NASA Says Up to 20 SpaceX Starship Refueling Launches Per Moon Mission

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A NASA official said Artemis will need 20 SpaceX Lunar Starship launches per moon landing. On Nov. 17, Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Moon to Mars Program Office, said SpaceX will have to perform Starship launches from both its current pad in Texas and one it is constructing at the Kennedy Space Center in order send a lander to the moon for Artemis 3. SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS) program needs multiple launches for refueling for each moon mission. One launch will place a propellant depot into orbit, followed by multiple other launches of tanker versions of Starship, transferring methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the depot. That will be followed by the lander version of Starship, which will rendezvous with the depot and fill its tanks before going to the moon.

Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, disagreed, calling the need for 16 launches extremely unlikely in an August 2021 social media post. He said a max of 8 tanker launches should be needed to fuel the Starship lander, adding it could be as few as four.

NASA wants more fuel depot supply launches to manage boiloff. Fewer launches would be better but would require more fuel reqching orbit with each launch. The more quickly the launches are made then there would be less boiloff.

“It’s in the high teens in the number of launches,” Hawkins said. That’s driven, she suggested, about concerns about boiloff, or loss of cryogenic liquid propellants, at the depot. “In order to be able to meet the schedule that is required, as well as managing boiloff and so forth of the fuel, there’s going to need to be a rapid succession of launches of fuel,” she said.

Artemis III will mark humanity’s return to the Moon in more than 50 years, with NASA making history by sending the first humans to the lunar South Pole to
explore.

There is a seven page NASA 2023 analysis of the Artemis moon missions.

SpaceX’s Starship HLS will be prepositioned in Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) to receive crew. SpaceX will start by launching a storage depot variant of Starship to Earth orbit, followed by a series of reusable tanker Starship variants that will carry propellant to the storage depot. The Starship HLS will
launch and be fueled by the depot before executing a translunar injection (TLI) engine burn, traveling approximately six days to NRHO where it will perform a Lunar Orbit Checkout Review (LOCR) and await the Artemis III crew.

The crew of four will launch to NRHO onboard the Orion spacecraft atop the SLS rocket. Orion will dock with the Starship HLS and two astronauts, and their supplies will board Starship, leaving the other two to remain in Orion. Orion will undock and back away from Starship and remain in NRHO. Starship will then descend to the lunar surface for an approximate 6.5 day stay where crew will do scientific work inside Starship and conduct a series of moonwalks to take pictures and video, survey geology, retrieve samples, and collect other data.

14 thoughts on “NASA Says Up to 20 SpaceX Starship Refueling Launches Per Moon Mission”

  2. Why, exactly, do we need Orion?
    Starship gets refilled on Earth orbit, goes to NRHO, crew rides in cramped Orion all the way to NRHO and THEN get on Starship, leaving two on board Orion (to… do what exactly?), Starship finally goes down to the moon’s surface, crew bounces around for 6.5 days, Starship returns to NRHO to rendezvous with Orion which will be , ground crew gets back on Orion, then presumably BOTH Starship and Orion return to Earth orbit.

    Why not:
    Starship (with or without a separate depot) gets refilled in Earth orbit, crew rides Dragon to Starship, Starship carries crew to the moon and lands, spends 6.5 days, back up from surface and back to Earth orbit, Dragon rendezvous to return crew to Earth.

    • We need Orion to funnel money to the ULA, because they have bribed a lot of politicians. (Or, alternatively, a lot of politicians are using it to launder money back to themselves.) There’s no technical reason Orion is needed, the mission reconfigured as you suggest would be more efficient and a lot cheaper.

      Indeed, the Gateway station adds considerable complexity to the mission, which could otherwise just be direct to the lunar surface.

  3. If boil-off is such a big problem, it’d make vastly more sense to add solar powered cryogenic regenerators to the depot, rather than launch even one extra time per mission.

    Also, why in the world (especially with all the claims about using the Moon as practice for Mars) isn’t NASA planning to generate LOX on the moon’s surface (from regolith using solar power), to hugely reduce the total propellant mass needed for a round trip? Unlike the difficulties of remote automated deployment on Mars, it could be remote-controlled from Earth before sending even one human to the moon. The experience gained could carry over to a similar set-up on Phobos, which would reduce the amount of fuel/LOX that needs to be produced on Mars’ surface.

    An experimental version could be put together and launched on existing rockets. The lander design could be derived from the original LEM design minus the human-rated components. Does SpaceX have to do everything for NASA?

  4. I think it’s worth remembering that SpaceX will have a fleet of starships that will be filling a fuel depot in orbit.

    Once that is full only then HLS will launch.

    Given the whole point of SS it rapid re-usability and they’re planning on making about one a week (IKR that’s insane) – who cares if they lose the odd one. F9 is now so reliable it’s amazing. SS will get there too in time. So for SpaceX at least this should, in time, be trivial – even if the rest of us have our mouths hanging open in amazement.

    Sorry NASA but also SLS and Orion sucks balls. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dragon XL taking over. Given its piss-poor capabilities and the insane orbit of Gateway (and I do mean insane, not clever-insane) I’m sorta thinking the whole thing needs a re-design. Yikes.

  5. It is more than 50 years from last lunar walk. Man, 50 years of let say progress and we are so struggling to get back on Moon.

  6. Of course they will have to make a demo landing and return first. And have another starship landing nearby for a backup.

  8. Seems like a gross overestimate of what’s needed considering these will be 2.X Starships that have Raptor 3 engines, hot staging, thinner SS walls reducing dry weight, 9 vacuum Raptor engines on the Starship, etc. Likely more than 150 tons of propellant in the depot to start plus transferred by each tanker. Base Starship holds 1200 tons of propellant or 8 x 150 tons.

    We’ve always know that it requires the launch of a depot Starship, the Artemis HLS lander Starship and some number of tankers to fill the depot fairly rapidly. That number is probably less than 8.

  9. ISRU Lunar LOX production should help reduce the number of flights needed to top off the Starship LOX tanks. It will help quite a bit if the Moon-Earth trip ends in mostly full LOX tanks.

    • Even four Starship flights (the minimum optimistic number Musk gave for each moon mission) is making the Moon’s polar regions look better and better as prime real estate even if they either have to swap out the Raptors for LOX-LH burner or go through the trouble of finding methane in the lunar cold traps.

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