I know they arent for sale yet but what do you even get for the 250$? Also what happens if the launch doesn’t happen and why would i buy my tickets if there was no guarantee they where gonna attempt the launch at all.

Provided the admin only cans SLS- though president musk wants both gone:

If this were to happen, when would this be in effect? And would this and Orion sustain Artemis 3, and be cancelled for IV, V and beyond?

Does anyone know how this congress will vote compared to obamas cancellation in 2011? Is there a funding bill expected to include this later this year?

Before everyone says everyone is scared of the admin… I think as a space industry enthusiast I’d like to be educated and informed.

So what loop holes does president MUSK and his boy toy Trump have to jump through if this were to actually happen? There’s way too many jobs at stake at the moment. Do you think this will survive another 4-5 years

I got a lot of pushback for suggesting that the incoming administration intends to kill the entire Lunar landing program in favor of some ill-defined and unachievable Mars goal... but I feel like the evidence is pointing in that direction.

What do you think this means for Artemis? Am I jumping at shadows?

Does anyone have a link to mission objectives? At what point per the milestones is the starship supposed to stop unexpectedly exploding? This is not intended to be a gripe about failures, I would just like to know when there is an expectation of that success per award fee/milestones outlined.

I have read the Wikipedia page and many of the corresponding pages and feel I am left with vague insights rather than a comprehensive understanding.

Is there anywhere these technical details are fully outlined such as:

• All planned missions and adjacent tests with timelines
• Some kind of 3D layout, diagram, or list showing all of the necessary components: SLS, HLS, gateway, etc.
• What will happen after the Artemis missions? What will lunar colonization look like? What will be needed for it? So far this is the only place I have found seriously discussing what lunar colonization might look like and what might be necessary for it.

Since there are rumors now about SLS being cancelled, I've been thinking about what a different architecture might look like. One idea I had was that Orion could basically hitch a ride on Starship HLS to the Moon. It would work like this:

1. Launch Orion on a Falcon Heavy. I know, Falcon Heavy isn't crew rated, but they could crew rate it if they wanted to, and if they don't want to then they can launch the crew on Dragon instead to LEO.

2. Orion docks with Starship HLS in LEO, presumably after being refueled for the journey by tanker ships.

3. Starship does its TLI burn, carrying Orion with it. The astronauts are basically sitting backwards for the burn, so I don't know if that would cause issues since obviously Orion was built with the intention that it would be traveling "forward."

4. Starship Orion (kinda has a ring to it, eh?) arrives at the Moon, either in NRHO or LLO, I'm not sure which would be better. Orion should have enough delta-v to get from LLO back to Earth, since it didn't need to use any to get to Earth in the first place. In fact I'm pretty sure that this is roughly the way that Orion was originally intended to be used in the Constellation program. I guess it all comes full circle (full orbit?).

5. Starship and Orion separate. Crew goes down to the Moon, does Moon stuff, and then comes back to meet Orion in orbit. Crew transfers to Orion, comes back home, eats birthday cake, the end.

Obviously the glaring issue is that Starship has to carry an extra 27 tons to the Moon, so I really don't know weather or not it works out delta-v wise. Thoughts?

Note: the module is still under construction, so it won't look like this when it's finished.

Source: https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=32702913 "For example, crewed lunar missions will include a secondary propellant transfer in MEO/HEO, the Final Tanking Orbit (“FTO”). "

One of the objectives of the Artemis program is the exploitation of lunar resources and the creation of a lunar economy. A lunar economy doesn't mean a giant concrete outpost with 500 people in it (although that would be nice).

Lunar economy roughly means getting companies and other entities to operate in lunar orbit or on the surface of the Moon - i.e. launching satellites/probes/rovers to the Moon or ISRU (unmanned) and things like that. Building manned outposts around or on the Moon is part of the lunar economy, but apart from Artemis and the Chinese (basically international?) program no one else is seriously interested in such a thing.

But "smaller" entities may be interested in a small-scale, unmanned ISRU in the future. Or more research satellites around the Moon. Or more rovers. But let's talk about the manned part.

Both Artemis and the Chinese program aim to establish orbital and surface manned outposts. Artemis with Gateway and Artemis Base Camp, the Chinese with a lunar space station and a surface outpost collectively referred to as the International Lunar Research Station.

This is reminiscent of the Skylab and Salyut phase of LEO. First something small, then a Mir and after international efforts an ISS. An international effort is probably the only way there will be a lunar ISS equivalent, either in orbit or on the surface since I doubt a single government would want to fund something that big.

Artemis Base Camp and Gateway should by the 2040s have a combined maximum capacity of 8ish people, perhaps more with an uninterrupted continuous heavy supply from Earth. The ILRS on the other hand should have a smaller capacity by then, unless the Chinese decide to build larger landers. Although it is possibly unlikely that their capacity will be fully utilized.

Even if the countries behind the two programs end up not cooperating, that means competition which usually means progress.

The only things I know of that are currently funded for Artemis Base Camp are ASI's habitable surface module, JAXA's pressurized rover, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle from an as-yet-unnamed manufacturer, and the technology for a small nuclear reactor. Another surface habitat module, the Foundation Surface Habitat, has also been extensively studied by NASA, but it does not appear to be funded.

The ASI module should be similar to the Unity/ Columbus/Zvezda modules of the ISS. These collectively cost $170-300 million a year to operate. But since it will be specialized for lunar missions, possibly with extra shielding and also have wheels, it could cost between 750 million and a billion dollars a year.

Additional costs are for the SLS Block 2 Crew launch and HLS and other logistics (provided that moving SLS work to the DST LCC does reduce costs to $1.5 billion per launch, and HLS costs are reduced through of economies of scale), total costs could ultimately be in the order of $3 billion a year.

So the total operational costs per year for Artemis Base Camp could be around 3.5 (+-) billion dollars. The cost of maintaining the two rovers and the small nuclear reactor should not be more than half a billion dollars. It's not too much, so one could assume that adding two more habitation modules would be somewhere around $7 (+-) billion a year (one more SLS launch, HLS(s) and so on).

But these are just rough estimates for something that is years away.

One way to reduce operating costs would be to use ISRU to generate water, liquid oxygen and hydrogen for refueling the Blue Moon (since the Starship HLS needs methane) possibly making the Blue Moon reusable, as well as growing vegetables/fruits in some special module on the ABC.

Or even the use of regolith through in situ 3D printing to form landing points or to provide an extra layer of protection to the surface modules.

All of this is not in NASA's current plans, but the Chinese have expressed particular interest in using regolith bricks.

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