Well, at present they still plan on having SLS/Orion deliver people out to NRHO (because that's as far as the overweight little Orion capsule can go) and transfer them to the HLS Starship for the actual landing. Two of them, at least, leaving two in the Orion to soak up the cislunar rads and make sure it doesn't go anywhere. They did mention they're reevaluating aspects of the mission.Arioch wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 2:34 amI watched Scott Manley's video on the subject, and apparently according to the internal documents it just boiled down to cost. Congress had limited the budget for Artemis to one-third of what NASA asked for, and SpaceX was the only one of the three that could deliver a proposal at that price, never mind that the system delivered at that cost has like ten times the capability of either competitor. Unless Congress is willing to fork over another ten billion dollars, I don't think complaining about it will do them any good.Mjolnir wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 1:41 amYeah, their lineup of partnerships was clearly designed to get political support on their side, and the usual Congresscritters are already complaining about the award (Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson complaining they didn't wait for "Ballast" Nelson to get in place as administrator first, as if it wasn't Lueders' job and responsibility to make the decision). Some of the other problems with Blue Origin's proposal, like asking for advance payments that were specifically not allowed and proposing more restrictive licensing and sharing of IP than the request required, make me wonder if they overestimated the political clout they had.
From SpaceX's point of view, it's about as big a win as one can get... to have NASA pay you almost 3 billion dollars for something you were doing on your own anyway.
So... I'm wondering what NASA will do when Starship beats SLS/Orion to the Moon.
It looks even worse if in the future if they want to reuse the HLS Starship, because they'll have to send out another supply Starship or two to supply propellant, transfer other supplies, etc. These can be standard Starships with flaps and heat shields that can come back to Earth afterward. They could certainly carry crew as well...or Dragons as crew return vehicles if they still don't trust Starship for returning crew at that point.