NASA really is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to its lunar plans. Its SLS system is a disaster, but pork barrel politics means it can’t ditch it. So it lives on, zombie-like, to suck the life and money out of better options.
Meanwhile, it’s placed all its eggs in a SpaceX basket. That company is run by someone who routinely exaggerates timelines for delivery and fails to meet them. Guess what? It’s happening again. A commenter on the OP article sums up what SpaceX has to do before humans can go back to the Moon.
Re-light Starship engines
Achieve stable orbit
Dock with another Starship
Transfer propellant
Use transferred propellant
Dock with Orion and/or Dragon
Design a life support system for a volume much larger than Dragon
Re-light Starship engines, achieve stable orbit (they deliberately cut the engines just a few meters per second shy of it on IFT-3, there's no reason not to count it), and transfer propellant (one of IFT-3's test routines during its almost-orbit was transferring propellant between internal tanks).
Actually they did not succesfully relight the engines in space as planned, but they intentionally skipped the test due to vehicle conditions as opposed to it failing
They attempted to relight the booster, but only 1 of the 13 engines they wanted on actually started (2 others almost started but immediately failed). Their hope was to demonstrate in-space relight of the second stage engines, which is obviously a crucial demonstration for HLS and eventually going to the moon, but they never went for it. So far they have never demonstrated Raptor start in a vacuum and microgravity, which is a significantly different challenge to firing on the ground or even during re-entry as was the case for the booster due to propellant slosh and ullage considerations. In fact, we have seen them struggle with these issues in the earlier Starship solo tests, where the engines upon relight would eat backfill helium and eventually switch over to an engine-rich cycle :D. I’m sure they will figure it out but in space Raptor relights are far from the ‘same’ as what they have already done.
I suppose if you want to add "in microgravity" to that list item, then yeah, they haven't done that part yet. The list item just said "Re-light Starship engines", which they have indeed done many times in many circumstances. Just not that particular one yet.
There was a propellant transfer done during IFT-3's flight between internal tanks, too.
The list's not as big as it seems, several items are very closely related (there's three separate items for "design, build, and test a life support system" for example).
Weren’t they talking about building a space station orbiting the moon? We’ve been to the moon. If we’re not building a station there, let’s move on to next steps. If we are building a station there, why not send equipment and robots down first to prep it while we figure out the logistics of doing something we did 55 years ago.
not to me. I would like us to work on robotics to build stuff that could be used when we send people out again or mining and such. would love to have them work on a lunar space elevator to work out the tech.
I have to suspect a lunar orbiter would be more practical for lunar base building and fueling further missions than a lunar space elevator, wouldn’t you need angular momentum from rotation to keep it rigid?
its not really about being a better option as much as to see how it would be and work on the technolgy involved in making it happen. with the lower gravity and lack of atmosphere it should theoretically be a best case scenario and can be done without any super materials.
A Martian space elevator can be built with high tensile steel, and will be shorter than one on the moon. I like space elevators, but they work better on smaller bodies with higher rotation, i.e., low gravity and lower stationary orbits.
Only because he demanded it. Those of us actually working on it just had a bunch of extra work to do indulging his fantasy while simultaneously doing the actual work of reality.
Yes, most of us have a concept of those things. We also have a concept of how many times since then the government has said ‘totally doing it again for reals this time you gusy! Just a few years1!’
Most people do not have exposure to rocket ship construction. Building construction yes to a certain extent, they can see a building go up. Most don’t watch a rocket ship being designed or manufactured.
The only conception, which I think is the one you are referring to, is that things often take longer than announced.
Wasn’t really clear you were talking about that when you only talked about the timeframe it would take to get to space. It sounded like you were saying people don’t know how long it took us to get to space last time.
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