Well, he wasn't entirely fair, but, rapid full-reuse of Starship feels like a distant thing at this point. Rapid full-reuse is required for HLS as according to NASA, around 15 launches of the tanker version will be necessary. Those launches will need to happen in relatively short order.

That means either 15 full stacks (Booster + Tanker) ready to go, or a few with full-reuse and very fast turnaround.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but there is a chance that Blue Moon lands first.

> either 15 full stacks (Booster + Tanker) ready to go, or a few with full-reuse and very fast turnaround

SpaceX is on track to launching satellites on a Starship this year. Given Artemis II is now bumped to 2025, that gives SpaceX 2 to 3 years to go from first orbital launch and recovery to a launch every 4 days (2 months for 15 launches), their launch cadence for the Falcon family in 2023 [1]. It took about a decade for the Falcon 9 to do that cadence, but it was first in its class. It seems plausible SpaceX will be able to repeat the feat in 3 to 5 years, which puts Artemis III within window.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_...

Current Blue Moon is also a Starship style lander, just instead of Superheavy, it'll launch on New Glenn. It's also a refueling heavy, orbital depot focused lander. Only major difference being that it's hydrogen fueled, and one of their project goals is to solve boil-off free storage of cryogenic hydrogren in orbit, which also seems like a tall order.

Kind of hard to believe you think it'll land before Starship when New Glenn itself hasn't even had a flight test yet.

> Kind of hard to believe you think it'll land before Starship when New Glenn itself hasn't even had a flight test yet.

Please put down your pitchfork. I said "I can't believe I'm saying this, but there is a chance."

A neutral reading of this would be that I believe Starship will land first.

Yeah that's fair, sorry if I came off as aggressive

Please think again what is the point of going back to moon if we cannot establish a base and stay longer ? It is not about just going to moon we want to stay there and establish a base

I am well aware of this. I think Destin's video was not nearly as cool as he thought it was.

I am just stating that Startship's full-reuse is not as close as I would like.

Sorry I should have been more clear. Starship is itself fantastic, but the starship lunar lander requiring 15 refuelings is extremely high risk and worthy of criticism. Also, why does it take 15 refuelings?? That seems like a lot. I could imagine 2 or 3, but is the proportion of fuel that makes it into orbit from a fully laden starship that low?

I can see starship (or something equivalently big) being eventually used to ferry large components to the moon, but to make the first phase of the manned part of the program dependent on that seems crazy.

If lunar starship (or an equivalent) could make it up in one refueling, it would IMO be less crazy, even if you had to ditch the whole thing on the moon each time.

15 was likely a pessimistic assessment. Likely calculated assuming that they have to use a regular old Starship (rather than a tanker variant) with near current specs, with no weight savings or any of the engine improvements, with conservative return fuel requirements. Basically, based on the data they had at the point of months before they submitted the proposal, when they were at the first iteration of Raptor and prior to all the different refinements they've been working on.

That said, that many launches is not that crazy and Starship wasn't the only proposal involving several launches and several orbital docking maneuvers. Basically all of them involved that in some form.

We've kind of been living in a bubble where any research on orbital refueling was forbidden by decree of Congress critters. But dozens of refueling launches should be well within our technical capabilities and SpaceX hasn't been the first one to suggest such systems. It's a necessary technology for realistically expanding human presence into space.

I believe again we are shortsighted here, it is not about just going back to moon but it is to establish as base. Based on wikipedia starship can take 100 tons to Moon after several refueling, which makes sense. We have already had our boots on the Moon why do you want to do the same again with almost no value of doing so after spending several billion dollars

Nobody is disputing 100 tons to moon capability is worth investing in. The plan though is to use starship for the first manned landing. Even that would be way less insane if you could get away with just parking an expendable starship in orbit around the moon, or deorbiting it or something and get away with fewer refuelings for the first landing. But that's not the plan.

Did you say first manned landing ?

First crewed landing of the Artemis program. Am I wrong about that?