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for Elon Musk podcast. On today's episode, we're going
to be talking about Spacex's HLS mission to the moon, NASA's
Orion spacecraft, and how things may completely change for the
Artemis missions going forward. Now, originally, NASA wanted
SpaceX to launch the lunar HLS Starship to moon orbit, where it
would dock with the Orion spacecraft and the HLS ship
would take the astronauts down to the surface of the moon.
Now, something drastic may be changing in the near future.
There's been murmurings that behind closed doors, NASA is
discussing a low Earth orbit transfer of astronauts between
the Orion spacecraft and the Starship HLS.
Now, these are unconfirmed right now.
They haven't released anything about this yet.
But Ars Technica posted an article about it.
And Eric Berger is very reputable and he was the one
that posted this article. What may be happening with the
Starship in the Orion? So let's just wind it in a
little bit because we have to understand what the process is
of getting the HLS Starship to the moon first.
OK? So first they have to launch a
fuel depot or a fuel fuel, a few fuel depots for the actual
Starship to fuel up in low Earth orbit before it gets to the
moon, before it launches to the moon.
In NASA, it said somewhere around 10:00-ish.
In SpaceX, Elon Musk said somewhere around 10 to 15.
So we're going to go on the low side.
We're going to say about 10 depots will be launched to low
Earth orbit, where the HLS Starship will dock with them and
fuel up before it goes to the moon.
Then the HLS will be fueled up and possibly in between the fuel
and going to the moon. Like that step right there.
Astronauts will fly on an SLS rocket to low Earth orbit and
then dock with the Starship. Now, we're not sure if this is
even feasible right now. We know that this is going to be
a thing in the future, but there are some caveats to this that
could make this a more impressive mission and also
could save NASA billions of dollars in the future.
You're asking yourself, why do they need the SLS rocket if it's
not going all the way to the moon?
That's what I'm asking myself too.
If the Orion capsule could be retrofitted to be on top of a
Starship or on top of a Dragon or Falcon 9 instead of a Dragon
capsule. That's a possibility.
But you're also probably thinking, why don't they just
use a Dragon capsule and dock that with a Starship?
Because Dragon capsules already go to low Earth orbit and they
can dock with the International Space Station.
So that seems like the logical next step, right?
Not quite yet. So there will be a possible
mission with the Orion spacecraft and the HLS Starship?
Because they need to test this out to see if the Orion can
actually dock with the Starship while in space.
Because that's what they're gonna be doing in the Moon's
orbit. And the Dragon capsule cannot go
to the moon and dock with the Starship and come back to Earth.
It just isn't feasible. It doesn't work like that.
The physics don't work. The Dragon capsule is not built
for that. So they need to use the Orion
capsule or some other capsule that could be created in the
future for docking with the Starship and then coming back to
Earth. So once the astronauts are on
board the Starship, then three or more astronauts would fly
their way to the Moon's orbit, where they would land on the
Moon's surface. And then when they're done with
their science and experimentation on a lunar
surface, they would fly back up and dock with the Orion capsule
or the moon station, transfer the astronauts again, and then
from the Orion they would come back down to Earth.
The HLS rocket would stay either in the lunar orbit or docked
with the moon station until the next mission and possibly just
land on the moon and wait for another HLS rocket to come up
because there's a limited shelf life for these things while
they're in space and orbiting in the moon.
So could land it on the moon and it could become a habitat for
future astronauts. Now, the good thing about going
to the moon in the HLS is that you're not cramped like the
Orion spacecraft. The Orion spacecraft, even
though it is a modern marvel of engineering, there's not a lot
of room. You can't really move around a
lot. You can't really do much and you
can't really stretch a lot. There's no there's no room for
activities there with the HLS Starship.
It's 9 meters around, 30 feet around.
It's a massive ship. And if they can construct this
so the astronauts could just fly all the way to the moon on the
HLS rocket, seems like it's totally doable, then they could
land the Starship with the astronauts on board and it would
be a much better experience for the astronauts.
They could have more experimentation time because the
HLS rocket could have more room for experiments and it's a low
Earth orbit experimentation while they're waiting.
Or they could do experimentation all the way to the moon and
while they get to the moon, while they orbit the moon and
when they land on the moon. So the experimentation time and
the experimentation mass of experimentation could be much
bigger than just going in the Orion space capsule.
Because it seems, I don't know, it seems like this is a win win.
We've been talking about this for a long time.
I know a lot of space reporters were like, why do we need Orion
when Starship's going to low Earth orbit anyway and they're
going to dock with Starship and then go didn't make a lot of
sense. So we've been talking about this
for a long time. But since there's murmurings
within NASA now about this happening, it's this totally a
possibility. They're going to need to launch
a few SLS, few more SLS rockets before they change completely
over to the Starship because Starship can do everything that
SLS can and possibly even more. It's, it looks like a bright
future for HLS Starship. Now the first mission that these
astronauts may do, because they can't go into the Starship
immediately then fly to the moon.
This they need to test this thing out.
So the Polaris program was going to test a docking from a Dragon
into a Starship and do some low Earth orbit experimentation and
check out to see if the Starship is feasible for low Earth orbit
or moon travel. And that was going to be the
initial docking and testing phase.
So there's a possibility that the Orion could, or maybe even a
Dragon could do this dock with the HLS. 2 astronauts would
transfer into the HLS Starship, while two others would stay
inside the Dragon capsule and do testing from there.
From a distance. They could do maneuvering, they
could do some burns, they could do orientations, they could
possibly even do an Eva, which doesn't make a lot of sense from
a Starship standpoint, but it might be something they do in
the future just for testing. Then they could redock with the
Dragon capsule and then come back down to Earth.
So they have to test the Starship out before they get it
to the moon. So the HLS Starship is that
might be the first Test of this series of tests.
Then that HLS Starship could fly to the moon and do a test
landing on the lunar surface just to make sure that there's
no astronauts on board in case something bad happens.
So let me know down the commas below what you think about this
'cause it seems like a logical step forward.
Like why would they even use the Orion capsule in low Earth orbit
to test this when they have a Dragon capsule?
Or they do need the Orion capsule to go to the moon and
come back down to earth. So I can totally get that.
I totally get that part. But everything else seems very
logical. Dock in Earth orbit and make
sure that everything's OK with the Starship and command a
gigantic spaceship between the Earth and the moon.
That sounds like a no brainer to me. 150 to 200 feet long
Starship. It's a massive ship, can do all
sorts of sciencing all sorts of engineering on your way to the
moon and in low Earth orbit while you wait and then head to
the moon. Sounds sounds great to me.
Let me know what you think down in the comments.
Now, does this make the SLS rocket unsustainable for the
billions and billions of dollars per launch that it costs?
I think it does. I think it does because if the
Orion spacecraft only has to go to low Earth orbit, they can
launch it from another rocket. Whether it's a ULA rocket, what
it whatever, it could be a star or it could be another SpaceX
rocket, who knows. I'm not sure exactly what the
configuration would be, but the SLS rocket is a jobs program.
It makes America a bunch of money.
And these people are spread across the whole nation making
and designing, building, engineering, all of these parts
to build this massive SLS rocket.
So the SLS rocket is a jobs program as well.
So they would lose tax money and they would lose funding if they
get rid of the SLS rocket. So I don't think they're going
to get rid of the SLS rocket. They may use it for deep space
exploration or something like that in the future and just
shift over to Starship and SpaceX for the time being for
the moon launches. And maybe SLS will be more Mars
and further out into the solar system in the future.
But we know that Starship will be capable in the future of
going to Mars as well. So there's really no reason to
use SLS anymore if this is true, other than super far out like
science missions. It's a massive rocket and
Starship can do everything the SLS can do and then more.
So I think this might be the end of the SLS program.
This might be the beginning of the end of the SLS program.
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