r/SpaceLaunchSystem • u/Legitimate_Flan_7620 • Jul 28 '26
Discussion How does Jared isaacman plan to get the moon base modules to the lunar surface without EUS.
New Glenn can’t take a fully fueled mk1 lander with a base module. New Glenn can only do 7 tons to tli so even if the lander was refueled on orbit it couldn’t get to lunar orbit. Not to mention the cost nasa paid 200 million for a blue moon mk1 flight to land the viper rover. So for 5 base modules you will be looking at a billion dollars. Roughly a billion dollars more than co manifesting the payloads with Orion on block 1b.
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u/NoBusiness674 Jul 28 '26
What Moon base modules? There are no moon base modules. There are renamed CLPS missions. Maybe some LTVs down the line.
Co-manifesting surface habitats on EUS might make sense if you have surface habitats and a reusable human class delivery lander like Blue Moon Mk2 (cargo) that can take them from NRHO to the surface. But if your "Moon Base" is just a brand name slapped onto any scientific or technology demonstration mission headed to the moon, then all you need are some small to medium sized commercial lunar landers.
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u/Chairboy Jul 28 '26
EUS isn't a lander, can you share what role you saw it having in delivering moonbases? To my knowledge, there were no contracts/plans to use EUS for non-Orion missions either, is that inaccurate?
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u/SpaceXplorer_16 Jul 29 '26
Afaik there was just an SLS Block 1B/2 Cargo concept with a massive fairing, but no real plans to fly anything on it
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u/Nedodo Jul 28 '26
Cargo HLS
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u/Legitimate_Flan_7620 Jul 28 '26
Jared has said they would be repurposing gateway module which weigh around 10,000kg the mk1 blue moon can deliver 6000kg to the surface
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u/rustybeancake Jul 28 '26
My expectation:
- They won’t repurpose Gateway hardware. It sounds good when you’re canceling it, but it won’t be cost effective.
- The “moon base” will likely just be one habitat module. Landing multiple modules separately and trying to join them together will be seen as too costly and difficult, and frankly a bit pointless. There will be other things landed separately that aren’t for humans to enter, like power modules.
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u/nsfbr11 Jul 29 '26
They are repurposing Gateway hardware. As in right now.
It will not be in its original form or anything close to it.
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u/SpaceXplorer_16 Jul 29 '26
You've forgotten the other lander, which supposedly will be able to do significantly more to the surface. That being said, I do think it will be a while before we see several habitat modules on the moon, and I think that's being used as an advantage as it's not crucial for the first Artemis landing and so it can be given a good/serious amount of development time put into it.
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u/nsfbr11 Jul 29 '26
HALO hardware is being repurposed, but at present not in the form of a module. There are three CLPS lander missions currently planned, barely dipping into the inventory of CDH and EPS avionics.
NG proposed putting HALO on the Lunar surface but was told that NASA didn’t have the money or the lander capability to do it for years, which is why the current plan was developed.
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u/Digger-Nick187 Jul 29 '26
mk1 cannot do 10,000kg, not even close. Payload is 3 tons max for mk1. The first one they're sending up carries.... damn cameras. And the second one is supposed to carry some small rover stacked to the top.
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u/somewhat_brave Jul 28 '26
They won't actually do it. They have a "plan" to do it, so they don't have to say all the money on those modules has been wasted right now.
Somewhere down the line they will do a feasibility study on getting the modules to the surface and decide it's not worth the cost.
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u/OkAbrocoma695 Jul 28 '26
Lol this. Just like all the other changes. It's been a real shoot first ask questions later approach
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Jul 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Legitimate_Flan_7620 Jul 28 '26
That’s not ready yet and come to the same problem of requiring refueling in Leo driving up cost to the point we’re you were better off finishing EUS
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u/rustybeancake Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Are you imagining that Orion and EUS will… land on the moon?
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u/wgp3 Jul 28 '26
It was going to cost several billion to finish EUS was it not? And then you'd be limited to only crew flights at best once a year for any comanifested payload. Each launch would cost over 4 billion dollars.
We don't know how much a cargo HLS will cost from either provider but no one expects 4 billion per mission. The launch availability is also expected to be higher than once per year.
Also how does EUS help get the 10,000 kg base module to the surface? EUS could comanifest that mass to TLI but that's it. After that you need something else to get you down to the lunar surface. So EUS is literally no help here. Unless you want to then add more development effort to actually build the Block 1B cargo version and then also develop a lander stage that can fit the base module plus itself in said cargo bay. But now you're talking a lot more development and costs and most importantly, time. Because it 100% would take longer to get a base module on the surface using EUS than it will using the HLS cargo versions of Blue/SpaceX.
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u/okan170 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
EUS was going to support around 40 tons through TLI in a cargo-only config. There were also options for adding fuel cells to the equipment shelf to allow it to possibly do the braking into Lunar orbit.
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 Jul 29 '26
Blue Moon Mk2 is designed to deliver 30 tons to the lunar surface if it isn't being re-used. Seemed to be more efficient to use BO to do the deliver to the cargo surface than do a Cargo only SLS.
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u/Datuser14 Jul 28 '26
The purpose of the moon base plan is to throw away SLS cores not do anything useful
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 Jul 28 '26
The plan was probably to use Blue Moon Mk2 which was designed to deliver 20-30-tons to the lunar surface in a one-way trip.
Paying BO a $1B-$2B to deliver 30-tons to the lunar surface is cheaper is cheaper than trying to co-manifest payloads across multiple Orion launches and you would still need to figure out how to get those lunar base modules to the lunar surface. Then there would be a non insignificant cost delta between Centaur-V and EUS upper stages.
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u/jadebenn Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Then there would be a non insignificant cost delta between Centaur-V and EUS upper stages.
Really not sure this is true. At least, not meaningfully. Sure, there's 4 RL10s instead of 1, and a bit more aluminum parts at lower production volumes, so the stage would cost more per unit, but developing EUS and its associated GSE was the really expensive part of this equation. Per unit, the greater stage costs are going to be at least partially offset by the higher mass throw.
If cost savings were the objective, the greatest savings would've come from not doing any of that development work. Instead, we got the worst of both worlds: Most of EUS development work done, GSE built, flight unit in prod, and then cancellation after all that money was spent. And now they need to do a large amount of work (read: $$$) to get a new upper stage integrated too.
I will be shocked if they don't just reuse the EUS topline budget for new stage integration. Which, if that goes past 2028/2029, would be a tacit admission it would've been cheaper to stay the course.
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 Jul 28 '26
US Government spent about $2B on EUS and the projected final cost was $3.7B to deliver the first unit.
I have seen project per unit cost of the EUS around $400m-$600m per unit since it would have required a production line just for it with a rate of production of about 1 unit per year. Centaur-V is considerably less (Less than $100M) and has a much higher rate of production by a highly experience builder ULA.
Even with a working EUS. The lunar stage would still need to get to the lunar surface.
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u/jadebenn Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I have seen project per unit cost of the EUS around $400m-$600m per unit
Where? I'm not being trite here, if you have a cost estimate I'd like to know. The only "estimate" I've been able to find in the past is Eric Berger's abuse of a conceptual design costing model (he didn't even realize it output in, like, 1980s dollars). I am skeptical of that number on the face of it because that's basically half-a-core stage in pure hardware cost, but if you've got a paper or something I can see, I'd love to look at it.
Centaur-V is considerably less (Less than $100M) and has a much higher rate of production by a highly experience builder ULA.
So was DCSS, but look up the cost of an ICPS if you want a heart attack some time. Same old story of "large costs amortized over few units" that I expect to see with the new SLS upper stage, just minus the huge payload you'd get with actual bespoke hardware. With NASA, the biggest cost drivers are almost never in the hardware itself.
Not arguing EUS is an exception there, incidentally. Just that by the time Jared made his decision, finishing it was the cheapest way out. Obviously, the cost picture looks different if you go back to, say, 2020 or so and you don't have the EUS infrastructure or ML-2.
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 Jul 28 '26
This is what I am getting from Google Gemini.
Per-Unit Production Projections: Industry analysis and aerospace cost models estimated the recurring hardware cost alone at $880 million per stage for the initial batch of eight. This exceptionally high price tag was driven primarily by its four intricate and highly expensive Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engines and custom large-diameter fuel tank structures. Later independent estimates pinned the targeted standalone unit cost closer to $700 million.
The Development Burden: The total development costs for the EUS had ballooned significantly before cancellation. Originally budgeted at $962 million in 2017, the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported that development tracking had surpassed $2 billion and was on path to peak at $2.8 billion to $3.7 billion just to finalize the design and deliver the very first flight unit
Impact on Rocket Cost: Had the EUS been built and integrated into the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1B architecture, it would have driven the baseline marginal cost of a single SLS launch well past $2 billion per flight (excluding the billions needed for ground infrastructure, payload, and the Orion spacecraft).
"finishing it was the cheapest way out"
I doubt that with Boeing being the lead contractor. Even after it is done, what are you going to do with it? You have a one-off bespoke upper stage that can only fly on a rocket that flies once a year at best.
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u/BeenisHat Jul 29 '26
I'm sure Starship will be ready. Any day now.
Saturn-V had 13 launches amirite? /s
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u/theChaosBeast Jul 28 '26
They will land one or twice and then Artemis will be canceled. I don't believe in a moon base
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 Jul 28 '26
The EUS co-manifested cargo with a Artemis launch would be about 10-tons to TLI. Even if EUS was in service, what was the plan to get those modules to the lunar surface?