Hey everybody checking back to the Elon Musk podcast.
This is a show where we. Discuss the critical crossroads.
The shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink.
And I'm your host, Will Walden. One more thing before we start,
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Search for Elon Musk podcast. Under NASA's Artemis campaign,
the agency and its partners will send large pieces of equipment
to the lunar surface to enable long term scientific exploration
of the moon for the benefit of all humanity.
Now, NASA's human landing systems provider, SpaceX and
Blue Origin are beginning development of lunar Landers,
the SpaceX, Starship and Blue Origin ship as well, for large
cargo deliveries to support these needs.
YES has contracted SpaceX and Blue Origin to provide landing
systems to take astronauts to the Moon surface from lunar
orbit beginning with Artemis 3. And that's going to be someplace
between 2028 and 2030 right now, but probably going to slip a
little bit later than that. Now, the agency has asked the
two companies to develop cargo versions of their human landing
Landers as an option under their existing contracts.
The cargo variants are expected to land approximately 26,000 to
33,000 lbs, or 12 to 15 metric tons of payload on the lunar
surface and be in service no earlier than the Artemis 7
mission. Now NASA spokesperson, the Human
Landing Systems program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, AL, Lisa Watson Morgan, said it's
essential that NASA has the capability to land not just
astronauts, but large pieces of equipment such as pressurized
Rovers on the moon for maximum return on science and
exploration activities. And she said, beginning this
work now allow SpaceX and Blue Origin to leverage their
respective human landing designs to provide cargo variance that
NASA will need in the future. Not only will they be landing.
Rovers. On the moon, but they'll also be
landing habitats, possibly in the future too, and these Rovers
could transport habitats around the moon's surface.
Now. NASA expects the cargo versions
of the company's Landers to be modified versions of their HLS
human landing systems that are currently being developed for
Artemis 3-4 and five, and modifications will include
adjustments for payload interfaces and deployment
mechanisms. And the cargo variants will not
have human life support systems. They're going to be autonomous,
flying to the moon with just cargo on them.
And this initial work allows the companies to proceed with
development for the cargo Landers through a preliminary
design review, the step that establishes the basis for
proceeding with detailed design. Now SpaceX is conducting its
work under the next step, Appendix H contract, and Blue
Origin is conducting its work under the next step, Appendix P.
And NASA officially exercised the options out of those
contracts in November of 2023 to begin work on the large COCAR
Landers. Now with Artemis, NASA will
explore more of the Moon than ever before, learn how to live
and work away from home, and prepare for human missions to
the Red Planet of Mars. And Artemis requires the best of
International Space agencies, private industries like SpaceX
and Blue Origin, and academia to establish the infrastructure for
a long term scientific research and exploration.
And as of now, SpaceX is currently building their massive
Starship program in South Texas and they're doing the 4th launch
of the Starship program in the coming weeks, possibly a month
from now. So stay on the lookout for that.
Blue Origin is developing their gigantic rocket as well, the New
Glen, and also their Lander at the same time, and we're
expecting a launch of New Glen sometime in the next fiscal
year. It's going to be a wild time for
rocket and spaceflight, so stay tuned for all of that.
Stay tuned to this channel as well because we're going to
bring you all the coverage of that.
Also check out our YouTube channel at Space Newspod for any
spaceflight coverage that you'll ever need.
Now let's get back to the Starship program.
It seems as if the Starship Flight 4 will be a massive
improvement over Flight 3. Now with Flight 3, they launched
the ship, they did the return maneuver for the booster, but
they had to detonate the booster over the Gulf of Mexico because
something wasn't going right. We're not exactly sure.
SpaceX didn't tell anybody what happened, but we know that the
booster did blow up under its own accord.
Then after the booster. Met its own fate over the Gulf
of Mexico. The ship continued on near the
Indian Ocean and continued its mission and they did a a test of
the Bay doors for Starlink satellite deployment and they
also did a fuel. Test.
At that point too, so it. Looks like.
Flight 4 of Starship, which is coming up, like I said, in a few
weeks, hopefully in a few weeks, probably a month, that'll do a
similar flight path towards the Indian Ocean.
They may stray off that a little bit because the FAA and SpaceX
are working closely together to finalize the plans for the next
mission, and the new Glen Rocket System is still under
development right now. They haven't launched 1 yet, but
they're hoping to possibly do one by the end of this year.
So we're looking forward to that because when they can launch the
rocket, then they can launch their lunar Rover, their lunar
Lander, and they can also have variants of the rocket that can
go into the outer solar system, which will be absolutely
amazing. O these cargo missions for NASA
are important for Blue Origin and also imortant for SpaceX,
but most imortantly they are important for AU presence on the
lunar surface. Hey, thank you so much for
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