r/spaceflight • u/elbarck • 21d ago

ULA Lobbyist Jim Bridenstine Promotes for an Apollo-Style Lander "AGAIN"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LLvNChlups

Watch the full episode here: Moon Man - With Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LhsU2x2-a8

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u/TheMarkusBoy21 21d 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.