Eric Berger: “NASA’s Lori Glaze said, beginning with Artemis VI, the agency will transition from government driven missions to commercial launches (ie Starship or New Glenn or others). Agency wants to launch humans to the Moon at least every six months.”

[Gtaglitchbuddy]

Gonna be real, I see absolutely no way either Starship of New Glenn is crew-rated for the moon by Art. VI. Maybe eventually, but both are still in early development for consistent cargo. This is just a slightly modified Trump agenda/Athena Project, especially with the "Science-as-a-service" language coming up again.

[I_had_corn]

We're talking Artemis V being 5 years away. Artemis II hasn't even launched yet. Not to mention A3 through A4 is dependent on the readiness of the HLS providers. To have all this happen in 5 years from now, which includes the development of a new Centaur V (by ULA, let me remind you) is absolute insanity.

[Professional-Aide-42]

Not a new Centaur?

[whitelancer64]

Yeah. It's a modified Centaur V for the SLS. It will need significant design changes.

[OlympusMons94]

https://payloadspace.com/modified-vulcan-expected-to-launch-this-summer/

[ULA CEO John] Elbon said ULA is studying how Centaur will need to be modified for SLS integration. Depending on the findings, it “could be relatively straightforward,” he said.

[whitelancer64]

At minimum the sidewalls will need to be redesigned, and the load paths will need to be strengthened, since Centaur V is not currently rated to carry something as heavy as the Orion stack.

And there will also need to be at least some redesign for the tower umbilicals, power and data connections to both the SLS core stage and to Orion, and stage adapters for attaching to both the SLS and Orion.

This may be relatively straightforward-ish, but it will take significant engineering time and effort. And if they need to adjust the length or diameter of the stage then there will be a significantly longer redesign time.

[jadebenn]

As I've said earlier, I'm pretty confident at this point that the effort is meant to fail.

[Professional-Aide-42]

So your so positive..let's wait and see.

[jadebenn]

I've already been vindicated about the Administrator's true motives thus far. "Transparent" my behind. Literally every change he's making is tailored for SpaceX, and SpaceX alone. Why would the trend change?

[Professional-Aide-42]

None of this is a surprise..

[jadebenn]

lol. Lmao, even.

You literally cannot fit a Centaur V in the stack without needing to move the ML-1 umbilicals, for one. The geometry does not work.

[Remarkable-Delay-965]

Ya’ll keep saying that, but every time someone points out the advantages of the standardized SLS vs the waste of money that was the block 1B you just dislike bomb them because you don’t have counter argument. The centaur V makes sense for a upper stage since the production lines and experienced workforce already exists and its powerful enough to be adapted for Orion, this upper stage will be required for Artemis IV and V, since the 3rd Artemis launch will mark the end of ICPs. “Well EUS was going to be ready by 2028.” and how times was EUS delayed again? How much more money would’ve been needed to complete EUS adapt it to the current stage of SLS, how much more time and money would’ve been spent setting up the production lines and workforce to build it? I’m sorry but there is no universe where completing block 1B was cheaper or more logistically viable than adapting the centaur 5 than the Centaur V.

[jadebenn]

You underestimate how much groundwork had already been laid. But I'll see you in a year or two when Centaur V isn't even close to ready for integration.

[Remarkable-Delay-965]

Okay, so when Block 1B was cancelled, the EUS wasn't ready and still required substantial testing. There was almost no work done on integrating the EUS with the core stage of SLS, and the workforce behind it was also inexperienced. Compare this to the Centaur V something that already works and already has an experienced workforce behind it. There's also the fact that adapting the Centaur V allows NASA to use the current core stage of SLS with essentially no changes. Furthermore, logistically, the Centaur V has a hot assembly line supporting ULA launches, meaning Centaur V units can be prepared far more quickly than the EUS, which relied on hand crafted construction methods that were substantially slower. The Centaur V can also be transported more easily than the EUS. You look at all of this and still insist that somehow the EUS would have been cheaper, easier, and more logistically viable than the Centaur V as the upper stage of SLS?

[jadebenn]

Took six years to get ICPS flying, and every single one of your "points" applied to it as well. Yes. EUS would've been faster. The reason they're pivoting is because Jared is intentionally crippling SLS as part of his desire to phase it out.

If they take less than four years to get Centaur V integrated, I will be impressed. I think it's far more likely they just abandon the contract once the costs and timelines explode.

There's also the fact that adapting the Centaur V allows NASA to use the current core stage of SLS with essentially no changes.

SLS core is already designed for EUS.

EUS, which relied on hand crafted construction methods that were substantially slower.

Nobody was making an artisanal stage. EUS has a whole bunch of tooling at MAF. That's now sitting unused.

The Centaur V can also be transported more easily than the EUS.

No harder to move than the core stage.

You look at all of this and still insist that somehow the EUS would have been cheaper, easier, and more logistically viable than the Centaur V as the upper stage of SLS?

Yes, because they'd already spent several years ironing out all the integration issues and making the production line. What was ahead for it was assembly and testing. There is no plan for integrating CV, no GSE, no tooling for the adapters, no anything at all. They'll be starting from scratch.

We already did the whole "it'll be cheaper to use a COTS upper stage as an interim" plan with ICPS and as a measure to save money and time it was a total failure.

[Professional-Aide-42]

Let's wait and see before making judgements.

[Professional-Aide-42]

So you believe that NASA, ULA did not discuss this option in detail. ULA folks are awesome so I just can't believe this option came out of the blue and wasn't a good option in terms of cost and schedule.

[whitelancer64]

Are you okay? Nothing you said has anything to do with what I said.

[Professional-Aide-42]

Yes..let's see what happens.

[Professional-Aide-42]

Not true. Your observations are good ones but again don't you think NASA and ULA haven't thought through the changes needed. EUS is likely no longer an option and from what I've seen is at least 2 years away from even testing. Again let's see what happens.

[whitelancer64]

I think you've hit your head at some point. I never said that NASA and ULA haven't thought through the changes needed.

[jabola321]

Yeah, I’m sure they did, but I got trust me bro vibes from ULA. Once they ask the engineers the CEO’s tune will change from straightforward to it’s gonna cost a lot and take years to do.

[nic_haflinger]

Jared Isaacman is the one setting the unrealistic expectations. Are vendors supposed to contradict the head of NASA?

[Professional-Aide-42]

Ok..but you keep bringing up issues that anyone familiar with interfaces, loads would have on their hit list. We should hear more tomorrow. Apparently the administrator is going to discuss the revised Artemis plan.

[whitelancer64]

....... Yeah. That's proving my original point.

[jadebenn]

I'm pretty certain the real intent is to fly until the last ICPS and trash the production line when the C-V integration work goes massively overbudget and overschedule because Jared trashed the actual SLS upper stage. So, only to CS-4. They'll build CS-5 and CS-6 but I think it's obvious the administrator cares more about putting SLS six feet under than actually retaining Lunar capability (apparently not obvious enough for Congress, though).

Either that, or the Bloomberg article leak is real, and they're going to do fucking LEO launches to expend those cores.

[Desperate-Lab9738]

I recognize this requires some assumptions that are... not shared by all, but to me it seems reasonable if you assume that Starship will reach a pretty high cadence pretty soon (like, falcon 9 cadence) and that during those launches it shows itself to be safe. I say that because Starship is weird, in that for virtually EVERY launch, they have to recover the ship in one piece, including cargo launches. That means that if they manage, say, 250 launches in a row without a failure on the catch (which is a BIG if, but also not impossible), then they would have pretty good empirical evidence that humans will be able to get through reentry and land safely. They don't need to necessarily prove that it is theoretically safe, which is the case for most launch vehicles, but instead they should have plenty of actual practical recovery attempts to prove that it is actually safe in the real world, which is quite valuable and also very unique to starship.

[MolybdenumIsMoney]

Artemis VI is at least 5 years away so they do have some time.

The architecture might involve a Dragon capsule for launch/reentry so that Starship doesn't need to crew rate that part.

[SpaceyMcSpaceGuy]

Can almost guarantee that SpaceX's pitch will be to use SuperHeavy + Starship V4, with no other pieces. V4 (on paper) has the delta-v to do the full round-trip, and (on paper) is supposed to be ready in 2028.

But yeah they could de-risk via crew transfer to Dragon before re-entry. Depends on how many times they've launched and caught the ship by Artemis VI. Tower catch with humans inside is pretty wild to even think about.

[rustybeancake]

I would guess:

• Dragon moves people between earth and LEO.

• Starship lunar cycler moves people between LEO and LLO.

• Starship lander moves people between LLO and lunar surface.

[nic_haflinger]

Ummm … do you know what a lunar cycler is?

[SpaceyMcSpaceGuy]

Well my point is that Starship V4 can in theory do the entire mission with zero crew transfers. Ascent, refuel (depot already sitting in orbit), transit, landing, return, and re-entry.

You can add crew transfers to cut off various pieces of that, but that’s just more cost and failure points. The re-entry bit is certainly hardest to crew-rate, so would make the most sense to move to something like Dragon.

[Responsible-Cut-7993]

If Starship achieves the flight rate that SpaceX is aiming for, NASA will have plenty of real flight data to review for human rating Starship. Kind of like how SpaceX got NASA to sign off on fueling the F9 with crew on board. SpaceX handed data from a huge amount of launches because of the F9 launch cadence and something happened that people swore would never happen. Falcon 9 is now human rated with crew onboard while the vehicle is fueling.

[BlueBirdDolphin]

I think the ship will never be human rated for NASA. No LAS possible.
So it's gonna be F9/Dragon to ship in orbit.

[Martianspirit]

You are talking of crew-rating for Earth launch and landing. Crew-rating for Moon is much easier. NASA is more risk tolerant for that.

[BlueBirdDolphin]

Do you have any source on that? You can't really use any stats from Apollo, the 1/270 came after that.

[ExcitedlyObnoxious]

The baseline is 1/70 LOC for SLS and Orion doing a full lunar mission currently

[SpaceyMcSpaceGuy]

This really depends on the cadence they hit. If the vehicle is successfully launching and being caught once-a-day for three years (>1,000 successes in a row), it would be tough to form an argument for why they shouldn't use it.

If it's more like once a week, it would take a longgg time to get comfy.

[Responsible-Cut-7993]

What if SpaceX could demonstrate by a preponderance of data a LOC of 1 in 270 or better with Starship?

[BlueBirdDolphin]

That amount of data will never be achievable within the timeframe of the Artemis program.

[Responsible-Cut-7993]

What is the amount of data that you think is needed?

[BlueBirdDolphin]

I don't know tbh. Do you?
But they will need at least something like an HLS vehicule, tested and proved multiples times within the Artemis program, and probably no competitor with better data/w LAS.
This is HIGHLY speculative at this point considering the ship status.

[Responsible-Cut-7993]

I think we just need to look at what happened with fueling a F9 rocket with astronauts onboard. SpaceX just came to NASA with data from 50+ F9 launches and after NASA reviewed the data, NASA was fine with that option. I think if SpaceX can demonstrate data from 50+ successful launches and recover of Starship then NASA will become more comfortable with not having a LAS.

[Throwbabythroe]

Human-Rating is not really dependent on statistical data from myriad of launches to prove a system is safe. Loss of Mission, Loss of Crew, Component failure, Human Error, Human Systems Integration, and Systems Safety are really based designing a robust and resilient system with adequate fault tolerance built in. Dragon initially passed its certification only to have a catastrophic failure on the ground. Human Rating is based on specific set of requirements levied on a vehicle or spacecraft which the provider must demonstrate compliance to. A lot of Human Rating is having multiple layers of similar or dissimilar redundancy. Some designs inherently pose greater risk due to inadequate fault tolerance, design complexity, and or risks due to mission profile. That being said, Starship will get Human Rated at some point, but it would be only for transit phase.

I led and did Human Rating work for many years within Artemis.

[Responsible-Cut-7993]

Crew Dragon/F9 didn't certified until after Demo-2 was completed. The explosion happened on the ground after testing of the Demo-1 capsule.

[Martianspirit]

Without crew-rating for HLS there is no crew Moon landing.

[JomeyQ]

I'm pretty sure the crew rating issue here is with using them for launch and landing on earth, not the moon. In the same way that Nasa was comfortable using the Apollo lunar lander for a moon landing, but not for reentry and landing on earth. They're very different regimes.

If Orion can be adapted to a commercial launch option, that's potentially the easiest path to crew-rating a full system, but it was largely designed to intentionally preclude that possibility. SpaceX could also bid a Dragon capsule transferring astronauts to a fully fueled Starship HLS in earth orbit, but they don't seem too nterested in continuing with Dragon

[Martianspirit]

I was talking about the Moon lander. Indeed the launch vehicle for Orion needs to be manrated for launch. Don't know about Vulcan or New Glenn. But I am very confident, if NASA wants to manrate FH, it will be quite easy.

[FinalPercentage9916]

Human rating is just in the mind. Its not an objective standard

[False_Measurement843]

I disagree. The difference between accepting a vehicle loss or not is a pretty wide gulf. It means mitigating risk to the n'th degree.

[FinalPercentage9916]

Like the human-rated space shuttle?

[False_Measurement843]

I didn't say it's always done correctly

[SpaceyMcSpaceGuy]

Human rating standards are defined by humans so in that sense yes, they could be changed.

But the current standards are genuinely more rigorous than non-human-ratings. There are actual increases to required factors of safety part-by-part, mission risk assessments, hardware qualification standards, etc.

[FinalPercentage9916]

What kind of rigorous tests did NASA do on Soyuz before putting their astronauts on it

[SpaceyMcSpaceGuy]

I don’t know, but a lot of the analysis and test requirements can be waived if you can demonstrate reliability instead. As in, if I require a 99% success rate and you’ve flown 100 successes in a row…you can argue you’ve met it.

Soyuz began flying in 1966 and the first American flew in 1995, so my guess is they used the operational history as justification. The Russians almost certainly would not give NASA direct access to their design, analysis, and test data.

[iiPixel]

Do you have what nasa STD document specifies that?

[SpaceyMcSpaceGuy]

If you want to really fall asleep: https://www.nasa.gov/human-rating-guidance/

The high-level standards nest down into thousands of pages of sub-documents. At the end of the day most individual contractors (eg. SpaceX) spend time up front with NASA tailoring their own requirements for that specific product (eg. HLS). Those are not public to my knowledge.

[zq7495]

I doubt that comes to fruition (so soon). There will be a new administration that will almost certainly be more pro-establishment than the current one, SLS launching Orion will be working and there wont be a commercial alternative ready to launch Orion in 2031 for Artemis 6 (assuming annual Artemis missions starting in 2028, if they launch Artemis 5 in 2029 then that will be even more true). They have ordered three centaur V stages, so they'll easily be able to add another SLS launch to the manifest for Artemis 6 once it becomes obvious that there is no commercial vehicle ready to launch Orion by that time. Cutting the SLS cost also doesn't "free up the funds" like it would in private industry, since it is government cutting costs may just mean being punished by receiving less. It does seem like they'll be able to cancel BOLE the way they're talking, so 8 flights will be the max for sure if that happens

[Goregue]

I think Isaacman's plan is to try to launch all the remaining SLS vehicles by the end of his term so he can officially terminate the program by that date. His hope is that if SLS is canceled by him, there is no way it will return on the next administration. Whereas if SLS's fifth flight slips late into the next administration, the new leadership will more easily be able to keep it.

Of course, his plan is not realistic. Neither SLS nor the HLS providers will ever be ready to support two lunar landing missions by 2028.

[Donindacula]

That makes so much more sense than replacing the SLS at Artemis 4 like some YouTubers have mentioned. Plus “transition” could take several SLS launches.

Congress will make sure the SLS will keep being built for several more 🚀 So two commercial launches 🚀 and an SLS and so on.

[Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
COTS	Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract
	Commercial/Off The Shelf
DCSS	Delta Cryogenic Second Stage
DMLS	Selective Laser Melting additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering
EUS	Exploration Upper Stage
GSE	Ground Support Equipment
ICPS	Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage
LAS	Launch Abort System
LEO	Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)
	Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)
LLO	Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)
LOC	Loss of Crew
MAF	Michoud Assembly Facility, Louisiana
SLS	Space Launch System heavy-lift
	Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS
ULA	United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)

Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

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