Is this realistic? Doesn't the development timelines for a new large rocket stretch into more than a decade? Unless someone else had one under development...
Yes! I'm disappointed I had to scroll down so far to see this. The CNN headline isn't even accurate. The actual NASA statement is:
> "I’m going to open up the contract. I’m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX."
SpaceX is behind schedule, but still years ahead of its competitors. No one is even in the same ballpark on the main metric that ultimately matters: dollars per kilogram to orbit. The main effect of this NASA statement, or of NASA sending a few dollars to SpaceX's competitors, is to give SpaceX a kick in the pants.
I love how government acquisitions works. A company can fail to deliver the final product, then use the recompete process to win a higher paying contract by using the progress they already made on the previous contract to demonstrate a performance level above their competitors.
Whereas all the competition has to use their own R&D budget to show capability to meet the requirements of the second contract, the winner of the first contract used the government's R&D money to be competitive.
> Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, fired back: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words."
Still marking his words on self-driving vehicles so I guess we can add this to the list. What’s the casualty count so far on that one btw?
Since blue origin is still developing their new glenn rocket with only a single launch so far what is the chance they use falcon heavy to deliver their blue moon lander
Artemis is a joke. You can tell this is politically motivated by their stance on SLS. If they were serious they would give Spacex the SLS contract for being years and years behind schedule.
the whole space industry is a joke; if it were healthy, there would be an ecosystem of multiple launch providers vs one finicky government-funded-Elon-company
Foreign policy and security policy, mostly. That mattered a lot the first time and it will matter a lot this time. Apart from that, there's absolutely no need.
It would be really nice to do much more biology research under no and low gravity conditions, of course, but not at those prices.
"A Lunar Space Elevator [LSE] can be built today from existing commercial polymers; manufactured, launched and deployed for less than $2B. A prototype weighing 48 tons with 100 kg payload can be launched by 3 Falcon-Heavy's, and will pay for itself in 53 sample return cycles within one month. It reduces the cost of soft landing on the Moon at least threefold, and sample return cost at least ninefold" [1].
Dreams aside, this story is court politics: "Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is NASA’s acting administrator, has told people that he wants to lead the space agency" [2]. "So does Jared Isaacman—the billionaire entrepreneur who was the nominee earlier this year before President Trump withdrew his support."
With "both men...jockeying to lead NASA," and, just "this past weekend, advisers and lawmakers representing Duffy and Isaacman [having] called contacts in the Trump administration—including the president himself," this announcement is politics through PR.
Duffy may threatening Elon to have his man back down. He may be going scorched Earth, signalling to Trump that Musk's decision making isn't to be trusted.
At the end of the day competition for SpaceX is a good thing so we don't become reliant on a single company and the whims of the person that owns it.
I don't know enough about whether or not they really are behind or if this is just a bit of sensationalized reporting. But this is how it should have likely been from the beginning.
I'm not really sure if keeping a strict schedule has any real relevance here, outside maybe PR and politics. Starships will drop the cost to other bodies in the same way Falcon dropped the cost to orbit. Why would anyone want to invest in a technology and a project that will be obsolete by the time it's implemented?
It should be clear that the protection NASA had as a pork delivery vehicle has been breached. Witness the slaughter at JPL and, more generally, attack on research spending in general.
Now that this has happened, expect a future democrat administration to have its revenge on human spaceflight centers in red states. Given the rot that has set in under that politically protected status, I can't see this as a bad thing.
Most were expected, when pushing the rocket to its limits to see where it would fail.
> the company achieved two sub-orbital missions for its monster rocket - impressive, but still more than 200,000 miles (322,000 km) from the Moon.
The test flights are suborbital due to FAA licensing requirements until they are ready to test returning to the launch tower. The role of Starship lander version in Artemis is not to directly launch to the Moon, but act as a shuttle between an orbiting vessel around the Moon and the surface of the Moon. So the comparison in miles is non-sensical.
> Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the company was "behind schedule"
SpaceX is planning to test orbital refueling in 2026. It was originally scheduled for late summer of 2025, so not late with more than a couple of months. It is certainly not the slowest cog in the system. Now, it is scheduled for 2027, and SpaceX will likely test in H1 of 2026.
> Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, fired back: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words."
SpaceX can completely drop out of the Artemis program and still bring astronauts to the moon earlier than Artemis.
---
There are also delays with Boeing, Axiom, Lockheed Martin (and Blue Origin although for a different mission).
Considering nobody in the world can compete with SpaceX currently this seems purely political in nature. The EU is struggling to even come up with an answer to reusable rockets. China is the closest and will likely have something equivalent to the Falcon 9 within the next 2 years. But someone in the USA? People are delusional. Sure it is always best to have competitors but how did that work for Boeing/NASA/Starliner? You can't have two players/competitors if there is only one player in the entire world. And the reason why you need reusability is so that it is actually sustainable to use it! Does anyone here thinking this is a good idea have any idea how much it costs to launch SLS just once??
Anyone know the details of the scheduling situation here?
Is this a "SpaceX spread itself too thin and wasn't able to keep its own pre-agreed deadlines" situation or a "The government-specified contract was unrealistically aggressive / so vaguely-specified that it could not be realized within its original timetable" situation?
Artemis from the beginning was just politics. And it wasn't driven by how to best do things, or any kind of coherent strategy. Its basically was a compromise, that had one of its pillars, that SLS and Orion need to continue to be used. Those two project have spend decades getting untold amounts of money. And even after all that money, their development isn't finished and they would need more money.
Then with the very, very little money left over, NASA tried to precure a moon lander. It was basically no money at all.
SpaceX won this competition, because SpaceX was willing to do things for an absurdly cheap price. Mostly because they are already investming themselves into the project. And their own investment was significantly larger then what NASA paid them.
Only after BlueOrigin lost, did they start a massive lobby campaign to figure out how to get more money out of congress so they could fund another lander.
But both landers, SpaceX and BlueOrigin, do not receive enough money to cover their cost. Not even close. So basically the US is relaying on massive companies in SpaceX case, and simply the private money of Bezos in BlueOrigins case to sponsor a moon program for them. Because all NASA money is going into legacy contracts that have very bad return on invesmtent.
The political move to now blame SpaceX for being late is just an excuse so that the overall project doesn't have to be reevaluated. The reality is, SpaceX is likely not the only reason for a delay. The suits are unlikley to be ready anyway. And even if Artemis III goes off, the SLS Block 2 is behind as well and will cost many additional billions.
And threating SpaceX with paying some legacy company to do a cost-plus lander isn't going to do anything, its just a fantasy thread, or at best the deamnd by some in congress to push even more money into legacy companies. Its not going to fix Artemis III or anything. Its funny how delays in cost-plus contract always lead to simply more money and more political support. Almost as if there was some other motives behind the decition when delays are unacceptable and when they are.
The reality of all of this is that NASA is completely mismanaged and fundamentally set up incorrectly. And just making big political waves on blaming whoever is politically out of favor will never actually work. The only reason SpaceX and the New Space economy exist is because clever teams inside of NASA and in Obamas team managed to sneak a few good programs, Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew past congress. Without those people, the US would already be far behind in terms of space.
The question the US (Congress/NASA) should be asking is not 'how can we get Artemis III' but rather 'what kind of Space program do we want over the next 30 years'. The US has an incredible space industry, and more private investment then everybody combinaed. There is no question that the US and NASA could be far, far beyond everbody else, and achieve amazing thigns, but Congress and NASA fundamentally misguided approch is holding it back.
So please, stop talking about Artemis III and start asking some more fundmanetal questions.
> The question the US (Congress/NASA) should be asking is not 'how can we get Artemis III' but rather 'what kind of Space program do we want over the next 30 years'.
I think the big question is "What is it going to do to the global standing of the United States (let alone domestic politics) when China repeatedly lands people on the moon and we can't."
This reminds me of the Space Shuttle era. Back then, relying too much on a single vendor and working under tight timelines led to repeated delays and safety risks. SpaceX is incredibly capable, but past experience shows it's always safer to have alternatives.
I highly recommend this talk at the American Astronomical Society from last year, which talks about the engineering culture at NASA and why Artemis has been slower than Apollo so far.
This is Destin of SmarterEveryDay. This is a very good speech, very courageous and has implications for all of society.
American society seems to be more and more controlled by people in positions where they cannot fail. The example that originally put this idea in my head was the Mozilla CEO who, oversaw a year during which Firefox usership fell, and Mozilla workers were fired, and then the CEO received a pay raise. A job where it's not possible to fail. You get paid no matter what, probably get a raise.
In the video Destin keeps asking "we're going right?", throughout the whole video, and the truth is everyone in the room is hesitant to say yes.
Destin keeps narrating and apologizing for his own speech (because he doesn't want to burn every bridge he has with NASA), but history will make Destin look like a prophet I think. I think this speech is worthy of the history books.
I guess it depends on the objective of the relative programs. SpaceX made for an ambitious project, that to date, appears to have bitten off more than it can chew:
A full-flow staged combustion engine, which proven works (yay) most of the time (not yay). If you follow the Starship launches, look at the random engines that go out on the Super Heavy every time it launches. The engines going out during ascent aren't planned outages.
A rapidly re-usable second stage. This is by far the most challenging part of the program. It turns out, returning things from space is mad difficult. And while I think it's great that we are investigating ways to make this happen, I'm a bit bearish on whether Starship itself will be the vehicle and team that ultimately figures this out. However, at the very least, there's a ton of science being done here that will ultimately help making this a reality.
Starship isn't returning in any meaningfully reusable form just yet. And while they've figured out how to get the thing up suborbital, there's yet no guarantee on the survivability of the vehicle itself. I am for sure certain that Elon is very likely unhappy with having to use heat shield tiles because they are not reusable. We don't yet know the stresses on the vehicle itself when returning from space and just how reusable the second stage actually is. Nor, for that matter, just how usable the second stage is.
Do I think they'll figure out how to get it to orbit? Of course. Do I think they'll figure out how to make it rapidly reusable? I'm not sure. And we won't yet know for a couple of years.
Getting a payload to LEO as far as rocket launches are concerned is "easy" relative to the loftier goals of the Moon, and by much further extension, Mars. The Moon is significantly harder to pull off and that's why the Saturn V was a 3-stage rocket.
In order to make all of this worth it, Starship and Super Heavy must be rapidly reusable--with a turnaround measured in hours/days, not weeks and months. And I'm just not sure it's there yet. Which really sucks, because getting mass to orbit is critically important for us to dominate our solar system.
I think the research is important, personally. And I'm glad we're investing at least some money into these projects. But there's no way Starship and Super Heavy meet the timelines allocated. But I'm wishing the best for the team to figure out something. And if not them, then some future generation that piggybacks off of the work they did to do it better.
118 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 86.8 ms ] threadCould this just be a pressure tactic on SpaceX?
Yes! I'm disappointed I had to scroll down so far to see this. The CNN headline isn't even accurate. The actual NASA statement is:
> "I’m going to open up the contract. I’m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX."
SpaceX is behind schedule, but still years ahead of its competitors. No one is even in the same ballpark on the main metric that ultimately matters: dollars per kilogram to orbit. The main effect of this NASA statement, or of NASA sending a few dollars to SpaceX's competitors, is to give SpaceX a kick in the pants.
Whereas all the competition has to use their own R&D budget to show capability to meet the requirements of the second contract, the winner of the first contract used the government's R&D money to be competitive.
Still marking his words on self-driving vehicles so I guess we can add this to the list. What’s the casualty count so far on that one btw?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
It would be really nice to do much more biology research under no and low gravity conditions, of course, but not at those prices.
Dreams aside, this story is court politics: "Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is NASA’s acting administrator, has told people that he wants to lead the space agency" [2]. "So does Jared Isaacman—the billionaire entrepreneur who was the nominee earlier this year before President Trump withdrew his support."
With "both men...jockeying to lead NASA," and, just "this past weekend, advisers and lawmakers representing Duffy and Isaacman [having] called contacts in the Trump administration—including the president himself," this announcement is politics through PR.
Duffy may threatening Elon to have his man back down. He may be going scorched Earth, signalling to Trump that Musk's decision making isn't to be trusted.
[1] https://opsjournal.org/DocumentLibrary/Uploads/The_Lunar_Spa... 2017; 2bn US2017 ~ 2.6bn US2025
[2] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-nasa-administrator...
I don't know enough about whether or not they really are behind or if this is just a bit of sensationalized reporting. But this is how it should have likely been from the beginning.
Now that this has happened, expect a future democrat administration to have its revenge on human spaceflight centers in red states. Given the rot that has set in under that politically protected status, I can't see this as a bad thing.
Most were expected, when pushing the rocket to its limits to see where it would fail.
> the company achieved two sub-orbital missions for its monster rocket - impressive, but still more than 200,000 miles (322,000 km) from the Moon.
The test flights are suborbital due to FAA licensing requirements until they are ready to test returning to the launch tower. The role of Starship lander version in Artemis is not to directly launch to the Moon, but act as a shuttle between an orbiting vessel around the Moon and the surface of the Moon. So the comparison in miles is non-sensical.
> Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the company was "behind schedule"
SpaceX is planning to test orbital refueling in 2026. It was originally scheduled for late summer of 2025, so not late with more than a couple of months. It is certainly not the slowest cog in the system. Now, it is scheduled for 2027, and SpaceX will likely test in H1 of 2026.
> Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, fired back: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words."
SpaceX can completely drop out of the Artemis program and still bring astronauts to the moon earlier than Artemis.
---
There are also delays with Boeing, Axiom, Lockheed Martin (and Blue Origin although for a different mission).
Is this a "SpaceX spread itself too thin and wasn't able to keep its own pre-agreed deadlines" situation or a "The government-specified contract was unrealistically aggressive / so vaguely-specified that it could not be realized within its original timetable" situation?
Artemis from the beginning was just politics. And it wasn't driven by how to best do things, or any kind of coherent strategy. Its basically was a compromise, that had one of its pillars, that SLS and Orion need to continue to be used. Those two project have spend decades getting untold amounts of money. And even after all that money, their development isn't finished and they would need more money.
Then with the very, very little money left over, NASA tried to precure a moon lander. It was basically no money at all.
SpaceX won this competition, because SpaceX was willing to do things for an absurdly cheap price. Mostly because they are already investming themselves into the project. And their own investment was significantly larger then what NASA paid them.
Only after BlueOrigin lost, did they start a massive lobby campaign to figure out how to get more money out of congress so they could fund another lander.
But both landers, SpaceX and BlueOrigin, do not receive enough money to cover their cost. Not even close. So basically the US is relaying on massive companies in SpaceX case, and simply the private money of Bezos in BlueOrigins case to sponsor a moon program for them. Because all NASA money is going into legacy contracts that have very bad return on invesmtent.
The political move to now blame SpaceX for being late is just an excuse so that the overall project doesn't have to be reevaluated. The reality is, SpaceX is likely not the only reason for a delay. The suits are unlikley to be ready anyway. And even if Artemis III goes off, the SLS Block 2 is behind as well and will cost many additional billions.
And threating SpaceX with paying some legacy company to do a cost-plus lander isn't going to do anything, its just a fantasy thread, or at best the deamnd by some in congress to push even more money into legacy companies. Its not going to fix Artemis III or anything. Its funny how delays in cost-plus contract always lead to simply more money and more political support. Almost as if there was some other motives behind the decition when delays are unacceptable and when they are.
The reality of all of this is that NASA is completely mismanaged and fundamentally set up incorrectly. And just making big political waves on blaming whoever is politically out of favor will never actually work. The only reason SpaceX and the New Space economy exist is because clever teams inside of NASA and in Obamas team managed to sneak a few good programs, Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew past congress. Without those people, the US would already be far behind in terms of space.
The question the US (Congress/NASA) should be asking is not 'how can we get Artemis III' but rather 'what kind of Space program do we want over the next 30 years'. The US has an incredible space industry, and more private investment then everybody combinaed. There is no question that the US and NASA could be far, far beyond everbody else, and achieve amazing thigns, but Congress and NASA fundamentally misguided approch is holding it back.
So please, stop talking about Artemis III and start asking some more fundmanetal questions.
I think the big question is "What is it going to do to the global standing of the United States (let alone domestic politics) when China repeatedly lands people on the moon and we can't."
https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?t=1112
American society seems to be more and more controlled by people in positions where they cannot fail. The example that originally put this idea in my head was the Mozilla CEO who, oversaw a year during which Firefox usership fell, and Mozilla workers were fired, and then the CEO received a pay raise. A job where it's not possible to fail. You get paid no matter what, probably get a raise.
In the video Destin keeps asking "we're going right?", throughout the whole video, and the truth is everyone in the room is hesitant to say yes.
Destin keeps narrating and apologizing for his own speech (because he doesn't want to burn every bridge he has with NASA), but history will make Destin look like a prophet I think. I think this speech is worthy of the history books.
A full-flow staged combustion engine, which proven works (yay) most of the time (not yay). If you follow the Starship launches, look at the random engines that go out on the Super Heavy every time it launches. The engines going out during ascent aren't planned outages.
A rapidly re-usable second stage. This is by far the most challenging part of the program. It turns out, returning things from space is mad difficult. And while I think it's great that we are investigating ways to make this happen, I'm a bit bearish on whether Starship itself will be the vehicle and team that ultimately figures this out. However, at the very least, there's a ton of science being done here that will ultimately help making this a reality.
Starship isn't returning in any meaningfully reusable form just yet. And while they've figured out how to get the thing up suborbital, there's yet no guarantee on the survivability of the vehicle itself. I am for sure certain that Elon is very likely unhappy with having to use heat shield tiles because they are not reusable. We don't yet know the stresses on the vehicle itself when returning from space and just how reusable the second stage actually is. Nor, for that matter, just how usable the second stage is.
Do I think they'll figure out how to get it to orbit? Of course. Do I think they'll figure out how to make it rapidly reusable? I'm not sure. And we won't yet know for a couple of years.
Getting a payload to LEO as far as rocket launches are concerned is "easy" relative to the loftier goals of the Moon, and by much further extension, Mars. The Moon is significantly harder to pull off and that's why the Saturn V was a 3-stage rocket.
In order to make all of this worth it, Starship and Super Heavy must be rapidly reusable--with a turnaround measured in hours/days, not weeks and months. And I'm just not sure it's there yet. Which really sucks, because getting mass to orbit is critically important for us to dominate our solar system.
I think the research is important, personally. And I'm glad we're investing at least some money into these projects. But there's no way Starship and Super Heavy meet the timelines allocated. But I'm wishing the best for the team to figure out something. And if not them, then some future generation that piggybacks off of the work they did to do it better.