Apollo astronaut Frank Borman has died

Re:Apollo astronaut Frank Borman has died by dotnet00 on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:55PM (#38214145)

2026 will likely be cutting it really close for boots on the Moon. Assuming the upcoming Starship test flight goes well, we might see a test of refueling operations in late 2024, 2 years is likely to be cutting it really close for operationalizing refueling and crew rating the HLS. Particularly on the paperwork front.

I'd say that if everything goes perfectly from this point onwards, 2026 might see the uncrewed test of the system and maybe a crewed landing by 2028.

Similarly with Blue Origin's HLS, maybe New Glenn finally flies in 2024, but they too have so many steps to prove out first. JAXA and ISRO IIRC have seats on a future Artemis crewed mission, which would probably be how they get their first boots on the Moon. ISRO would probably be too busy with its LEO station at that point to make a crewed lunar lander, but JAXA and ISRO would most likely contribute with base components or related (rovers, orbital infrastructure).

The Chinese plans for a lunar base by 2035 are essentially imaginary in terms of partnerships, particularly since of them, China is the only one with any worthwhile space program (the Russian program being in steep decline and would be lucky to even pull off a proper ISS replacement by 2035 let alone a worthwhile contribution to a lunar base).

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Re:Apollo astronaut Frank Borman has died by alephnerd on Thursday November 09, 2023 @09:12PM (#38214268)

> the Russian program being in steep decline

Idk.

The Russian program seems to be weaker at operationalizing in 2023 but still has a lot of IP from the USSR era.

China is making massive strides but doesn't seem to have as deep IP experience yet.

Imo I wouldn't oversell the Chinese and undersell the Russians.

> JAXA and ISRO would most likely contribute with base components or related

That tracks, and fits with their specialities.

Also, I didn't realize JAXA, ESA, and ISRO are part of Artemis. NASA needs to have a better PR team. The Chinese Lunar Base is getting so much PR despite being much more behind Artemis

Edit: they signed the Artemis accords, they are not part of the similarly named Artemis Program

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Re:Apollo astronaut Frank Borman has died by dotnet00 on Friday November 10, 2023 @12:20AM (#38215338)

I think Russia has mostly lost the perks of its USSR legacy in space to time, and I would argue has even less current experience than China on making new systems. Most of the USSR stuff would've been like NASA's stuff from that period, extremely reliant on the experience and intuitions built up by the engineers of the time such that reusing the designs from that time now is almost as much work as just designing a new thing from scratch. Russia hasn't invested in propagating that knowledge to younger generations, and the people from that time are quickly aging out of the workforce. So the only institutional knowledge they really have left at this point would be Soyuz, which, while a workhorse, is certainly not enough on its own to cover the systems needed on a space station/base of any sort.

JAXA, ESA are considered partners on the Artemis program (at least based on Wikipedia, there does not seem to be an explicit list of partners on NASA's site), they're training astronauts to eventually be sent to the Moon in a similar arrangement as with the ISS. JAXA and ESA (along with the Canadian Space Agency) are also contributing various key components for the Gateway space station. Plus, the ESA is an important player with the Orion capsule which Congress-critters seem committed to forcing to be the center of the program regardless of technical and financial sense.

As for ISRO, I think I mixed things up a little. I think I had heard talk about the potential for an arrangement to fly a vyomanaut to the ISS on Dragon, assumed that it was about the agreement having been made and then mixed it up with Artemis. Turns out none of that was real, there does not appear to be any talk of sending an vyomanaut to the ISS.

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