Does anyone actually seriously believe the U.S. will land a person on the moon in 2025? This is the country that takes decades to open a new subway station.
There is a very interesting video from Smarter Every Day that suggests everyone knows that the SLS is physically incapable of landing on the moon as designed but nobody seems to be mentioning it.
SLS is the thing that launches Orion, which is the capsule with humans inside. SLS isn't capable enough to get that capsule into lunar orbit. Orion also isn't landing by itself though, it just transfers the astronauts to a landing vehicle (SpaceX Starship, currently...), which lands and then starts again.
The thing brought up in that video is that the rendezvous point should probably be in lunar orbit, but isn't.
Unfortunately there is no alternative to Orion so far.
No, Starship may carry people to the moon, but getting them off the moon isn't possible. The lunar Starship won't return to LEO.
The closest thing you could do is send another Starship and do the same NRHO docking that SLS+Orion is already doing and then instead of aerobraking, do a deceleration burn to get an LEO capture. That is the only way without Orion. For better or worse, Orion in NRHO is indispensable.
We're the only nation that has ever done it. It seems like unchecked graft is our current main problem. In the scope of all problems of returning people to the Moon this is both expected and the easiest to deal with.
When that was happening, the US was spending ungodly amount of money to show Soviets that they can take ~a nuke~ sorry people to the Moon and back.
Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model.
And there were a lot more players in aerospace then too. Apart from Boeing and Lockheed, Apollo also involved North American Aviation, Grumman, Rocketdyne, General Dynamics, Pratt & Whitney, Douglas, TRW, and Bell. Of those, only General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney have not been acquired or merged into other companies.
Are there not _far_ more players in aerospace today than what you listed? Maybe those of today are not at the scale of the companies you listed at the height of the cold war, but we're really in a new era of space industry.
> Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model.
To be fair, Boeing, Lockheed etc won't be the decisive players putting humans back on the moon from the US. It'll be smaller and scrappier players more akin to startups.
This is where the "ungodly" funds of Cold War make the difference. There is little incentive in the US government to spend at once as much and take political risk as much as it did back then.
I really think it's worth it to go back and read the original Apollo program proposals, technical conference memos, and NASA administrative plans to see the history of the program and how something like this gets off the ground in the first place.
The US was not a bastion of technical capability or well educated people in the 1950s. To say that the "skill doesn't exist anymore" suggests a misunderstanding of "where it comes from" in the first place.
You can do the same thing for Apollo as you can for the Shuttle. The process of reading through these histories, from front to back, is incredibly enlightening, and shows just how with determination alone you can build something like this from scratch.
That being said.. it really also helps if there's a dual purpose use for the military.
I think you drastically underestimate the influence that World War 2 had on up-skilling a technological workforce in the United States. I know a handful of people who's fathers or relatives went from farm boy to a radio technician with basic electrical engineering skills (or a similar story) because of the war.
The effect that war had on the technological progress, including learning the skills of how to manage a not-so-simple idea like going to the moon into reality was incredible, and a direct spinoff from the bureaucracy created during the war.
But what wars has China started though in order for us to be afraid of them?
If I look at the current score board in the last decades, US has invaded more counties than China (have they found those WMDs yet?), yet somehow we're (us non Americans in the west) are supposed to fear China, because reasons?
Honestly, my biggest enemy right now is my own EU government who has done the biggest damage to our country and because of them there's a shortage of doctors, teachers, etc, high inflation, stagnating wages, high taxes, unaffordable housing, etc. We have done that ourselves, not China. Whatever bad things China is doing in their own back yard is much less damaging to us than all those things I've just mentioned yet somehow we're expected to fear China.
Aren't these foreign boogie men convenient finger pointing to our corrupt and incompetent leadership: "Hey, don't look at us for your plummeting standard of living, look at Covid, Russia, China, immigrants with beards, The Loch Ness Monster, etc". Give me a break.
China has made it pretty clear that it is planning to grow into a dominant position and then invade Taiwan and claim the 9 dotted line.
While it is true that it is globally not very active in military terms I am pretty sure that this is going to change when more and more economic partners are realizing that there is no more money coming from China and it is cheaper to just default on their debt and nationalize Chinese interests.
> and then invade Taiwan and claim the 9 dotted line.
FWiW :
The Republic of China (ROC), or simply China, was a sovereign state based in mainland China from 1912 until its government's retreat in 1949 to Taiwan, where it is now based.
The nine-dash line, also referred to as the eleven-dash line by Taiwan, is a set of line segments on various maps that accompanied the claims of the People's Republic of China (PRC, "mainland China") and the Republic of China (ROC, "Taiwan") in the South China Sea.
A 1946 map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was first published by the Republic of China government on 1 December 1947.
The area has always been claimed, whether by the ROC, the PRC, or indeed under Puyi, who had reigned as the Xuantong Emperor of the Qing dynasty.
The issue is that "Western" sea faring nations self selected themselves as arbitrators of global borders, including those of regions with governance dating back 4,000 years.
On 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal organized under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concluded that China had not exercised exclusive and continuous control over the [ dashed zones ]
Over 20 governments have called for the ruling to be respected.
It was rejected by eight governments, including China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC).
It is somewhat disingenuous to say that Taiwan claims those regions. China has made it clear that any abdication of those claims would be seen as a move towards independence and result in invasion.
Similar to the Chinese claims that the British never brought democracy to HongKong while China threatened invasion if any such thing had happened.
>China has made it pretty clear that it is planning to grow into a dominant position and then invade Taiwan and claim the 9 dotted line.
Populist words are cheap. I'll start blaming China for warmongering when they actually put boots on the ground. Meanwhile how many dorne strikes has the US made in the middle east without any consequences?
Wars don't have to be waged with rubber and lead; actually, fighting a war is about the worst possible way to wage one.
No, China is waging a war against the entire world in the smartest way imaginable, and most of us don't even realize it: They have their financial tendrils in all of our economies, down to the core elements and throughout the peripheries. Nearly everything has at least some degree of Chinese monies and thus influence now.
It's really only a matter of time until Pax Americana comes crashing down because we are all far too busy complaining about our navels. Be prepared, because Pax Sino isn't going to be kind to most of us.
>No, China is waging a war against the entire world in the smartest way imaginable, and most of us don't even realize it:
IDK man, being drone striked from above by the USAF seems far worse to me than whatever China could be doing to me, but I'll bite.
>They have their financial tendrils in all of our economies, down to the core elements and throughout the peripheries. Nearly everything has at least some degree of Chinese monies and thus influence now.
More influence that the world reserve currency which last time I cheeked is the USD and only the US has the printer for it?
But the massive buildup of the Chinese Navy and their paramilitary maritime militias are not cheap. In the end the only thing that matters is if China invades Taiwan there will be war, if it doesnt there wont be. Better be prepared for the first case.
There is no reasoning about this. Government as an entity (especially the "Rainbow" West ones like the EU and US) is literally schizophrenic or crazy or has multiple personality disorder (that's the best analogy I can come up with). Their laws are not internally consistent, their words don't match their actions, they entertain conflicting and opposing priorities, they actively do things to their own detriment, they promote the well-being of everyone but their own citizens, they can't get consensus on anything from their own populace, and they blame everyone and themselves too at the same time for their own failings.
They admit their own failings by showing us who they are "allergic" to. So yes, China may be a "bad guy", but they're painted as a boogeyman for a reason.
Apollo really was a rare alignment of motivations, unbounded optimism meets existential fear, ie, "humanity can migrate into the stars" overlapping with "if we don't do this the commies win first strike capability", seems unlikely to re-occur.
Something else... US current political climate vs immigrants doesn't help. In addition to the life prospects of potential immigrants.
I'm a drop on the ocean only, but my case is the one I have: PhD in Computer Science, highly specialized and have lived and worked around the world , but there's not enough that attracts me to living in the US.
Its health system issues, the animosity against minorities and immigrants and the lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals make it unsexy.
And as I said I'm literally nobody. How would the US attract real post Ww2 talent?
There is definitely animosity towards migrants in the U.S. but I’m not convinced it’s any worse than in any other country with a large immigrant population. Look at the huge advances made recently by far-right parties in Europe for example, or the riots in England.
> lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals
getting a visa is the hardest part, but doable if you’re a bit lucky. Once you have the visa, getting permanent residency after a few years and ultimately citizenship is relatively straightforward, IF you’re not from one of a few countries with large numbers of immigrants to the U.S.: mainly Mexico, the Philippines, China and India.
It seems from your profile that you’re Mexican so yeah, getting permanent status in the U.S. would take a really long time even if you got a visa.
This is one of the biggest competitive disadvantages of the U.S. currently: making it unreasonably hard for skilled people to immigrate, compared to places like Canada or Europe. But I think it’s an exaggeration to say there’s no reasonable path.
It can be unreasonable, like you mentioned, if you originate from specific countries. For sectors like Defense, Aerospace etc., you literally can't work unless you are a permanent resident or a citizen. Which means, even if you do have a visa, without a path to permanent immigration, you can't really contribute in those sectors, making it unreasonable.
That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX. So until SpaceX achieves Mars, they have too much to do to become too comfortable. Of course, I just sit on a couch offering opinions.
> That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX.
IMO, the opposite is true.
1. SpaceX needs money to fund their Mars dreams. And the HLS contract is a couple billion dollars that they can grab.
2. Getting to the moon with NASA will dramatically help SpaceX because NASA will be working with them to crew rate the lander for everything except taking off from and landing on Earth.
3. Developing HLS Starship will let SpaceX begin to offer private Lunar missions.
4. Mars is really tough. It's far away, it's only feasible to travel there once every 2 years, it's very difficult to land, and it'll be super hard to get in-situ resource utilization - basically harvesting resources from Mars to generate enough propellant that a return trip to Earth is possible.
I'm sure SpaceX will probably send some rockets to Mars. But the first few sets will be figuring out hwo to land and maybe set up ISRU. And in the meantime, the Moon is a great venue for SpaceX to train systems and earn a bit of money.
I honestly hope so or soon after although I think it unlikely.
The psychological shock to the nation & to the world of seeing China do it before us will be immense. It will have indicated a changing of the guard and the decline of America.
That was always a bullshit date. No different than elder Bush's Mars in 2030. 2028, maybe if everything goes well with Starship, and the suits. Their lunar variant is still a disaster waiting to happen without a better design. We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel? SLS is also supposed to somehow fit into the picture which is still not tested in any way resembling the baby steps Apollo took.
"We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel?"
Starship has fewer engines than Super Heavy, it likely won't be landing at full throttle either, and lunar lander Starship could have landing legs as well. The lower gravity on the Moon means that you can carry more hardware with you. Maneuvering in 0.16 g is nowhere near as fuel intensive as in 1 g.
