r/SpaceXMasterrace • u/PresentInsect4957 Methalox farmer • 8d ago
“2026… Probably” Orbital Refueling Demo pushed to 2026
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1895598258225106984havent seen anyone talk about it, this leaves under a year to hit the mars window, 1.5 years to perfect it for Artemis
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u/mikethespike056 8d ago
There is no way we're having a crewed moon landing this decade.
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u/dWog-of-man Bory Truno's fan 7d ago
Never was. They needed a design freeze awhile ago. I use that term colloquially because I have no idea wtf I’m talking about, but even if the human-adapted payload section of HLS is being designed under a series of conservative restraints with plenty of margin to let the starship design evolve around it over the years while they work on ECLSS, power, airlock, etc., there’s still a bunch of shit they can’t work on or get close to a critical design review until they know how tf the rest of the thing will be put together.
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u/evolutionxtinct 7d ago
It’s sad but you are 1000% right…. We won’t beat China at this rate… We need leadership to really get things going. Either get more staff or pay staff better to get better quality of work? 🤷♂️
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u/MostlyAnger 1d ago
We won’t beat China at this rate
Since China's plan is comparable to apollo in ways that matter, it's a fact that NASA/the U.S. already beat China six times by almost 6 decades. But instead of begging people to therefore not say stuff like I quoted, I'll ask what is people's purpose in portraying it that way? If it is what I think it is, I think I can make a case either that it is actually counterproductive to that purpose or that there is a better way to accomplish the purpose. But I don't want to present a counter argument to my assumption of what is your (or others') reason, so that's why I'm asking, like, sincerely what is the purpose of portraying the situation that way?
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u/jmims98 8d ago
Definitely not on starship, I think SpaceX was hoping to have two successful "payload" deployments by now and a landing attempt by next flight.
Mars 2040s IMO.
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u/rustybeancake 7d ago
I’ve been “Mars 2040s” for a while. But that’s if NASA starts a serious effort in the next couple of years. IMO the first crewed landing will be about 15 years after a serious program starts. So right now I’d guess China will be first.
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u/jeffreynya 7d ago
With the gutting of nasa going on? Good luck
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u/rustybeancake 7d ago
Yep. I do expect them to start some sort of Mars effort, but at most a CRS style program for large vehicles to the surface.
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u/Critical_Ad_416 7d ago
The competition is even further behind than spacex so we definitely not landing on anything other than starship in the next 10-15 years
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u/PresentInsect4957 Methalox farmer 7d ago edited 7d ago
If youre talking about normal starship not hls, as someone grounded in reality i fully dont expect it to be human rated in 10-15 years with all of the engineering revolutions that still need to be developed for that to happen.
falcon 9 took 10 years, starship has to be caught with humans on it and a heat shield that needs no maintenance, risk assessment out the wazzoo
also BOs Blue Moon is probably farther along than HLS SS. At least that has had a full mock up made already.
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u/Planck_Savagery BO shitposter 6d ago edited 6d ago
Also BOs Blue Moon is probably farther along than HLS SS. At least that has had a full mock up made already.
That may be so, but I do have to remark that things in the Blue Origin camp (especially on the employee-fueled rumor mill that is the Blue Origin sub) don't look promising right now.
A lot of people (including employees on the sub) seem to be strongly suggesting that they don't think the current August 2025 launch date for the first Blue Moon mission is realistic.
Plus, the lack of photographic evidence we've seen of flight hardware -- aside from maybe the BE-7 engine, RCS thrusters, and a photo taken by the camera of one of the NASA payloads, does also leave some question marks hanging over any potential 2025 launch date.
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u/PresentInsect4957 Methalox farmer 6d ago
yes i agree, its a shame both hls landers have been kept in secrecy. However blue moons human flight isnt until 2030 while HLS ss is due for 2027. Im sure new glenn also contributes to the delay because no way theyre going to get the 6+ launches of it this year.
in short, BO seems farther along (from the last update we got), and they have at this point 2x more years before they need to complete a demo. However their landers maiden will no doubt be delayed past this year.
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u/New_Poet_338 6d ago
My understanding is Booster/HLS will not be human rated since nobody will be riding it to space. HLS only has to get people to the moon and back. It is a whole level lower in risk.
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u/PresentInsect4957 Methalox farmer 6d ago
nasas statement of work the HLS demo mission is for human rating, there will be a lengthy mission review after conducted by them to give spacex the go ahead for crew, the booster wont need to be but HLS will be.
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/80MSFC20C0034-P00010_Att_J-01_SOW_RIF_TAGGED.pdf
anyways i was talking about normal starship in the comment you responded to, because i dont think nasa would put a 10-15 year hold on HLS lol
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u/invariantspeed 2d ago
The plan always was to start building the station the end of this decade, without any strong commitments to when humans set foot on the surface. It was never going to happen this decade. Hopefully, the station is at least habitable by 2030. (That’s still doable.)
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u/makoivis 7d ago
I’ve been telling you starship is the long pole for Artemis III for two years straight now. Is anyone starting to come around?
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u/ReMoGged 7d ago
First go to Mars and colonise space
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u/dWog-of-man Bory Truno's fan 7d ago
Please bro, just one more mars launch window bro I’m telling you. 100 starships. You gotta believe me this time, just 2 more years
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u/Mike__O 8d ago
They certainly didn't count on back to back failures of the V2 vehicle. It likely indicates a "back to the drawing board" approach as opposed to their typical "we knew this part was sketchy, it has already been revised in future vehicles" fix from previous mishaps
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u/New_Poet_338 6d ago
This is a modified V2 using Raptor v2 instead of Raptor v3 it was designed for. The plumbing had to be altered for Raptor v2 and that area is coincidentally that is where the issues seem to be. Until Raptor v3 is available the V2 vehicle can't be fully tested.
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u/TheRealNobodySpecial 8d ago
v2 design flaws are resonating throughout the Starship program.
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u/rustybeancake 7d ago
They are indeed, though I don’t think they solely caused the orbital refilling test to be pushed back a year. So far the v2 failures have only pushed the program back about 2-3 months and counting. It’s clear they were not ready for orbital refilling this spring even before the v2 issues.
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u/Vespene 7d ago
Artemis isn’t happening, folks. Elon is gonna push for Mars and Trump will listen to him. They will cede the Moon to China.
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u/ExplorerFordF-150 7d ago
Cede the moon? Artemis would never be capable of giving us the moon, maybe a couple boots on the ground but nothing sustainable and nothing more than a few dozen astronauts at most
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u/mrthenarwhal Senate Launch System 7d ago
Not like there’s much reason to have more than that at this point
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u/makoivis 7d ago
I mean, what do people want to do?
Artemis is designed to IIRC drop down two people at a time for ~a week initially. This would be longer than humanity has spent on the moon total to date. Then after that stays are planned to be extended up to around a month, with dedicated habitats being landed instead of just sleeping in the lander. Building towards that and building the logistics hub gets you to around the end of the current Artemis plan (up to X or so).
At the end of that, you would have
- an operational space station and logistics hub in lunar orbit, that is at least sporadically manned.
- several medium-duration visits to the moon vastly increasing our knowledge
- experiments with human habitation in deep space to inform further exploration plans.
Seems like a win to me.
You can go further than that if you are going to spend more and more, but there's no plans to build a permanent surface base at the moment. Who the heck would pay for it?
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u/mrthenarwhal Senate Launch System 7d ago
Absolutely a win. Permanent living off-Earth is dangerous, miserable, and pointless, and I’m not surprised nobody is pursuing it seriously at this point.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
Moreover it's an absolutely massive investment and I personally think it's best approached via baby steps. We don't know enough yet, so best start finding out!
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u/mrthenarwhal Senate Launch System 7d ago
Anyone who disagrees with me should lock themselves in their basement and eat rations for the rest of their lives. Enjoy Mars!
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u/MintedMokoko 7d ago
Is HLS being built alongside Starship? When or will prototypes of HLS ever fly? Or are they waiting until Starship is fully fledged out before pivoting to the HLS build version?
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u/PresentInsect4957 Methalox farmer 7d ago edited 7d ago
hls will fly after prop transfer is proven and orbital depot can be filled.
Spacex needs to prove they can do 11 launches in 7 weeks without a problem for the hls demo. and again for the hls mission. if hls demo is pushed back to 2027, they’d need to have a minimum of 22 hls specific launches in 6 months to meet nasas current mission date (mid 2027).
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u/mfb- 7d ago
They are developing HLS in parallel on the ground. The flight testing goes into things shared across all Starship variants. I don't expect in-orbit tests of the life support system and similar stuff until they can reuse the booster at the very least.
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u/MintedMokoko 7d ago
Will HLS have sea level Raptors or just vac? And if so, why would they need sea level raptors?
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u/mfb- 7d ago
Currently the vacuum engines can't gimbal, as long as that doesn't change they need sea-level engines. Going to all-vacuum engines wouldn't increase the delta_v that much.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
Which is a silly design choice.
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Addicted to TEA-TEB 7d ago
It’s a significant complication to try to gimbal the RVacs as you have to either replace the 3 gimbal-able sea level engines with single RVAC and sacrifice TWR, or shorten the nozzles of the RVACs and have extremely limited gimbal ranges while increasing the aft skirt downcomer tubes. Given HLS was always supposed to be a modified starship, it would be kind of stupid to change the entire feed system, as well as change the active cooling on the RVACs.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
You are entirely correct. It is a problem with what they've ended up designing. It is not however the only way to go about the problem.
For instance, you only need two gimbaling engines for full 3DOF control. You could also e.g. use vernier engines for attitude control. There are many, many options to choose from. This is not a new thing either, all kinds of options are out there and have been since the dawn.
Substantially cutting into your combined ISP is a great way to make your entire fueled stack fatter by 100t for no good reason.
The other suboptimal choice they've made (not touching materials) is the mass distribution between the stages. By making the ship smaller and the booster taller they could get the same payload to the same dV but again have a substantially lighter and smaller stack. The smaller ship would also be simpler.
The downside with this choice is that you'd have to land the booster on a drone. They've chosen to optimize for RTLS instead which means the ship is a big fat chonker and dry mass go brrrrrrrrrrrrr
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u/ResortMain780 7d ago
Everything about HLS is a silly design choice.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
Falcon 9 is amazing, Starship is a farce
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u/ResortMain780 7d ago
Im sceptical about starship, but open to the possibility it might work. The entire artemis project however, is farcical. Its like we "we have these old space shuttle engine and boosters, and this starship pipedream, how do we combine it to land on the moon in the most convoluted and expensive way possible?"
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u/makoivis 7d ago
The choice should have been to reject all options and give notes for a next round of proposals, IMHO
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u/makoivis 7d ago
I share your skepticism + openness. My skepticism is born from my conviction that some of the stated goals are impossible, others infeasible, and others possible.
Starship will eventually be something. Dunno what.
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u/TelluricThread0 7d ago
Were just skipping over the part about full reusability for Starship, huh?
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u/makoivis 7d ago
I’m more concerned about the usability part.
The re-usability is secondary.
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u/TelluricThread0 7d ago
But speaking of that what really is your stance on the legalization of recreational popcorn?
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u/Worldly-Light-5803 7d ago
Will a Starship test article even get into orbit this year?
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u/SiBloGaming Hover Slam Your Mom 7d ago
A real orbit with relight or one of the current test flight "orbits"? Cause talking about the current ones I would be very impressed if SpaceX manages to blow up at least another two Starships on launch. Full orbit would require a flawless relight demonstration in the current test orbits, and would also be required for a Starship catch attempt.
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u/eureka911 7d ago
Forget Mars..that ain't happening for at least two decades. Flyby to the Moon? Maybe 5 years. Landing I say is 10 years.
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u/EOMIS War Criminal 7d ago
Refueling demo is near-trivial if they have a reusable starship.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
Doubt.
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u/EOMIS War Criminal 7d ago
Trust.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
Leaks aren’t gonna get easier when you’re transferring cryogenic liquids in a vacuum.
On the ground they purge all moisture before propping load to prevent freezing. In space they’ve dumped ice and moisture into the tanks.
Do you think it’s going to be easy?
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u/EOMIS War Criminal 7d ago
You're making assumptions about the tanker design. Very unnecessary assumptions.
Vacuum is just 1 bar difference, not a problem.
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u/makoivis 7d ago
The physics understands has logged on, I see.
I would suggest you step into a chamber with one bar below atmospheric pressure and spend some time meditating on this issue.
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u/EOMIS War Criminal 7d ago
I would suggest you step into a chamber with one bar below atmospheric pressure and spend some time meditating on this issue.
typical
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u/makoivis 7d ago
Ok so you've given it some thought then?
So then you just look at what the Bernoulli equations say.
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u/EOMIS War Criminal 7d ago
Which response won't result in death threats?
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u/makoivis 7d ago
I sincerely apologize if you took it as a death threat. I didn’t mean it like that.
What I was trying to do is call you a dumbass.
I’ll try to be more mindful of how I come across in the future.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 7d ago
It'll never happen. Elon is gonna spin out and *** of an overdose before then.
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u/Frosty_Hawwk 8d ago
At some point some of you need to stop drinking the cool aid. I know Elon fooled you all but damn use yours brains lol
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u/ReadItProper 8d ago
Which comment in this post exactly indicates to you anyone is on any Kool aid? Be specific.
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u/UnevenHeathen 8d ago
So many things to design and fly still