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A comment on SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon.

Re:SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astron... by elihu on Friday April 16, 2021 @05:27PM (#26839258)
I wonder if they'll use the belly-flop maneuver to land the astronauts back on Earth, or if the astronauts will depart the ship in a more traditional capsule and land separately from the Starship?

I guess they have quite a while to figure out the details, and if the belly flop maneuver isn't deemed to be safe enough by the time the mission is ready, it shouldn't be that big a deal to take a more conservative approach.

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Re:SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astron... by nickik on Friday April 16, 2021 @05:53PM (#26839463)
This is already known. Austronauts launch on SLS/Orion and transfer to moon orbit, transfer to Lunar Gateway or Starship and then land on the moon.

Starship launches from surface back to lunar orbit, gives astronauts over to Orion and Orion will then land on earth.

Lunar Starship will stay in Lunar orbit and potentially be reusable or just land on the moon to start building a Basecamp.

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Re:SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astron... by elihu on Friday April 16, 2021 @06:50PM (#26839905)
Okay, that makes sense to do a (mostly) one-way Starship trip. Rockets are expensive, but not so much so that it wouldn't be worth it be able to haul more cargo instead of more fuel, and maybe have a nice big stainless steel tube on the moon or in the general vicinity, that could be used for all sorts of things.
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Re:SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astron... by aynyc on Friday April 16, 2021 @05:58PM (#26839506)
Why can’t they just dock with ISS and use the crew dragon to bring the astronauts home?
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Re:SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astron... by gnzoidberg on Thursday April 22, 2021 @06:53PM (#26909101)
Too expensive to brake to LEO, and a bazillion failure modes.
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