this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
18 points (100.0% liked)
Spaceflight
617 readers
26 users here now
Your one-stop shop for spaceflight news and discussion.
All serious posts related to spaceflight are welcome! JAXA, ISRO, CNSA, Roscosmos, ULA, RocketLab, Firefly, Relativity, Blue Origin, etc. (Arca and Pythom, if you must).
Other related space communities:
- !rocketlab@lemmy.nz
- !curiosityrover@lemmy.world
- !perseverancerover@lemmy.world
- !esa@feddit.nl
- !nasa@lemmy.world
- !spacex@sh.itjust.works
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !space@lemmy.world
Related meme community:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I still don’t understand why NASA doesn’t make the lunar lander themselves, they are great at landers. Then contract out the ride to low lunar orbit.
I know it’s unprecedented, but surely a few Falcon Heavies could put a transfer stage, service module, and lander into LEO, to be assembled in-orbit. Heck it’s not even that unprecedented since Apollo had to be reconfigured in-orbit as well.
Yeah, this might fundamentally change the goals of Artemis, but it seems like relatively low hanging fruit compared to the bonkers complexity we’re trying now.
Even if the program sticks with Orion, I'm hoping later missions will try bidding out flights and cutting SLS out of the picture. I'm hoping that's at least part of the purpose of spinning all of SLS off into a commercial entity.
If anything, I think they're moving in the opposite direction of what you suggested for landers. They're building up an industrial base of different companies building lunar landers for cheap.