This video is supported by Brilliant! - Hey, Hey Marcus House with you here, and today
we are going to look a little deeper into NASA and SpaceX’s plan to bring us to the
moon for a more permanent venture. We’ve not seen a human presence on the lunar surface
since 1972 but all of that is about to change. After NASA chose SpaceX as their sole provider
of the human landing system or HLS for short, space enthusiasts such as us here have been
incredibly excited for such a mission, that would once again capture the excitement of
people all around the world. It is true that the award is currently in a weird state of
limbo with the recent protests from both Blue Origin and Dynetics, but regardless, it is
expected that SpaceX will hold onto this award along with we hope at least one other contractor
as new awards are announced. Anyway, this video focuses on the latest information about
the award for SpaceX, what we do and don’t know about the mission. Why do we see it as
such a big deal? Well… not only will this help to further our journey in becoming an
interplanetary species, but it will also inspire that curiosity in people all over the globe
when we once again witness astronauts step on another celestial body. Almost half a century
ago we visited, but this time, we aim to stay. The construction of a permanent lunar settlement
aided by reusable launch systems is the first step towards reaching these new technological
heights. A stepping stone if you will, that enables us to reach out to further destinations
in our Solar system, notably of course Mars and the asteroid belt. Strap in, because this
is going to be an interesting topic.
As many of you are aware, we have just recently seen the first real concrete proposal we have
to get us back to the moon after nearly half a century. A few months ago in April 2021,
SpaceX was chosen by NASA to develop, manufacture, and fly two lunar missions with the Human
Landing System or HLS Starship. This will be a fairly substantial variation on the Starship
that SpaceX has been testing for the last year or so in Boca Chica. The overall plan
would be to utilise this version of the Starship as a system to transfer crew and cargo to
and from Lunar Orbit to the Moon’s surface. Now at this stage, we only have a vague idea
of the engine performance and the dry mass of this vehicle. Those stats just haven’t
been released, but we can infer a few things from what has been said in the Source Selection
Statement that NASA has recently shared. In that document, we discovered a specific line
which states that “SpaceX’s capability contemplates reusable hardware, leverages
common infrastructure and production facilities…” This specific point is huge as it explicitly
defines reusable hardware as a future choice but not necessarily as the primary option
bid for the Human Landing System. Taking that with a grain of salt however, we derived what
could be the potential outline for a future Starship lunar mission incorporating reusability.
Although this may not be how initial missions play out, it is interesting to talk about
what could be further down the track. The first step of a round trip reusable Lunar
Starship mission begins with placing the Ship in a High Elliptical Earth Orbit. This Orbit
could be similar to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit utilized for Communication Satellites.
Based on that assumption, we can estimate the orbit at the lowest point, or perigee,
being at minimum, a couple of hundred kilometers. And at the highest point, or apogee around
42,000 kilometers. Keep in mind that refueling the ship in this orbit would take a much larger
number of Starship tanker missions than if it were to leave from a low earth orbit. This
all depends on vehicle mass and how much payload would be intended to be placed on the lunar
surface. Based on many unknowns a rough estimate of 15 of 20 tanker missions could be involved
in this. Because those tankers would be fully reusable though, that may still be a viable
option. Fully refilled in this already high elliptical orbit, the Trans Lunar Injection
Burn at this point is quite minimal and would leave the vast majority of propellant for
the remainder of the mission. From here it can begin the main goal of reaching Lunar
Orbit. Specifically a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit. The injection burn into this Halo Orbit
around the moon is initially cheaper than going directly from Earth Orbit to Low Lunar
Orbit. Now that the Ship is in a Lunar Orbit, an Orion Spacecraft can be launched via the
Space Launch System with crew and their supplies for the mission. Tony Bela has created some
wonderful renderings to show how Orion and Lunar Starship would dock through the nose
hatch. Just beautiful work there! Looks a bit like they would switch from a Peel P50
to a deluxe sized motorhome. All of this action of course would happen in the Halo Orbit and
after all preparation is complete, the surface bound ship would disconnect from Orion, and
begin a burn to lower the orbit, all the way down to a Low Lunar Orbit. So now comes the
exciting burn, the burn to finally touch down on the surface of the moon. We can see here,
that they will need to likely switch to the smaller engines far up on the HLS to avoid
blasting too much of the Moon dust into orbit. Once landed all of that wonderful surface
activity and science can continue and at this point, the ship would begin and complete its
primary surface mission and once finished, that can undertake ascent preparations. To
get off the surface, a significant amount of propellant is required which would have
to have been left over from the initial refueling around Earth. This propellant would primarily
be used for the Surface to Low Lunar Orbit burn, then soon after, the Low Lunar Orbit
to Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit burn. Once these two burns are complete, the ship would
return the Crew and Cargo to the Orion spacecraft. At this stage, the primary NASA mission of
Lunar Starship is complete however in an optimal scenario, the ship would be returned to be
used again. We believe there could be just enough Delta-V to allow for this if all the
preceding scenarios were done accurately and efficiently, therefore meaning with a low-cost
maneuver, the Ship could make its way back to a High Elliptical Orbit around Earth. As
noted before, the Ship’s recovery is not the primary mission of the Human Landing System.
Therefore, taking longer to recover the Ship is not a drawback to the overall outlook for
Artemis Missions. With that all said, this is a lot of hypothesizing and speculating
given we don’t have accurate information on the ships dry mass or the specific impulse
available by the Raptor engines. Let us know if you think this is possible and if our suggested
Mission Profile does actually fit the bill of what is necessary to meet the goals of
a Fully Reusable Lunar Starship. So yes, the main benefit of this is that this
can do what NASA wanted a lunar lander to do anyway, plus a lot more. While the competitors
focused on creating a vehicle specifically for landing, SpaceX simply proposed some alterations
to their already designed vehicle to convert it to a lunar lander. This is why the scale
of this solution is so much larger than Dynetics HLS and the Blue Origin’s Integrated Lander
Vehicle. It becomes especially apparent when you examine
NASA’s original Artemis Program promotional videos where it shows a smaller lander being
separated from an Orion capsule to land on the moon. Compare this with the massive Starship
and it begs the question as to why NASA decided to go with a design so different from what
they envisioned. A good benefit for NASA choosing Starship as their lander (if they do believe
that this will be the spacecraft of the future), is that they will have more oversight in how
Starship will be developed. Assisting and funding SpaceX in order to create a spacecraft
that is aligned with their vision for the upcoming decades in space exploration would
be hugely exciting. The most notable difference between the HLS
version of Starship and the traditional Starship is that it has no heat shield or flaps. A
huge reduction in mass right there. The traditional Starship has been designed to return to Earth
after launching, but this is not the case with the HLS variation. This variant will
be operating entirely within the vacuum of space making these atmospheric components
unnecessary. When it comes to the actual Lunar Landing, instead of using the beefy Raptor
engines all the way to the surface, there will instead be smaller and more precise landing
thrusters. These thrusters are not currently known or have a name but we can assume they
will exist as they can be seen in the renderings provided during the initial development period.
The assumption I have is that these will be powerful hot gas thrusters that will derive
their fuel from the existing stores of liquid oxygen and liquid methane.
Now another hot topic of debate is on the landing legs. The traditional Starship will
require deployable, heavy-duty, and reusable landing legs. The Moonship can be designed
with larger landing legs for added stability on the Lunar Surface. These only need to support
lunar gravity so could be substantially lighter at the same time. Two very different goals.
Moving back up the ship to the nose, we can also see the docking port which is in place
of the Liquid Oxygen Header Tank seen on the current Starships. In fact we could assume
there is no need for header tanks at all on this version of the ship. Unlike the flip
and landing burns done on Earth, in a vacuum, they can simply use reaction control thrusters
to slowly settle fuel into the bottom of the tanks before firing up the main engines. Another
weight-saving and simplification of the vehicle there. Additionally one of the greater benefits
of Moonship, or rather the Starship program overall, is the capability to deliver massive
payloads to orbit, and also deliver it to the lunar surface. Think of all the supplies,
research equipment, and science that can be delivered. With that capability, we can expect
a lot more surface activities, lunar samplings, and longer-duration missions.
So this brings us back to the selection document which includes the sentence, which states,
“I note that SpaceX’s capability contemplates reusable hardware” - That word right there.
Contemplates. We outlined earlier in the video what we predict the Mission Profile of a fully
reusable Lunar Starship could be. Although it seems completely plausible the Ship could
handle full reuse, I ultimately believe the first few missions will be staged from low
earth orbit with the ship being fully expended and not recovered. I think though, that another
exciting option could exist. Could there be enough fuel margin to return the Starship
back to the surface to land and stay? Allowing it to remain on the surface could be a massive
benefit for future missions. This would mean that by the end of the two missions there
would be two huge habitable surface bases along with all their life support equipment,
that could be utilised. This could prove to be especially useful as the beginning of Moon
Base Alpha which Elon Musk has referenced numerous times. What do you think? I love
this stuff having been a space-exploration-fan much of my life. I believe this upcoming decade
may be the most exciting time in Space flight history. Thank you so much for your support
here and for helping to spread the word. It makes a big difference to my channel here.
It is interesting I think looking into why the drive for lunar activity has been non
existent all this time and why these new commercial opportunities are changing the landscape here.
Historically NASA has been a perfect platform for single launch projects like Apollo, but
a sustained presence on the moon has always been out of their reach. There are many reasons
for this. Firstly there are the obvious setbacks like NASA’s post Apollo budget slash. After
the space race was won, the enthusiasm dropped significantly. Over the years this issue has
been compounded by a tendency for each presidency wanting to make their own mark on things by
changing the focus and direction of mission spending. This essentially means a manned
project is rarely stable enough to last more than a decade. For that reason, anything other
than staying locked in Low Earth Orbit over the past twenty years has been troublesome.
Without that long term political competition and drive to be the first to achieve such
greatness, building a much more massive permanent colony on the moon or even on Mars, has been
near impossible. We also have to consider that we went to the
moon prematurely as a species. We did not go when we were good and ready. We rapidly
developed the minimum technology needed, and the second we were able to meet that goal,
we were off. Sadly this wasn’t primarily due to our collective need to explore and
understand the universe. Nope... This was due to the pressures created by the cold war
era. NASA and the Apollo astronauts truly believed that failure to succeed here would
have led to a world dominated by the Soviet Union. As it turned out of course the United
States won the Space Race to the moon with the Apollo program.
So where is the new generation of Apollo vessels? Well like we mentioned, it only takes one
president with a change of direction to interrupt any of these plans. After the space race was
coming to an end, the decision was made to create a totally new spacecraft that would
better suit the regime at the time. The reusable space shuttle. The program for that of course
formally commenced in 1972. This was not a spacecraft to land on the moon. This space
shuttle was created to service low earth orbit. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the shuttle
and it did amazing things such as deploying and repairing the Hubble space telescope.
But at the same time, the capability to explore further, was almost ripped away with the retirement
of Apollo. Looking back, that decision seems to be a huge setback for manned exploration.
With the retirement of the shuttle, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program took the lead, born
to fund vessels that would be used to send astronauts into low earth orbit. We’ve already
seen technology moving on with new vessels such as Crew Dragon and we hope soon Boeing's
Starliner. With a lack of funding and consistent coordination decades prior, this solution
I think has so far been a refreshing change. Institutions like NASA, Roscosmos and the
European Space Agency just to name a few, have only got us so far. Without them, we
would not be here today of course, but if we really do want to advance space exploration,
we can’t just sit by assuming things will continue progressing at a pace that is in
line with our expectations and capabilities. A private company has much more freedom to
operate than a government agency and this excitement is clearly shared by you, the community
that has been growing over the past decade. In a world where we are more connected than
ever before via social media you have the chance to have your say more easily. The political
movements around funding and decisions are to at least some degree driven by public opinion,
and collectively we can always help to make a difference by voicing these opinions and
voting for individuals that understand the importance of these budgets. With commercial
opportunities though, there can be concrete longer-term visions, and this is where SpaceX
has thrived. They need to move… and move fast. SpaceX can’t sit on public funds for
years and run around in circles for decades. They need to be sustainable, and although
NASA contracts currently play a huge part in that, self-funding is also critical over
the longer term. Starlink is one of the funding platforms to allow SpaceX to push the next
generation of space exploration well beyond what has been achieved in the past. They MUST
give us massive results to survive and wow have they done this so far and more. By now
you can see why we are so excited about this future venture. For the first time in our
history I see a clear vision for a sustainable presence on the moons surface, and that could
be followed by an extremely exciting future. A big thank you to Brilliant for supporting
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