SLS is super heavy class like Starship. It deploys about 100 tons to orbit in Block 1 configuration.

New Glenn deploys half that. Closer to a Falcon Heavy.

You can't really do a moon program without a super heavy rocket.

A moon program requires a super heavy booster or on orbit rendezvous, not both. The reports from the sixties determined that on orbit rendezvous would be easier and cheaper, but take longer, making it more likely to miss their deadline of 1969.

Supposedly, the former Senator from Alabama personally intervened on a continous basis to stomp any NASA efforts towards in-orbit refueling.

> You can't really do a moon program without a super heavy rocket.

Use two parts like Apollo but launch them separately?

"It deploys about 100 tons"

What's the cost per ton? Make sure to include failure rate.

Why do we need a moon program?

It'd be nice if we had a good one, alas ... https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

That's a fun read. Also the first time I've heard of the company Aerojet Rocketdyne. Did they come up with that one while playing beer pong?

Smarter Every Day gave a talk directly to NASA that raises some of the same issues. It's a good one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

Those are very old aerospace companies. They predate NASA. Aerojet was von Kármán's rocket company, founded in 1936. Rocketdyne was founded in 1955. Both are now owned by L3Harris.

To practice for the Mars program.

Grow the economy through the advancement of technology.

A good way to be poor is to not advance technology.

Why should the government pay for it? If there’s an economically viable reason to have a moon program, let private enterprise take that on.

That’s a great way to never expand the frontier of knowledge. We don’t know the returns on the investment of a Moon program ahead of time, but exploration drives human knowledge forward. If we only ever funded things that had a clear economically viable reason, we would have never progressed past steam technology.

Think of space exploration as basic research. It’s fundamental to moving human knowledge forward and that should be worth any price.

Private enterprise doesn’t advance advanced technology because they are constrained by profit requirement. It’s impossible for private enterprise to do so because of that. That’s why we rely on government to advance literal moonshot programs.

Space-X can’t even do this without government funding.

It is important to remember that the Space Race was a front of the Cold War, the "Why do we need a Moon program?" question was squarely answered by "Because we are at war."

Today we are not at war, at least not one that concerns space or the Moon. China is in a fierce self-imposed race to land on the Moon and Do The Other Things because it (probably correctly) views the West as an enemy to overcome. The US has not reciprocated that sentient, we've just shut them out of our space programs and then left them be.

For the US government to fund another Moon program we definitely need an answer to the question of Why. So far we don't have one other than THE PRESTIGE and OUR SCIENCE GRANTS as evidenced by many other threads on similar subject matter here. That's not going to convince the taxpayers.

It's important to remember that USA cannot fly men to the Moon.

USA had that ability some 50 years ago. Since then companies changed, technologies were replaced, knowledge transformed and people got interested with other things, not to mention that risk threshold grew a lot. As a result, right now USA can't fly men to the Moon.

US government, however, doesn't want to give China the ability to say "yes, we're on the Moon - and we're the only nation which can do it today". And because of that, we have a rather similar conditions today as we had some 60 years ago - US government can't really allow China to fly men to the Moon without showing that Americans are also doing that, at the very same time.

Taxpayers, of course, are and were different - somebody doesn't care, somebody else cares a lot. I doubt US government want to assume those who care aren't that important.

So far the American system has been for the government to fund basic research and private industry to commercialize it. This has worked stupendously well. We should be very cautious about moving away from this arrangement.

>So far the American system has been for the government to fund basic research and private industry to commercialize it.

In that case SLS definitely needs to be cancelled.

We are well beyond "basic research" into how a Moon program could be executed, private companies are already doing it and the only question left is how to commercialize it.

Sure, I agree, but the person I was responding to was not talking about SLS specifically. They said that a moon program should be strictly up to commercial interests to pursue and that the government shouldn't purse one at all.

I agree with that assessment, neither NASA nor the country has the money nor time to waste on another public Moon program. There is no justifiable reason for another Apollo.

Leave it to the commercial world, and if they can't figure out a sustainable business model then it simply isn't meant to be (yet?).

You not agreeing with the reasons is not the same as there being "no justifiable reason" for another moon program. There absolutely are justifiable reasons and those reasons have worked out very well for the U.S. in the past. And as to whether we have the money for it, the U.S. is the wealthiest it has ever been and certainly much wealthier than we were in the 60s.

>There absolutely are justifiable reasons and those reasons have worked out very well for the U.S. in the past.

Apollo quickly lost funding and popular support once the Cold War in space was effectively over. Space Shuttle ran on its fumes, and it had to be designed partially as a warplane in order to get additional funds from USAF that NASA couldn't get otherwise. SLS is an extension of that.

Also, we're living in 2025, not 1965. The reasons of the past do not translate perfectly to today.

>And as to whether we have the money for it, the U.S. is the wealthiest it has ever been and certainly much wealthier than we were in the 60s.

We are also literally many trillions in debt. There are many things we should be doing and arguably none of that involves another Moon program just for the sake of it. Been there, done that; we don't have the money.

In 2024 we spent $1.5T via Social Security so that 70 million people could be economically unproductive. We're a wealthy country that can afford many little dalliances to expand our understanding of the natural world (which so far has been a prerequisite to human flourishing).

So we can have corporations and shitty billionaires also own the moon? No fucking thanks.

This is just a variation on the broken window fallacy. There are any number of engineering projects one could embark on that would stimulate R&D and provide a productive output in their own right.

I have to admit that while this stuff has absolutely fascinated me for 40+ years, I have zero interest in seeing these vehicles succeed. I remember writing to NASA in the early days of the shuttle and getting back packets and packets of information. Not only is that interest missing, but part of me hopes they either fail miserably or stop getting government funding altogether.

Because manned space flight is a frivolous waste of money?

How about a robotic moon program? An all-robot base, with lots of rovers exploring and digging. They could work for years, rather than short visits by humans.

The moon is close enough that you can teleoperate robots, although the 2.5 second lag means you have to have autonomy for at least balance. That's where Tesla's robots are now.

As you're very likely already aware;

  Tank on the Moon (2007) is a French documentary film about the development, launch, and operation of the Soviet Moon exploration rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2 in the period from 1970 to 1973.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_on_the_Moon

on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_0K2-Tf3Ko

A bit of sometimes overlooked history.

It's about time for a larger scale robot base .. good trial run for elsewhere at even greater distances.

Tell that to the Apollo program people. Maybe two parts that stick together in orbit could actually reach the moon. I guess we’ll never know..

I agree, but there’s no way to divorce this from Musk’s hand controlling our government. It should have been cancelled years ago, but the motive matters.

The motive is Boeing didnt deliver, doesnt deliver, and cannot deliver.

Neither has SpaceX; we have two contracts that have missed deadlines.

> two contracts that have missed deadlines.

Just two. Wow. That’s an unprecedented track record in the space industry.

Every industry has different critical indicators. “Late” doesn’t mean much here.

Even routine individual launches are often scheduled as “NET” or “No Earlier Than”.

For major new rocket designs, it’s a lot like me and social events. “If I’m not late, I’m not coming!”

I can't find it anymore but someone made a site overlaying all of Elon Musk's outrageous project timeline goals as if they were serious

This is such a cliche, not to mention inevitable pattern, for any ambitious research or development project if any date is mentioned.

But we all want to talk about dates anyway, so we get “delays” that are not delays at all because the dates are never, could never, be real.

A better way is to look at ambitious date projections as targets. If we don’t talk about dates, we feel less pressure and go even slower. But if we talk about dates, we get some urgency even when we miss them.

“Target date” is a good phrase that communicates we know we can’t beat that date, but if absolutely everything went to plan, we might hit it, so we are going to try for it. Knowing that as long as we keep having to learn anything whatsoever, we are going to have a moving target.

SpaceX may not have done everything but they've delivered a lot.

It’s naive to look at it one dimensionally.

Assuming they contract out to both those venders. Having a single vendor win the contracts lead to this mess to begin with

I think Jared Isaacman's closeness to Musk gives him added motivation to award contracts to non-SpaceX vendors (once he's confirmed), because he'll seek to disprove claims he's biased in favor of SpaceX

I see no evidence that "keeping up appearances" toward critics has been a priority for anyone else in the last two weeks.

You're getting downvotes, but I agree that Isaacman isn't likely to favor SpaceX. The space community in general is very supportive of him, and he's shown a great interest in spaceflight regardless of who's launching the rockets.

Also keep in mind that his previous missions realistically were only possible via SpaceX whether he liked them or not. Starliner was not (and is still not) ready, Orion isn't ready and is for NASA only anyway, and Russia/China aren't going to work well for geopolitical reasons. SpaceX is the only company left who has the capability to lob you into orbit.

....because there's tons of precedent for the Trump Administration, GOP courts, or voters to punish in any way raw corruption or profiteering?

That depends on the application. If we are talking safety critical human space flight SLS would be preferable over SpaceX.

You’re picking Boeing for their safety record? Why is that?

Caution went out the door.

How can that possibly be true?

I mean one is actually flying right now and one ain't

Wait, you mean the SLS that could not bring astronauts back from the International Space Station? It's nine months in and they are still up there.

You're confusing things. The mission you are referring to was flown using the Boeing Starliner capsule, launched atop a Atlas V N22 rocket. Not the SLS or Orion.

Oops, that's Starliner. Still...It would be perhaps better for Boeing to get out of rockets entirely and focus on fixing their commercial airline business.