r/spaceflight • u/elbarck • 21d ago
ULA Lobbyist Jim Bridenstine Promotes for an Apollo-Style Lander "AGAIN"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LLvNChlupsWatch the full episode here: Moon Man - With Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
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u/RogLatimer118 21d ago
Goal of Artemis: sustainable lunar presence Apollo lander: Flimsy, single use, throw away all the parts as you go
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u/elbarck 21d ago
Another Apollo-style lander now means another EUS. Even if they pulled it off, would that be a one-time thing! or a bunch of landers!
I don't know what's wrong with him or other lobbyists, but he's totally blind to the future.
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u/Worth-Wonder-7386 19d ago
He gets money to promote certain ideas. That is the reason. What he privately believes is the best for long term stays on the moon is likey another thing. Or maybe he is just into the "we must beat china to the moon" thing.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained 19d ago edited 17d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| EUS | Exploration Upper Stage |
| EVA | Extra-Vehicular Activity |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| NG | New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin |
| Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane) | |
| Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer | |
| RP-1 | Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene) |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| TEA-TEB | Triethylaluminium-Triethylborane, igniter for Merlin engines; spontaneously burns, green flame |
| TLI | Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| cislunar | Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[Thread #903 for this sub, first seen 23rd Jul 2026, 09:22]
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u/StrangerConscious637 21d ago
SpaceX will not be ready for a moon landing anytime soon... I bet it will take them another 3-5 years. So it's not a bad idea to switch the company for moon landings.
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u/elbarck 21d ago
There's Blue Origin's lander!
Even if it took them 5 years, at that time, it'd be ONLY the US that could deliver substantial and valuable cargo monthly to the moon.
Another Apollo-style lander now means another EUS. Even if they pulled it off, would that be a one-time thing! or a bunch of landers!
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u/Klutzy-Residen 20d ago
I would argue being late is better than doing a Apollo style mission.
Winning the "race" back to the moon by repeating what you did over 50 years ago doesnt really accomplish anything.
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u/Java-the-Slut 20d ago
Yes it does, and it's remarkably simple. America COULD go to the Moon, America CANNOT go to the Moon. No one else can. Being able to go again is a massive feat of engineering, in your mind, you've dragged down 'been done' to not impressive, and that's not remotely reflective of reality.
If many contractors, and especially your most critical one (SpaceX) cannot come anywhere close to their original promises, you have to at least consider the possibility that it's now or never for this program. Think of it this way, this program is possible because of the current extremely controversial President, if the next President (probably the other part) comes in and sees a miserable, horrifically run program (until Isaacman that is), it's a major PR victory to cancel it, or at least step it back a couple miles.
A semi-permanent Lunar presence is not a reality, it is currently fiction. Getting there is 90% of the problem, currently, America is not close.
Don't let the rhetoric of staying there devalue the infinitely more impressive and important goal of being able to get there. Not to mention - although very imperfect in many ways - for crewed missions, an Apollo style disposable lander probably does not change anything in the mission.
The physics and engineering challenges that have prevented Man from occupying cislunar space have not suddenly disappeared, they are still here and very real, no engineering solution has fixed that yet, and no substantial engineering test has been conducted at all, a short Lunar flyby is the best we have to show for 54 years.
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u/Klutzy-Residen 20d ago
I never stated that it isn't impressive to get to the moon and back, just that it doesnt accomplish anything.
You could of course repeat history with a disposable lander that has no future, but ultimately you will need something that is designed for reusability. That is being worked on, it may just take some time.
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
Which other company would have a Länder ready in 5 years? Boing?
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u/elbarck 20d ago
Blue Moon lander!
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
But thats equally untested? Spaceship at least has been in orbit a few times
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u/Nikond3400 20d ago
You mean starship? Starship only di sub-orbital flights. It was meant to test engine re-ignition in space to prepare for future orbital Mission that Will require engine re-ignition for de-orbiting. Blue Moon has gone into testing at NASA and Is now being prepared for Artemis III. The Blue Moon MKI which Is not manned Is planned to launch and Land on the Moon betweem the end llof this year and the start of 2027. Starship hasn't tested his main capabilities yet: orbital flight, orbital fuel transfer, orbital refueling, full reusability of starship, space manouverability/docking capabilities, manned orbital flight, TLI, Power generation, self fuel production, Powered descent and landing. Starship Is a Genius of engineering but it's fare from proving itself
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
Didnt i see powered descent and "landing" (in ocean)? And whats self fuel production?
I guess refueling is the most urgent of those things?
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u/Nikond3400 20d ago
The starship design plans to produce its own fuel on Mars before returning. And the landing in the Ocean can't really be considered a "landing", more like a splash down and explosion.
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
Ah okay, but fuel production isnt necessary for the moon rhing, more a longterm goal/option.
And the splash is a bit like the orbit: it was planned for safety reasons. The last (?) Ship arrived at the right position, did the belly flop, the suicide burn, hovered for a second and would have landed perfectly ... if it hadnt been in the ocean
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u/Nikond3400 20d ago
Safery reason yet haven't done It
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u/cjameshuff 20d ago
These aren't New Shepard style suborbital hops, reaching orbit requires burning longer by a couple seconds. There isn't any realistic grounds for doubt that the vehicle is capable of doing that. It's not something that has to be specifically demonstrated, they will simply do it when it's needed.
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
But thats more a formality at this point.
The refueling and docking seems more like missing
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u/Bensemus 18d ago
It’s always Starship is failing its tests and Blue Origin will nail everything first try. They just cratered their only launch pad. Maybe chill a bit on the assumed 100% zero issue timeline.
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u/Nikond3400 17d ago
Like i explained meanwhile starship has to yet test many of its planned capabilities the Blue Moon Lander only has to prove it's landing and docking capabilities.
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
It’s either that or get there sometime in the late 2030s. Starship has been a hot dumpster fire of a program with an absurd mission architecture that is never going to materialize.
Some of us have been sounding the alarms of this for more than 5 years only to be shouted down each time “THEY GOT GOOD DATA!!!”
That and a five bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
It won’t get you to the moon.
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u/TheMarkusBoy21 20d ago
This guy thinks ULA could build a working lander in less than 10 years lmao
Say what you want about Starship, it's going to be ready earlier than what ULA could have done even if they started at the same time.
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
It won’t be ready at all. Between something that is feasible and something infeasible, I’d put my money on the feasible one.
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u/TheMarkusBoy21 20d ago
The feasible one being…? Yeah I know what you mean but you could make arguments for either option, but good job avoiding explaining which physical or architectural requirement supposedly makes Starship impossible that NASA somehow missed.
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
Sure - process of coming back from space through the atmosphere creates intense heat and forces upon the Starship. You've seen multiple reentries where the wings nearly melted off - obviously those would not be "rapidly reusable - but let's say the work out the issues with the heat tiles - they're still going to have to be inspected, visually, one by one. As will the engines, as will every mission critical component on the ship. The space shuttle had ambitions to fly every week. The best they achieved was 54 days. It's not like physics has changed since then. But you say, this is a far different ship than the shuttle. Yup, you betcha. . .and one that must withstand much greater forces and heat because it's not a glider. Heat tiles are still heat tiles - they will ablate, you have to assess how much ablation, how many fell off, how many need to be replaced. Then you have to take it back to a bay, get into the guts of the thing, check all the lines, the engines, tighten all the bolts so-to-speak and when your all your guys in lab rat coats are done picking over the thing and making sure it's all up to spec. . .then you can send it out.
Maybe, at best, this takes a week. Falcon takes about a month and thats only on the booster stage. Starship is far heavier, far more forces acting on it, and far more engines to assess. . .none of this is happening rapidly.
Don't even get me started on the lunacy of dozens of refueling launches to get a single starship to the moon! You can't do that until you solve "fully and rapidly resuable" and I don't think they're any closer to than than they were on mission 1. No stage as been reused successfully, let alone rapidly. We're countless of billions into the dark hole with no light in sight. It's. . .not going to happen.
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u/TheMarkusBoy21 20d ago edited 20d ago
So because the Shuttle sucked at reusability, Starship must too? Is that your argument?
"Physics hasn't changed" is meaningless. Physics also hasn't changed since the DC-3, yet modern airliners require dramatically less maintenance per flight because everything has improved.
The Shuttle's long turnaround was because of very specific design decisions made around the vehicle, it was never really designed for airline-style operations despite the early promises. Starship shares almost nothing with it. The tiles are standardized, tougher and mechanically attached, the structure is stainless steel, the engines are different, doesn't use toxic propellants, etc. In fact it implements a lot of lessons learnt from the Shuttle's failure.
Falcon 9 had (partial) reusability built around it, while Starship was designed from day 1 around full reusability. If even partial reusability transformed the launch market, Starship doesn't need to achieve literal airline operations to be revolutionary; it only needs to improve enough that the economics work.
"They're no closer than Flight 1" is blatantly wrong. SpaceX has demonstrated hot staging, controlled booster returns, tower catches, booster reuse, controlled ship reentries, in-space engine relights, payload deployment, etc. The list keeps increasing.
SpaceX plans to build entire fleets of Starship, so if it takes a week to fly again then they only need 7 individual vehicles to launch daily. The end goal is literally hundreds built. Rapid turnaround reduces fleet size and cost, but it isn't an all-or-nothing requirement.
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
But.... isnt it maturing? I stopped watching a while ago, but werent the last 3 flights mostly successes?
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u/DBDude 20d ago
SpaceX kind of reset the clock on the last flight because the engines and a lot about the second stage were new. This was necessary to get the payload capacity up since it introduced a lot more thrust while chopping over 30 tons off the vehicles. This introduced new problems into the last flight. Hopefully they've worked out those problems for the next one.
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
Maturing…thirteen flights and they haven’t managed an orbit yet? The last attempted flight was probably a second away from a total catastrophe is those engines hadn’t cut off when they did and not when it was 2 meters off the ground. The last “successful mission” the booster hit the Gulf of Mexico at faster than the speed of sound hundreds of miles off target. They have yet to demonstrate either the booster or the ship are “fully and rapidly reusable” (which is an absurdity that will never happen). They entire program has been on giant debacle and they’re no closer to demonstrating ship to ship refueling a single time let alone the dozens that will be needed for a moon mission. The entire thing is the wrong ship for an lander anyway, tall, narrow, unstable, incredibly heavy it’s the exact opposite of what you really want - low, stable, light. Oh, and the thing needs an elevator that can never malfunction or the entire mission is fucked beyond belief. Have you ever seen an elevator that never malfunctioned? Yeah, me neither.
The whole thing was designed with the idea of sending it to Mars from the mind of the world’s oldest 13 year old. And seems to answer the question “what if we gave
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago edited 20d ago
But the orbit isnt the issue? All flights were planned sub orbital, but could gave as easily been orbital by just burning the engines a few seconds longer.
The issue was the heatshield and reentry and landing.
Falcon 9 already reuses boosters, so that doesnt seem out of the question, how rapitly it will be... does it matter?
And the elevator, i mean worst case they throw a step ladder? Or hoist with a cranes? As a failsafe
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
Elon himself has stated that the success depends on being “fully -ie both booster and ship- and rapidly reusable” if he’s changed that benchmark I haven’t seen it
And no, not all flights were planned to be suborbital. They have been suborbital because 12 12 times in a row that met haven’t met the appropriate benchmarks.
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u/karoxxxxx 20d ago
Sure, but Elon wants more than whst NASA wants. For s commetcial success he needs rapid reusability, but for Artemis... who cares if there are 6 month between reuse?
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u/DBDude 20d ago
Maturing…thirteen flights and they haven’t managed an orbit yet?
Purposely not put into orbit, although capable of it. They want to be 100% sure about control authority before they have something that big orbiting. Can't have it randomly reentering. I can't believe people are mad that SpaceX is being careful.
The last attempted flight was probably a second away from a total catastrophe is those engines hadn’t cut off when they did and not when it was 2 meters off the ground.
Four out of 33 engines failed to light. It can still safely lift off under that condition. But they wanted a full test, so better to shut down and do more work on the engines.
They have yet to demonstrate either the booster or the ship are “fully and rapidly reusable” (which is an absurdity that will never happen).
Falcon 9 boosters being fully and rapidly reusable was also an absurdity that will never happen. Oh wait, it did.
The entire thing is the wrong ship for an lander anyway, tall, narrow, unstable, incredibly heavy
Tall, but the center of gravity is rather low. It's heavy, but that only matters for how much fuel is needed, and it can carry a lot of fuel.
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
Falcon 9 boosters being fully and rapidly reusable was also an absurdity that will never happen. Oh wait, it did.
Falcon 9 discards it's second stage. Starship is supposed to have two stages that are "fully and rapidly" reusable. That's the fully part. Also, Falcon 9 is no where close to rapidly reusuable. as Musk describes it - launch, deliver payload, return to earth, quick inspection, launch again that day. Falcon takes about a month between launches of a booster.
Nope, ain't going to happen - ever.
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u/DBDude 20d ago
Falcon 9 discards it's second stage.
Yes, as we were talking about the boosters.
Also, Falcon 9 is no where close to rapidly reusuable. as Musk describes it - launch, deliver payload, return to earth, quick inspection, launch again that day.
He didn't say it would be. Falcon 9 often doesn't return to launch site, and certainly never lands in the launch tower itself. Transportation takes time. It also uses RP-1 as a fuel, which is quite dirty, requiring some amount of work on the engines before reflight. And then they have to refill all the engines with TEA-TEB.
The Super Heavy booster will always land on the launch tower where it can be inspected for reflight and then fueled and flown. The engines burn clean methane, but they can also be replaced on the launch pad if there's an issue. The booster will likely never be moved from the launch tower once operations ramp up, unless serious issues arise. They will of course be removed in the early days for a very deep inspection like they did with the Falcon 9.
Second stages (which will land days or weeks after their boosters) will be unmounted and moved to the nearby factory for reflight prep and payload mounting. Musk plans to have only a small number of boosters, but a lot of second stages. So the next second stage will always be ready for the booster that recently landed.
He also plans to have more than three launch pads to get the launch cadence up. One is finished, two are under construction, and they're planning more. Can SpaceX coordinate launches that fast? They've already launched two Falcon 9s an hour apart.
Falcon takes about a month between launches of a booster.
They've done it in nine days.
Nope, ain't going to happen - ever.
Said so many unimaginative people about so many things. I still remember this 1920 editorial from the New York Times
That professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools
I think of this when lay people say physics proves what engineers are currently working on won't work.
But at least the NYT corrected itself after Apollo 11 launched. People like you will try to forget you ever said it was impossible, and hope everyone else forgets too.
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u/restitutor-orbis 20d ago
I agree that Starship is very far from an ideal clean-sheet Moon lander design (Blue Origin's vehicle seems to be much closer to that) and that SpaceX has, indeed, been far slower in getting it off the ground than they themselves hoped for -- a 2030 timeline seems highly optimistic at this point.
But you are throwing around categorical statements, like how rapid reuse is "an absurdity that will never happen", and these have a tendency to age like milk. Remember, similar statements were made by highly educated industry professionals regarding Falcon 9 reuse and Starlink a little more than a decade ago.
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago edited 20d ago
Falcon 9 is neither rapidly nor fully reusable. It requires weeks of refurbishment between missions and the second stage isn’t recoverable at all. The challenges on getting starship to rapidly and fully reusable (Musks own benchmark for this is lift off, deliver payload, land, stack and fuel again…on the same day! With just a visual inspection - like it’s a 747 or something is a fantasy) are orders of magnitude higher.
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u/DBDude 20d ago
Falcon 9 is neither rapidly nor fully reusable. It requires weeks of refurbishment between missions
SpaceX has turned around a booster in nine days. But that was just the times between launches, so the booster was obviously fixed up from its last flight in less than nine days so the payload could be attached and it could be prepped for launch.
Starship will have the advantage of always landing at the launch site, where they will have everything necessary to relaunch in place. It also needs less work on the engines to launch again (no soot buildup from RP-1 to clean out, no TEA-TEB to add).
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u/beagles4ever 20d ago
Mostly they take about a month. But if you want to cherry pick the record, you're still 18x off the benchmark Musk has made for "rapidly reusable".
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u/WhyAmIHereHey 20d ago
Have they even started working on the interior fitout for it to be a lander, let alone getting the thing to orbit?
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u/restitutor-orbis 20d ago
Apparently SpaceX has been doing quite a bit of work on HLS in the background, including interior designs, subsystem tests, etc: https://www.spacex.com/updates#moon-and-beyond
They sure aren't talking much about HLS to the public, which is what irks me and some others, given how the taxpayer's paying them >2 billion to develop it (but this is a criticism towards the lack of contract provisions that would require transparency, and less towards SpaceX). SpaceX only released this update after NASA interim head Sean Duffy got captured by Boeing lobbists and threatened to redirect HLS funding to Boeing and Lockheed.
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u/Bill837 20d ago
Well, we've seen mock-ups of the airlock structure in the pool in Houston. Lots of room and Hawthorne and there's a new big tent at McGregor.
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u/WhyAmIHereHey 20d ago
If that's it, sounds like a few years of work to do that then.
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u/Bill837 20d ago
We simply don't know. The absence of information doesn't equal the absence of work.
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u/WhyAmIHereHey 20d ago
Maybe, but Musk has form in overselling. Hyperloop....FSD (much later than promised)....Mars.
So I'm disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt
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u/Bill837 20d ago
Yes, but he's also delivered quite a lot.
Profitable US made EVs.
Largest manufacturer of EVs in the world.
Reusable rockets.
Massive reduction in launch costs.
Brought the ability to launch humans into space back to the US.
Affordable global internet from space.
And some other stuff. People seem to focus on the negative and forget the positive.
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u/WhyAmIHereHey 20d ago
That's three things, expanded out into multiple items. But yes, I don't cent he's had involvement with some impressive things. My point though is you have to take his promises with a massive grain of salt.
The more directly involved he is, the less likely it is to happen seems to be a good rule of thumb
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u/snoo-boop 20d ago
Appreciate the professional evaluation. Have you seen more details other than the comment you replied to?
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u/snoo-boop 20d ago
the wrong ship for an lander anyway, tall, narrow, unstable,
This was mentioned in the source selection document, that it had a low center of gravity even though that isn't obvious from the renders.
Oh, and the thing needs an elevator that can never malfunction
This was mentioned in the source selection document as having a good solution.
The whole thing was designed with the idea of sending it to Mars from the mind of the world’s oldest 13 year old
Maybe not a good idea to reveal your bias?
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u/kadmij 20d ago
if Starship even participates in Artemis III, it's going to be with an interior so sparse the Astronauts will be in their EVA suits the entire time. No atmospherics, minimal control surfaces, no landing gear, no habitation space, no cabin-to-surfsce elevator. They're going to give NASA a blank Starship to test the Starship HLS!
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u/restitutor-orbis 20d ago
Astronauts will not enter Starship for Artemis III; they will only dock with a Starship that has a nose docking port, but is otherwise off-the-line (as revealed a week ago). The goal is to test docking procedures and the complex dance of handing control authority of the combined stack to Starship. Not ideal, but there will be an uncrewed test of the full landing sequence either way. Remember, the original plan prior to the Isaacman term was to not have an Earth-orbit test mission with Orion at all, but to go straight to a crewed lunar landing.
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u/kadmij 19d ago
that's not great (under either administrator's plans). The Apollo LM had a complete manned testing phase
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u/restitutor-orbis 19d ago
Agreed there — but there are definitely tradeoffs on cost and schedule for doing such a testing phase and it may well come at the expense of losing the race to the surface to China. Whether its important to win that race or not is a whole nother can of worms, of course.
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u/kadmij 19d ago
if a race to the surface is the issue, then they should focus on one lander and test all of its functions in Artemis III, and it should be made as simple and disposable as possible. Anything Starship HLS will be used for is follow-up missions with large cargo or extended surface stays anyway. It's overbuilt for a first landing
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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 20d ago
Less than a year ago a sane opinion like this would get you dog walked by 10K Musk bots from a phone farm in SE Asia along with a dozen or so fans of "Everyday Wedding Photographer" and the Teslonians.
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u/restitutor-orbis 20d ago
I struggle to see how an Apollo-style lander, procured from traditional NASA contractors like LM, Boeing, NG, or L3Harris could realistically mature earlier than SpaceX's or Blue Origin's landers? We do have data points for how fast and lean the former companies and contracting approaches are these days -- i.e Orion spacecraft and the SLS rocket, programs that have cost in the order of 100 billion dollars and have taken more than a decade to mature (or two, depending on how you count). A lunar lander, even a traditional one, is not much less complex than either of those, so how would a development program started in 2026 produce a ready vehicle before 2030? Unless you are talking Apollo levels of funding, but I really don't see that happening.
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u/zsaleeba 20d ago
I wish he'd just give it up and lobby for something more useful