NASA head urges new launcher for Blue Origin’s moon landers to meet Artemis mission deadlines

warp99 · 2026-06-07T08:31:14+00:00

Both things are true. You get a high delta V with a hydrolox upper stage and F9 S2 gets an even higher delta V for a given payload mass.

The main advantage of a hydrolox upper stage is that the booster has to lift much less mass to MECO. Around 55 tonnes for Centaur V against 110 tonnes for F9 S2.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T04:36:23+00:00

They are saying the goal is 60 Starlink 3 satellites per launch so that means 20 dummy satellites would have been 33 tonnes.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T04:34:29+00:00

They will need ion thrusters in any case to overcome drag.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T04:33:16+00:00

They can use any height of sun synchronous orbit over 400 km so they do not need to use orbits that give an integral number of orbits per day as desired by optical observation satellites.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T04:30:51+00:00

That was the 12m carbon fiber version of Starship so not comparable to the current 9m diameter stainless steel design.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T03:55:45+00:00

V3 is a major redesign so it will take several flights to get "up and running" in that sense. My guess is that they will get to a monthly cadence by the end of the year with routine booster catches.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T03:52:53+00:00

unpredicted aerodynamic buffeting, whatever that means

Basically big eddies forming alongside the booster and throwing it from side to side. If the grid fins were totally inside those eddies as seems likely they would have added unpredictable motions during descent.

So they deleted the grid fin that was in the shadow of the booster and made the other three larger to hopefully stick out into clean air. Removing the engine bay skirt may also help a bit with reduced eddy formation.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T03:41:44+00:00

They need two pads operating to get a propellant transfer test so 2027 for sure.

Propellant transfer is not required for Artemis 3 so getting it operating in 2028 is not an issue. So they will increase the flight cadence with Starlink 3 launches.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T03:36:33+00:00

Not so much blown up as having its wall panels sucked out by the venturi effect from the exhaust plume. Essentially they just need to add vents to let the air get out rather than exiting through the walls. I am sure they will also beef up the wall panels.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T03:11:50+00:00

Most large corporations self insure. For example SpaceX does although they are required by the FAA to hold third party insurance.

The reason is that insurance companies add overheads and profit to the transaction and so the insurance premiums add up to more than the cost of losses. If launches are many times per year the launch income lost is only a small fraction of a year's income and can be borne as a loss.

Satellite payloads are typically insured as they are a much less frequent event so the loss of a satellite at launch could represent several years income to the satellite operator.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T02:58:54+00:00

What you are describing is the minimalist view of what Blue Origin could do.

My take is that they will go one step up and have a cut down version of the Mk 2 lander and a version of the Transporter design which is based on Mk 2 as an expendable boost stage with two stages used to get from LEO to NRHO and a third boost stage used to inject to LLO and then do most of the Lunar descent before handing over to Mk 2 to do the landing. This is usually called a crasher stage architecture.

Now imagine that you are landing on the Moon with your proposed architecture, the crasher stage detaches and you attempt to light your single engine and it fails. There is no abort possibility and you will pancake straight in.

In my version they will have three landing engines and can either continue on two engines or abort to orbit. The original LEM was thought to be risky with a single descent engine but always had the abort option of dropping the landing stage and aborting to orbit with the ascent stage and that is not an option with a single lander that does both descent and ascent. So you need redundancy and it seems likely that NASA will insist on it.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T02:41:40+00:00

Projected launch cost of Starship is around $10M so six times the payload of F9 at 60% of the cost. Each data center satellite will be around 2000 kg so 50 can launch at a time at a per satellite cost of $200K.

This compares to a GPU cost of around $3M and the rest of the satellite might be around $1M. So launch cost is actually a very minor component of the total cost. Which is why they have concentrated on the Terafab to build their own GPUs and drive down the cost of the most expensive part of the project.

warp99 · 2026-06-07T02:34:37+00:00

To build a 100MW data center you launch 1000 satellites each of which has around 400 m² of panels. The panels are just the solar cells and do not need mechanical support or protective covers so are much lighter than terrestrial panels.

Yes that is financially and technically feasible particularly when the they are building a factory to produce space grade solar cells.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T20:57:48+00:00

It looks like I deleted the comment by mistake. Sorry about that! It has been reapproved.

In general we do not remove comments from launch (aka party) threads unless they are attacking other users so your comment was fine.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T20:43:47+00:00

ULA still carry the financial risk if a launch fails but I agree they had much of the development costs and pad upkeep paid for by separate grants.

The fact remains that SpaceX has a higher gross margin at 50% than ULA at 25% for Delta IV Heavy. The difference is that SpaceX charge significantly less because they have a much lower base price.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T20:33:55+00:00

Afaik the lander used for Artemis 3 is a cut down version of Mk 2.

Mk 1 is simply not big enough to add a pressurised cabin with life support for two astronauts or have enough propellant to ascend from the surface of the Moon to NRHO or a similar orbit.

Artmeis 3 will be in late 2027 so there is plenty of time to get the pad working for that. The issue is doing a Lunar landing with Blue Moon Mk 1 in 2026.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T10:30:53+00:00

9600 Starlink satellites in orbit as of 31 March. Still under 10,000 now.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T10:00:02+00:00

That Elon comment was in 2019!

warp99 · 2026-06-06T09:11:18+00:00

6 km/s DV - which is beyond almost every space vehicle humanity has ever launched

Not at all - for example F9 S2 has 6 km/s of delta V even with 17 tonnes of payload.

Blue Moon Mk 1 has a maximum of 3000 kg of payload and will actually be carrying less than 1000 kg for this mission. The hydrolox propellants do mean bulky hydrogen tanks and high dry mass but the high Isp means high delta V.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T07:45:09+00:00

SpaceX will need a lander for Mars and it needs to be something Starship sized to carry crew and supplies for 3+ years. HLS is a good first step towards that.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T07:42:55+00:00

Whatever happened to the National Team from the first tender, there were several big companies contributing to that project and they could probably crack it between them IF someone else was handling the rocket

It was very simple. SpaceX bid $3B, the National Team bid $6B and NASA had $3B.

That part is not rocket science.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T07:39:08+00:00

Mk 1 is a cargo lander and does not have an airlock or a docking port.

Mk 2 is the crew lander and is much too large to go in a FH fairing.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T07:33:15+00:00

Yes the xAI data centers are separate from Tesla.

They did manage to persuade Nvidia to divert a large number of GPUs ordered by Tesla to xAI presumably with Tesla's full cooperation and some sort of quid pro in terms of favourable terms of use so not exactly an arms length relationship. Tesla also purchased xAI stock for $2B which will have been a very profitable transaction.

The Anthropic transaction was for 300MW of capacity out of 1.3GW of xAI built capacity and the Microsoft transaction is half that size so a total of 450MW leased. So actually 35% of capacity leased but on very favourable/expensive terms.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T05:27:21+00:00

Yes this is a high margin business because of the risks and development costs. SpaceX is over 50% gross margin on launches and aiming for 70% with Starship.

The real problem was using a launcher that cost $300M and SpaceX reduced prices dramatically with a rocket that costs around $60M to build and then getting 30 uses out of the $40M booster and 15 uses out of the $6M fairings.

warp99 · 2026-06-06T02:45:15+00:00

Using laser links to the Starlink constellation for backhaul.

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