NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship

NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship - Printable Version

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NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship - C C - Mar 24, 2022

RELATED THREAD: Blue Origin tries again to alter NASA's mind: SpaceX's HLS is high risk

Uh... So now they're covertly admitting Bezos was right, while potentially snubbing him this time around? Where did the extra money that supposedly wasn't available for a 2nd lander suddenly come from?
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10647669/NASA-looks-second-lunar-lander-work-alongside-SpaceX-Starship.html

INTRO: NASA is on the hunt for a second lunar lander - to be used as an alternative to SpaceX Starship - as the agency steps up its plans for longer-term exploration of the moon.

The agency said it will send the first woman and first person of color to the surface of the moon in a SpaceX vehicle, but added that future missions will be split between the Elon Musk-owned firm and whoever wins the bid to build the alternative.

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin has already confirmed it will enter the race to build the second lander, although it is unclear how well that will be received at NASA. Bezos previously took the agency to court, and lost, over its decision to only award one lander contract - to SpaceX - in the initial round.

Any new lander will have to be able to dock with the lunar Gateway space station, increase crew capacity, and take scientific payloads to the surface of the moon, NASA said.

The first crewed landing is expected to happen by 2026, and will involve the astronauts reaching the moon in an Orion capsule and docking with the Starship Human Landing System - eventually using that module to put two people on the moon's surface.

Future missions are likely to involve a combination of the Starship and the winner of the new contract. The agency said it plans to operate one crewed mission per year until the mid-2030s... (MORE - details)

RE: NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship - Yazata - Dec 7, 2022

The "National Team" is Baaack!

This time they seem to have dropped Northrop Grumman and added Lockheed and Boeing. And they seem to be aiming their pitch not so much at NASA as at Congress, promising that their proposal will bring jobs to all 50 states. (Suggesting that their proposal will be excessively expensive, since all of these subcontractors will want to make a profit. SpaceX on the other hand tries to be as vertically integrated as it can be.)

I don't see any details about any engineering changes to their original proposal (basically a redo of the Apollo Lunar Lander) or how they intend to scale it up into a cargo and crew vehicle capable of supporting a permanent human presence on the Moon.

https://www.blueorigin.com/blue-moon/sld-national-team/

Edit

So what happened to Northrop Grumman? Fear not. They aren't out of the HLS game, they've just joined up with Dynetics, the third HLS finalist from last time.

https://twitter.com/northropgrumman/status/1600501641551175682

So if NASA really has found additional funding somewhere and they really are going to choose a second HLS proposal for the dissimilar redundancy they've always wanted, it looks like the two options will be updated and improved versions of the ones they evaluated last time.

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RE: NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship - Yazata - May 19, 2023

And today NASA announced their choice for the second lunar lander.

To no one's real surprise, it's Blue Origin and the "National Team". (Don't sue us, Jeff!) It's a $3.5 billion contract. Blue says that it plans to put a similar amount of company funds into the project.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-second-artemis-lunar-lander-provider

https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1659576468991778816

https://twitter.com/LMSpace/status/1659584080847986689

https://twitter.com/BoeingSpace/status/1659603281406992384

The Blue Moon lander is probably a safer choice than Starship, because it's more of an updated re-do of the Apollo lunar lander. Its capacity will be a lot less than Starship. While the NASA graphic below makes them appear the same size, compare the size of the astronauts. At least theoretically, Starship has the potential of delivering 100 astronauts or 100 tons of cargo to the lunar surface, bringing a permanent lunar base into the realm of possibility. Blue Moon only carries a few astronauts and a small amount of cargo. So Starship might become the lunar cargo freighter of the future, with Blue Moon more of a personnel transport. Both landers have a lot of development work to be completed, not least refueling them in Earth or lunar orbit so as to make them reusable rather than one-trip-only.

[Image: Fwf-o8TWcAM057s?format=jpg&name=4096x4096]

RE: NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship - C C - May 19, 2023

(May 19, 2023 06:24 PM)Yazata Wrote: And today NASA announced their choice for the second lunar lander.

To no one's real surprise, it's Blue Origin and the "National Team". (Don't sue us, Jeff!) It's a $3.5 billion contract. Blue says that it plans to put a similar amount of company funds into the project.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-second-artemis-lunar-lander-provider

https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1659576468991778816

https://twitter.com/LMSpace/status/1659584080847986689

https://twitter.com/BoeingSpace/status/1659603281406992384

The Blue Moon lander is probably a safer choice than Starship, because it's more of an updated re-do of the Apollo lunar lander. Its capacity will be a lot less than Starship. While the NASA graphic below makes them appear the same size, compare the size of the astronauts. At least theoretically, Starship has the potential of delivering 100 astronauts or 100 tons of cargo to the lunar surface, bringing a permanent lunar base into the realm of possibility. Blue Moon only carries a few astronauts and a small amount of cargo. So Starship might become the lunar cargo freighter of the future, with Blue Moon more of a personnel transport. Both landers have a lot of development work to be completed, not least refueling them in Earth or lunar orbit so as to make them reusable rather than one-trip-only.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fwf-o8TWcAM057s?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Yeah, it is practical to have both. Imagine expending the costs and resources of a Starship for conveying a visiting legislator to a moon base for a special tour. (Even though the "travel by conventional aircraft" version of that probably does occur at times on Earth, at taxpayer expense.)

But the problem, as always, is whether NASA really can maintain the budget for both.

Like Musk going to Mars for his own reasons, Bezos ought to be sending his own commercial projects to the Moon, establishing corporate facilities there for whatever industrial purposes.

RE: NASA looks for a second lunar lander to work alongside SpaceX Starship - Yazata - May 20, 2023

It's becoming apparent that Blue has completely redesigned their Blue Moon lander! The version that won today is not the version they offered the first time around. It isn't even close!

Here's the original very kludgy design. That's the tiny crew compartment way up on top, large enough for two astronauts and a few hundred pounds of "carry on" cargo. Astronauts would have to climb up and down a ladder in their space suits. Like the Apollo lunar lander, it has two stages: the bottom half is the descent stage (the actual lander) while the top half is the tiny crew compartment and an ascent stage to return to lunar orbit.

[Image: FwevTraWIAAzhz_?format=jpg&name=small]

And here is today's totally different version. It's significantly larger. Blue claims it can carry many tons of cargo, though I don't see a cargo bay apart from filling the crew compartment with cargo but no astronauts. Even then, it simply hasn't got the necessary volume to carry large objects like lunar exploration vehicles. (Will Tesla build extraterrestrial-optimized cyber-trucks?) It has one stage that serves as both descent and ascent stage. And to thoroughly mix things up, the larger (but still small) crew compartment is now at the bottom to make entry and exit easier. It isn't clear from the graphic where the engines are located. Under the relocated crew compartment, perhaps. Putting the engines that close to the lunar regolith would propel lots of Moon-dirt and rocks around. That's why SpaceX relocated Lunar Starship's descent and ascent engines to a ring about 2/3d's the way up the vehicle.

[Image: Fwf9bu3XwAM2FOJ?format=jpg&name=large]

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