Blog for
Sunday, May 21, 2023
Fourth weekly blog, starting to become a habit, hope you
enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.
This week Carol and I went for our annual
pilgrimage to Shady Hill Nursery, now Countryside Gardens, in Elburn, IL. We’ve
been going there for quite a few years. Memories include sharing geranium
prices with Silvio, picking up Meteor Shower plants because they look so cool
and one-time event where we called the Mund’s when we stopped in at
Wahlburger’s restaurant on the way home and surprise, surprise, they joined us
for a burger!
Humans to Mars Summit for 2023 (H2M) -- I just finished watching the 27 hours of H2M
on YouTube. Beth did a fabulous job as co-host with Matt Kaplan of the
Planetary Society. She also moderated a few of the panel discussions. Very interesting
seeing all the representatives from NASA and industry. I feel like I understand
NASA’s new “Moon to Mars” strategy much better. One big question I have, is
where was Robert Zubrin? He has always been so prominent at other Mars events.
My lead for today was going to be the Axiom 2
mission but then NASA announced the award for the second Human Landing System
(HLS) on the moon. HLS leads the way.
NASA names second HLS team
– On Friday, 5/19/23, NASA announced that the Blue Moon Lander from Blue Origin
(BO) will be the second HLS lander. A little over 2 years ago NASA awarded
SpaceX $2.9 billion for their Lunar Starship as the sole winner of the original
HLS competition. Lunar Starship will take 2 astronauts down to the lunar surface
as part of Artemis 3 in December of 2025. Blue Origin sued NASA over not being
selected. NASA said that they could only afford one team. Subsequently, NASA
awarded SpaceX another $1.15 billion for their upgraded “sustainable” version
of the Lunar Starship to be used on Artemis 4. Congress said they wanted 2
landers, so there was one more contest. The winner, Blue Origin will get $3.4
billion for their “sustainable” lunar lander that will support the Artemis 5
landing in 2029. They will perform a test unmanned lunar landing in 2028. BO
says they are funding over 50% of the effort on their part. The sustainable
landers will be able to carry more cargo and up to a crew of 4 to the surface.
Plus, they will integrate with the Lunar Gateway and support surface missions for
up to 30 days. Hopefully, this isn’t a second choice like Starliner for
Commercial Crew, where Boeing is twice as expensive as SpaceX and so late on
delivery that the service is missing much of its “window of need”. BO left a
bad taste in my mouth with their suit that delayed the startup of the HLS program.
The Blue Moon Lander will support up to 20 mt of cargo to the lunar surface in
its reusable mode and 30 mt in expendable mode. The 16m tall lander will weigh 16 mt dry and
45 mt loaded with LH2 and LOX. The
CIS-lunar transporter/propellant loader is coming from Lockheed Martin. The
lander has been redesigned so that the crew section is at the bottom and the
fuel tanks are on the top. That removes one of the big criticisms of the
original design where astronauts would have to navigate a 12m (40 ft) ladder to
climb down to the lunar surface. BO will use the New Glenn rocket to get Blue
Moon to lunar orbit. Dynetics was the only other bidder in the recent contest with
their ALPACA lander. Not much was said of their bid except that it was more
expensive than Blue Moon. I think I sense another MASS Prize contest where we
will guess when the first HLS vehicle successfully lands on the moon.
SpaceX hires retired Kathy Lueders from NASA
-- Lueders was the head of NASA’s Human Spaceflight division. She follows the
former head of the division to SpaceX, Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the VP of
Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX. Ken Bowersox, who is also a former
astronaut and worked for SpaceX before returning to NASA, is the current head
of Manned Spaceflight. This relationship can’t help but solidify the attachment
that NASA has to the SpaceX Lunar Starship for HLS.
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