Posted on 10/31/2025 11:30:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure, including production facilities, test facilities, and launch sites -- which SpaceX is self-funding representing over 90% of system costs -- and development of the HLS-specific Starship configuration, which leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability to support NASA's requirements for landing crew on and returning them from the Moon. SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs. SpaceX provides significant insight to NASA at every stage of the development process along both paths, including access to flight data from missions not funded under the HLS contract.
Both pathways are necessary and made possible by SpaceX's substantial self-investments to enable the high-rate production, launch, and test of Starship for missions to the Moon and other purposes. Starship will bring the United States back to the Moon before any other nation and it will enable sustainable lunar operations by being fully and rapidly reusable, cost-effective, and capable of high frequency lunar missions with more than 100 tons of cargo capacity.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacex.com ...
There are planned relays so communication will take place in near-real time.
“To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure, including production facilities, test facilities, and launch sites — which SpaceX is self-funding representing over 90% of system costs — and development of the HLS-specific Starship configuration, which leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability to support NASA’s requirements for landing crew on and returning them from the Moon. SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs.”
totally unfair business practices: they’ll drive every other government contractor out of the business if they keep that up ...
LOL!
People generally think that the way musk will enable the mars mission to make a living will be to send miners from there to the asteroid belt where there are large pices of space rock with trillions of dollars worth minerals and metals. Ceres is one such I think
Also in the IGAGIK clip, that looks like Cesar Romero on the piano.
for those interested, the clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TurG8WeEQk4
BTW, JG had his own postwar big band.
Oh, ChatChooChoo, probably Marion Hutton of the Modernaires. Both sisters were lookers back then. It’s probably a good thing for the sake of the paradoxes and other problems that there is no time machine.
One of the first cargoes to Mars will be Starlink for Mars, I’m guessin’, with a two-way laser data setup between Earth (and the Moon) and Mars.
Each relay adds several milliseconds to the total delay. Relays will not help with round-trip message time, but they will eliminate the need for massive ground station antennas.
SpaceX will succeed, period. If NASA dumps SpaceX, it’ll come in third behind Musk and China, and maybe fourth, behind India.
SpaceX will succeed, period.
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Musk is not focused on the Moon, but on Mars, which is his primary goal. In that he will succeed, just not in NASA’s Lunar program.
The only thing SpaceX is likely to have to do with the Moon is running supply tonnage to it, should the US actually make a station on it. Which gets more doubtful by the day.
NASA is a hot mess when it comes to its lunar program; there are only going to be three more Artemis rockets built, with no plans to build more. You cannot go to the Moon and build a permanent manned station on a shoestring budget, as is currently planned and budgeted.
Congress would have to triple or quadruple NASA’s budget, if the US was serious about building a stations on the lunar South Pole. Never happen. China will be there long before the US [ India is behind the Europeans ].
Relays will not help with round-trip message time
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I suppose you should tell SpaceX that and save them the time and money - they might even hire you for your vast and comprehensive knowledge. Who knows?
Musk is not focused on the Moon, but on Mars, which is his primary goal.
That's correct. That's why the SpaceX lunar plan will succeed, and will double as a proof of concept for interplanetary flights.
If NASA's interim nitwit tries to screw around with the contract, it won't get to the Moon for ten years. That's plenty of time even for China to beat NASA, and perhaps India as well.
By that time SpaceX will have a privately-funded permanent base on the Moon that third parties will be leasing for research, and the jokers responsible for NASA's fiasco will be getting called to Congress for a much-deserved grillin'.
It is about 250,000 miles to the moon. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. One way to the moon is a little over one second, the way back is the same. That is over two seconds round trip time. Adding a few 20ms delays is not going to improve the delay. It will, however, maintain signal strength.
You completely misunderstand what the intended relays will accomplish. SpaceX most certainly won't be hiring you. A lunar/earth connecting orbit will be a bitch to establish and will be a bitch to maintain. It would be a lot more difficult than the "free return to earth" orbit of Apollo days.
Relays to the Moon, not Mars.
Again its the Moon, not Mars, that relays will be used for.
The contract has already been “screw around with” since NASA is asking for outside bids.
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