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NASA to look for new options to carry out Mars Sample Return program (spacenews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/nasa

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

SpaceX has no orbital refueling system.

An intra-ship propellant transfer test was conducted on IFT-3. Inter-ship propellant transfer tests NET 2025.

So assuming everything goes right from now on, that’s 24 launches before September 2027, or 1 successful launch every 7.5 weeks, starting yesterday

I expect launch launch cadence will be sigmoidal, not linear. Exponential at first, then levelling off with market saturation.

Musk claims that a “starship 2” will be capable of actually delivering what they promised to be able to do, but there’s basically no sign this is in production

S29 through S32 are the last of Starship V1, and I think there is a good chance they will have all launched by the end of this year. I don't see SpaceX taking a long break between V1 and V2, especially as pathfinder components for V2 have already been spotted.

He also claims extending the entire Starship+SuperHeavy structure by 4.1 meters will add 50 tons of lift to LEO. I’m not rocket scientist, but that seems rather unlikely.

SpaceX stretched Falcon 9 too, and nearly doubled the payload capacity between the original Falcon 9 v1.0 and today's Falcon 9 v1.2 Block 5 fuller-er-est thrust Version 7™. I'm no rocket scientist either, but I don't think it is too unlikely that they can make similar optimizations with Starship.

docking systems

NASA and SpaceX jointly tested the docking system a couple months ago.

Overall, you seem a tad overly pessimistic, which is fine. I just hope you are not underinformed or misinformed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Inter-ship propellant transfer tests NET 2025.

Which is "not yet". We'll have to see if this actually happens.

I expect launch launch cadence will be sigmoidal, not linear.

Again, we'll see.

especially as pathfinder components for V2 have already been spotted

That's good to hear at least.

SpaceX stretched Falcon 9 too, and nearly doubled the payload capacity between the original Falcon 9 v1.0 and today's Falcon 9 v1.2 Block 5 fuller-er-est thrust Version 7™.

Assuming you mean the v1.1 (1.0 is about half as tall), the main difference between those models is in the engines, which are running at design-specs in the newer model. Starship's engines are, according to many many comments by musk, already running optimally. Although I grant you that might have been a lie.

NASA and SpaceX jointly tested the docking system a couple months ago

Nice. Glad to see they picked up the slack in the time since the GAO report.

Overall, you seem a tad overly pessimistic, which is fine. I just hope you are not underinformed or misinformed.

I'm very pessimistic, and the massive delays extending the original schedule seem to warrant my pessimism. Remember that HLS doesn't even exist yet, and musk has a long trackrecord of broken promises.

The fact that NASA wrote a second lunar lander contract makes it seem like they're pretty pessimistic too.