belts as a fringe benefit, to get to LEO. Not exactly practical. 🙂
Whad’ya mean starting?
They already had a go at it and gave up. VentureStar, bay-bee!
I still think the existing capsules (5 Dragon, 3 Orion, 2 Starliner) can be repurposed (with some mods) as control room/escape capsules for early crewed Starships/ I’m sure you could fit a dozen suites astros in an Orion.
Now, getting back to what Rand’s post was actually about – namely, the potential for a commercial somewhat-reusable future for Orion if launched on some non-SLS rocket – pardon me while I horselaugh hysterically.
Orion is strictly a Moon capsule of the Apollo type. There are no other “deep space” destinations for which it is suitable unless someone can come up with a reason for a future manned visit or presence at Earth-Sun L1 or L2 or Earth-Moon L1 or L2. To get into even the general vicinity of the Moon without an SLS, Orion would need to employ a 2-launch-plus-Earth-Orbit-Rendezvous architecture with a pair of New Glenns or a single-launch architecture with a Falcon Heavy. Neither will be cost-effective nor able to be frequent compared to a single much more spacious refillable Starship that can carry an order of magnitude more crew and on a much more frequent schedule.
More concretely, in the here-and-now, this whole “commercial” Orion notion is pretty much an exercise in flag-raising to see if any salutes can be attracted. LockMart pretty much gave the game away by noting that it had yet to spend any actual money to see if, say, Orion could withstand the vibration environment of non-SLS launch vehicles. As usual, LockMart is looking for someone else to pick up the tab for instantiating its risible idea.
I suspect Orion won’t live past Artemis II let alone Artemis III.
A sadly non-trivial probability what with a wonky heat shield and a first-timer ECLSS.
If the Artemis 2 dice roll doesn’t come up boxcars, though, Orion will definitely fly Artemis 3.
If we do lose the Artemis 2 crew, then when we land again on the Moon will be entirely in SpaceX’s hands as I don’t see Orion ever flying again. SpaceX can likely gin up a Starship version capable of launching crew from Earth, refilling in LEO, proceeding to a rendezvous with HLS in some kind of lunar orbit – not necessarily NRHO – wait while HLS descends and returns, then takes the crew back to a direct-entry EDL on Earth and do so in time to Beat the Chinese[tm].
Is there some legal/treaty reason why SpaceX cannot plan and execute their own moon landing, using their own systems, whenever they feel ready?
Not that I know of, though I suppose that the State Department could deny a launch license for some BS reason.
We’ll know about Artemis III if/when Gateway is launched.
Wrong (see my post above).
Expendable Starship as the first and second stage of a 3 stage system to loft Orion to the moon. Embrace the comparatively low cost of building Starship compared to most launchers (certainly SLS). A third stage of 1 or 2 RVAC engines to get the system to LLO. Another 3 stage system to loft a lunar lander (BO Mk 1 or MK 2 Lander I don’t care).
Thrust and weight wise it gets us a 1963 concept of NOVA 8L, just a little late.
Keep working rapid reusability of Starship and absolutely keeping working orbital refueling which opens the solar system to real exploration and exploitation.