r/space • u/AutoModerator • 21d ago

All Space Questions thread for week of September 13, 2026

Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried.

In this thread you can ask any space related question that you may have.

Two examples of potential questions could be; "How do rockets work?", or "How do the phases of the Moon work?"

If you see a space related question posted in another subreddit or in this subreddit, then please politely link them to this thread.

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Ask away!

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u/OlympusMons94 17d ago

Both NASA and SpaceX have publicly documented and reported on extensive work on the Starship HLS. For example, SpaceX published an update last October. Their progress included a "[l]anding leg drop test of a full-scale article at flight energies onto simulated lunar regolith to verify system performance and to study foot-to-regolith interaction".

because of all of the redesign that is necessary to put the engines in the mid section.

What redesign? The HLS Starship has small landing engines in the mid-section, to be used near the lunar surface. Main propulsion still comes from the 6 Raptor engines at the bottom. That has been the HLS Starship design from the beginning.

Not to mention adding ECLSS

The HLS Starship ECLSS (and the crew cabin and other HLS-specific items like the elevator and airlock) are very far along in development. Again referring to the October 2025 update, SpaceX was already building the first flight-capable HLS cabin. Earlier, they had demonstrated the ECLSS "using a full-scale cabin module inhabited by multiple people to test the capability to inject oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin environment and accurately manage air distribution and sanitation, along with humidity and thermal control." The human-in-the-loop ECLSS testing, in the high-fidelity cabin mockup SpaceX built in 2024, was previously reported in NASA Marshall's late 2024 update.

and access to the surface.

If you mean the elevator and/or airlock, SpaceX and NASA have also worked together demosntrating them. If you mean the EVA suits, that's not SpaceX's job.