Consequently, the South African billionaire has been put in charge of a so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” to excise $2 trillion from the national budget. Whether this advisory group will be able to take aim at the Artemis program remains to be seen.
He knows SpaceX can’t deliver what they promised for the Moon program, so he needs to change the goalposts. Obviously NASA isn’t suddenly going to request less of SpaceX, not without demanding back all the funding awarded. So he needs to have the Moon program replaced with a Mars program, where they don’t need to deliver anything for the next 10-15 years and can delay time and time again.
Yeap, starship looks cool but is entirely impractical for lunar missions.
Just to get to LEO its fuel is pretty much completely depleted. So to get it fueled up to attempt a trans lunar injection you’re going to need an additional 8 launches, which all have to link up in orbit.
Not only is this going to be adding an incredible amount of additional cost, it’s going to be much more dangerous.
There are no humans on starship when it is being re tanked in orbit, so no its not more dangerous to humans. SpaceX are experts at in space docking, proven by their dragon capsule that docks perfectly with the space station evey time, and a startship launch will eventually be cheaper than a Falcon 9 launch. Yes I believe spaceX when they say that because they have always proved the nay sayers wrong (flacon 9 landings) and will continue to do so in the future. So you’re wrong calling it expensive, all launches to retank the lander will cost less than a NASA SLS launch that will actually take the humans to space.
You sound like a United Launch Alliance shill lol, that’s the arguments they tried to use to win the contract over spacex too.
I think most of you hate on SpaceX because of musk, and I agree fuck musk, but spaceX is the most revolutionary space company in our generation and I can’t wait to see them continue to prove you all wrong like they always do and keep advancing human space flight capabilities.
SpaceX is no further behind than any of the other contractors for artemis, everyone who knows anything about space and space policy knows that no contractor will meet the deadline trump set specifically because he wanted to be on the moon before the end of his second term (he thought he was gonna get reelected last time). Its common knowledge in the space community artemis will not be on time, and has already been delayed.
I fucking hate musk but you don’t know what you’re talking about, the new head of nasa is gonna be Elons freind Jared Isaacman anyway so it doesnt matter if they’re late at all.
But you are sorta right on the tail end of your comment, I think musk wants to scrap artemis specifically so a new mission that is almost exclusively done by SpaceX can take its place. Primarily I think he wants SLS to die and starship to replace it.
Also Elon claims SpaceX is going to launch a starship demo to Mars during the next transfer orbit which is in 2026, and I really hope they do because as much as I hate that bitch space exploration is cool AF.
I always love the debate about fantasizing about anyone going to colonize Mars … we’re having a hard time sustaining life here.
Musk is a bigoted lying piece of shit and also a Mars colony could lead to useful discovery, even ones we never could have anticipated. Science should never need to prove itself as useful 100% of the time. Many important discoveries were made by accident.
I would never ever want Musk to be anywhere near decisions about a Mars mission, or anything else of consequence though. Among many other reasons , he likely would prevent such unanticipated discoveries by being a stubborn narcissist…
I didn’t realize humanity wasn’t capable of working on both issues at the same time.
See the problem with that is Elon would have to hire more people, which would hurt his bottom line and require his money bin to fill at a slower rate. That’s unacceptable.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ SpaceX has hired a significant number of people at Starbase for the Starship program and are still hiring for said program
Did SpaceX promise anything with the moon? I thought their goal was, and had always been, just Mars?
Spacex is fairly central to the current Artemis moon missions. They are building the lander from the Lunar Gateway (Moon orbiting station) to the surface and back. SLS will take people from Earth to the Lunar Gateway.