Re:NASA’s bet on Starship for the Moon
by skissane on Sunday April 25, 2021 @05:35AM
(#26931467)
> it might be possible to deliver an upgraded Crew Dragon Plus (or whatever you want to call it) before Orion is ready.
Orion basically is ready. There is an uncrewed full stack test flight around the Moon scheduled for November this year, Artemis I. Decent chance it will slip by a few months, but still highly likely to happen by early next year. And then in 2023 they have planned a crewed test flight (orbiting the Moon but not landing, like Apollo 8).
I think SpaceX wants to focus as much of their development resources as possible on Starship. They'd rather focus their energies on that rather than on coming up with new versions of Crew Dragon. Starship, if successful, is going to kill SLS/Orion in the medium-to-long term. I don't think there is any great benefit to SpaceX in trying to kill it in the short-term. That'd be walking into a potentially expensive and risky political battle with vested interests in Congress, and why get them offside when doing so isn't on your critical path to your ultimate goal?
Orion basically is ready. There is an uncrewed full stack test flight around the Moon scheduled for November this year, Artemis I. Decent chance it will slip by a few months, but still highly likely to happen by early next year. And then in 2023 they have planned a crewed test flight (orbiting the Moon but not landing, like Apollo 8).
I think SpaceX wants to focus as much of their development resources as possible on Starship. They'd rather focus their energies on that rather than on coming up with new versions of Crew Dragon. Starship, if successful, is going to kill SLS/Orion in the medium-to-long term. I don't think there is any great benefit to SpaceX in trying to kill it in the short-term. That'd be walking into a potentially expensive and risky political battle with vested interests in Congress, and why get them offside when doing so isn't on your critical path to your ultimate goal?