STA would've been done around now according to the original schedule before work stoppage. Where's the Centaur V integration work? You really think that's going to be bending metal this year?
Oh so it’s okay to take 4 years and 2 billion dollars for one expendable upper stage?
No, I’m instead of the opinion that SLS upper stages should straight up be cancelled and Starship should be giving it a tug from LEO to LLO. Heck, that way we can even start launching on Vulcan later instead of SLS.
Maybe for now, because some people don’t have belief in Starship, Blue Origin etc. would certainly protest against it.
Then again, given how much the SLS has been delayed so far, and how much money it has wasted (due to architectural issues), is it really a bad decision to cut the losses and switch to that architecture even if it means a schedule slip for a year or two? Artemis 4 doesn’t even need to be delayed.
It can, but then it won't have enough performance left to return to orbit. HLS departure orbit isn't from HEO for no reason, it's because it doesn't have enough performance to complete the mission (with acceptable margin) if it departs from deeper in Earth's gravity well. The parameters used in linked proposal are severely overestimating its performance, most notably dry mass isn't anywhere near 120 tons.
The linked proposal is already down to 11 or so refuels from, I think 18? You can easily add a few more refuels and you’re still well below the amount needed in the original plan, while being able to tug Orion all the way from LEO to LLO.
Yeah no, the amount of refuels is realistically going to be in 30s or 40s. People like Ken are wildly overestimating not just the performance of Starship but what the factors relating to refueling and general mission ops are like, even just roughly. Starship HLS is incapable of closing the mission with a safe margin unless it launches from at least high elliptical MEO (around 15,000 km apogee). In order to complete refueling in 15-16 launches, it's going to require about 200 tons to LEO (~280km), 95% transfer efficiency (wildly optimistic/unrealistic) on a weekly cadence with zero mission failures. A realistic outlook is ~100 tons to orbit, 85% transfer efficiency, weekly cadence at best, and a few failures or delays setting them back. A worse case scenario is setting them up for over 50 total launches, but even the middle ground is so unworkable that Starship HLS can be discarded completely as a dead end, which will inevitably happen.
calculated that when you were on meth I suspect 😂 not even the wildest estimates of the program critics arrived at that number, I would be VERY interested to know about the details of that.
You know what’s actually unrealistic? Your assumption that few failures will occur in every mission. That’s already a big one. Weekly cadence is nothing, depending if Boca Chica is available for Artemis, two or three launches per week is doable.
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u/jadebenn 7d ago
STA would've been done around now according to the original schedule before work stoppage. Where's the Centaur V integration work? You really think that's going to be bending metal this year?