SpaceX Starship Testing for NASA Return to the Moon

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SpaceX photos from Flight 3 Starship six-engine static fire.

There will be a lot of Starship launches in 2024 as SpaceX will be increasing the testing to meet the schedule for the NASA Artemis return to the moon.

There needs to be refueling and fuel storage tests. Eight to twenty Starship orbital launches will be need to fully fuel a 200-250 ton payload mission to the surface of the moon.

12 thoughts on “SpaceX Starship Testing for NASA Return to the Moon”

  1. I don’t understand why the Artemis missions are being designed to require so much to keep a few people on the moon for a month. It feels like SpaceX has Starship/SH which could do on-orbit refueling, so gosh darn it we’re going to make all of our Lunar missions dependent on that. The ol “When you only have a hammer, everything’s a nail.” situation. I understand the need to maybe get 2-3X the weight onto the Lunar surface for Artemis vs Apollo, but Starship/SH is already more capable than Saturn V. Why not just build Artemis missions around two or three direct Starship/SH flights? And, don’t get me started on the Lunar “gateway”.

    I have a feeling that, the complexity that NASA and SpaceX are injecting into Artemis will cause it to be massively delayed, or worse, fail outright. And then, we’re going to be staring up at a Chinese dominated moon.

    • Musk offer NASA a lower price for 100 metric tons to the lunar surface than other bidders were offering for 25 tons.

    • I’d prefer an electric rail in an evacuated tube on the western side of the Sierra’s, near Ecuador – bulk product for pennies a pound.

  3. “Eight to twenty Starship orbital launches will be need to fully fuel a 200-250 ton payload mission to the surface of the moon.”

    That is a lot for 1 mission and for Moon, which is close by.

    • 8 to 20 is a pretty broad theory. We will wait to see what it will take. HOWEVER it is a thunderously radical endeavor. An orbiting fuel station opens up tremendous possibilities for exploration. Tremendous

  4. Unfortunately for the US and the free nations, China will be the first back to the Moon.

    China in 2 years reached 5nm processors among others.

    USA the leader of freedom better get their act together in the next 3 years…

    • That’s strongly dependent on the incumbent stopping the government and regulatory agencies being adversaries of Musk companies.

      It’s ridiculous that SpaceX Starship gets stalled just because some crabs and fishes get anguished. Gimme a break, we fish them for food by the thousands of tons. And even more they have to smile and say the bureaucrats are being very supportive.

    • yes, they are likely to win, but not due to what you think.

      China didn’t reach 5nm, they imported 5nm chips from other countries & rebranded older processes as 5nm.

      china is only great on paper, for instance they only just developed the industrial precision to make ball points for ball point pens, this is something the west has been able to do for about 100 years now as up until recently those cheap Chinese pens were made using European ball points.

      China can get there first, but it will be via the fast, risky and ugly way, like how the soviet union did.

      they will boast like mad about every gamble that pays off (just like the soviets did with Yuri Gagarin (he was given a FIFTY percent chance of living (their rocket had that BAD of a success rate))) and they’ll cover up every mistake they make.

      Remember the CCP have dropped/crashed rockets not just near by, but onto villages before.

      They are happy to take risks and play cover up (they even foolishly tried to cover up covid) just for bragging rights.

  5. The high 9s reliability required for refueling AND manned spaceflight won’t be achieved for 5 years by starship, IMO, partly due to SpaceX and Musk and partly due to a cautious/hostile FAA and other regulatory agency environment. By 2029, fission even fusion nuclear rockets will be flying, making long range refuelable chemical rockets seem highly antiquated. A starship type rocket may be needed to get out of Earth’s gravity well first, then nuclear for the Moon and beyond.
    https://breakingdefense.com/2020/12/white-house-paves-policy-for-nuke-powered-rockets-reactors-on-moon/ – the article is copy-protected but about halfway down, this White House sponsored article from the Trump administration talks about NASA developing nuclear-powered rockets to counter ongoing Chinese efforts, possibly military. Historically, the greatest space advancements have come about when there is competition between adversarial nuclear powers – Russia vs. U.S. in the 1950s & 60s. China (possibly with Russian help) vs. U.S. today.

    • Are you saying that Elon and SpaceX makes it less likely that they will achieve their targets than if it were another chief engineer and another company ( such as Boeing)? Ie that Elon and the employees at SpaceX are – from a work ethics and technical prowess point of view – liabilities rather than assets?

    • Your points are coherent and plausible.

      I don’t agree on the time line: we (collectively, world-wide) haven’t YET launched a nuclear powered reaction rocket. Anywhere. Well, OK, if we include ion-thruster deep-space probes with their nuclear decay electrical power sources, they are technically nuclear powered. And not insignificantly. Decades of power. That’s pretty cool. Xenon is expensive, but I figure in the future (tho’ less push-per-kilowatt), Argon will be the reaction-mass of choice. Basically free, being 1% of Earth’s atmosphere.

      Still, I don’t think there are good HIGH power Ion-and-fission (or lord knows, fusion) thruster-and-power-supply combos in play yet, and it is basically 2024. By 2030? Not a chance. The testing, validation, scaling, retesting, validation and … contract awarding, building, near-earth testing, more building, Congressional wrangling, Special interests buffeting (remember those vulnerable crabs and fleas), will take at least 15 years, if not 20, to maturate.

      See … to your final point … while there may be ‘competition between nuclear powers’ today, namely the Good Ol USA and Commie China, there really isn’t more than bragging rights ‘heat’ under it.

      Going TO the Moon in 1960 was not about beating the Russians (ultimately). Its heat came from being a frankly gargantuan idea, yet backed with ‘it is possible with what we now have’ science backing, and the unique American determination to take on whopping-big industrial projects to fulfill its leadership-in-science position in the World.

      Today? Nah… China launches rockets to say that they’ve “arrived” where America and Europe have already been for decades. They’re certainly not pushing outward. It is too risky, and they are (in spite of the fluffy glitzy sparkling CGI graphics) they are deeply RISK AVERSE. Especially if it comes to publicly launching a high risk mission replete with fine Chinese argonauts, only to have it crash and deflagrate on the launch pad, or between stages, or failing to make LEO, or over-or-under shooting the Lunar landing spot, to hit a big ol’ boulder, or too high a velocity, or run out of oxygen, or fail to take off when time to come back home, etc.

      But there’ll be a LOT of ginning up of glitzy CGI. They OWN the world’s Media outlets when it comes to self-aggrandizing advertising and propaganda playback. Uyghurs notwithstanding.

      Nope. 20 years seems more likely.

      BUT you and I agree… it’ll be a nuclear-powered deep-space, for sure.

      Chemical, getting out of Terra’s gravity well, chemical getting from LEO to most-anything close by (even the L points), but nuclear-electric-and-ions for all the longer-mission stuff. And I project Argon and ridiculously easy to fission plutonium power sources, being abundant, well worked-out, and when cobbled together carefully, pretty darn safe for multi-decadal missions.

      ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
      ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

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