Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX, said securing an updated Federal Aviation Administration launch license was the key factor driving the schedule for the third Starship test flight. The third flight should be sometime in February 2024.
“From a hardware readiness perspective, we are targeting to be ready in January,” she said. The company performed static-fire tests of both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, or ship, intended for that launch in late December.
She said. “We’re expecting that [FAA] license to come in February. So, it’s looking like Flight 3 will occur in February.”
Refueling Tanker Launches for SpaceX Lunar Starship
The number of tanker launches needed for a Starship lunar lander mission has been a topic of disagreement. Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, once stated that no more than eight, and perhaps as few as four, tanker launches would be needed. But at an advisory committee meeting in November, Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars Program, said the number of tanker launches was in “the high teens.”
Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars Program. “Probably the reason why you’re hearing different numbers is because we have a lot of different modeling and analysis iterations that are going on.”
SpaceX VP Jensen described an iterative process of flight and ground tests. “That will wind up determining how many missions we need,” she said.
It sounds like 10 plus or minus 4, but clearly there are many unknowns that will get sorted out in testing. The fact that there is so much uncertainty also seems to suggest that even if NASA and SpaceX start with a higher number of refuelings there could be ways to improve it towards 4-7 refueling.
So How Many refuelings? A lot but we could get better at doing it and improve the fuel transfer processes and the rockets over time.
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In Musk’s SpaceX 2023 retrospective he mentioned that there is a pathway for Starship to get 200,000 metric tons to orbit with full reuse.
Nuts
The amount of Starship launches needed for a SpaceX mission to the Moon will be different from the amount of launches needed for a NASA Artemis mission to the Moon;
As far as I understand, the high re-fuelling number is not because it goes to the Moon, but because of the stupid Artemis mission specs designed to please everybody, instead of having clear objectives.
Check this talk Destin from SmarterEveryDay gave at NASA to the Artemis people… literally calling them off in their folly. It’s an interesting video to say the least
I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA… (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU&t=2671s
10 is a high number and that just for Moon, which is close by and has low gravity.
They could potentially build an over-sized fuel tanker that would do it in one or two trips. The scaling factors for Starship design would permit that.
But from SpaceX’s perspective, 10 flights is 10 opportunities to collect for flight data that contributes to eventually man rating Starship.
Maybe a dumb question, but how did Apollo mission get to moon without need for refueling, and on the launch of a single rocket?
This is happening now with SpaceX Falcon 9 able to launch 1.5 ton landers to the moon.
Apollo landed the Eagle lunar module which had a mass of 15 tons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Module_Eagle
Apollo Saturn V could take about 52 tons to Trans lunar injection (TLI).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V
TLI payload of Falcon Heavy is at least 16,800kg, but no more than 26,700kg. It is probably around 21,000kg*, but due to the nonlinear nature of rocket delta-v, that could be off by a couple tons.
SLS current version can do about 27 tons to TLI and later versions if they are made could go to 46 tons.
Expendable landers and rockets would reach the higher TLI. If you want to reuse then masses drop.
Apollo landed on the Moon with 2 astronauts. It stayed a maximum of 2 or 3 days on the Moon, on Apollo 17, if I am not mistaken.
It landed on easy spots on the near side.
The 110 meters tall Saturn V launched. The whole Lunar Lander landed on the Moon. Only the smaller top part took off from the Moon. Only the small capsule returned to Earth.
The objective now is to land near the poles. With more astronauts. With much more materials, in order to build a permanent presence.
You want the whole Lunar Landers to return now. You want to land a 50 meters tall rocket with probably over 60 tons of payload on the Moon. And launch it again.
But it’s not ONLY that. NASA complicated everything with the Space Station around the Moon.
The mission profile is so complicated that I don´t even remember it.
Check out Destin’s (from Smarter Every Day) last video posted on Youtube, in his speech he gave at NASA to Artemis administrators and employees… where he basically chastised them.
Don’t forget the last 3 Apollo missions carried a folded up Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Roving_Vehicle which weighed 462lbs and was built by…Boeing. Apollo 1, which was fatal, to Apollo 17, was less than a 10-year program. Now, it’s been over half a century since anyone has set foot on the Moon, and it somehow seems harder than ever, with more setbacks and cost overruns, and compromises – 10 or more refuelings to get to the Moon. No one in Apollo would have accepted that level of risk and inefficiency and right now, today, no spaceship can land as much mass on the Moon as the Apollo series 9-17, including 2 astronauts crammed into the LEM. It may be more comfortable, but it’s less capable.
Prediction: we’ll have atomic rockets before all the refueling and other logistics are worked out for today’s version of chemical rockets for crewed landings.
Not a chance: The regulatory paralysis that’s slowing chemical rocketry development is a thousand times worse for nuclear.
It’s rather more likely that we’ll circumvent chemical rocketry to orbit by some other approach, like mass drivers or a launch loop. Not likely, just “more” likely.