Im one of the types who feels its by and large pointless to send humans to space destinations. I think iss is a rare exception because of the experiments but I would mostly like to send machines to places to take readings and to work on making things remotely with machines. If we can setup a decent human habitation on the moon or such with them then I could see sending humans.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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Are we great again, yet?
Führer Musk doesn't want any competition!
Hitler was just saying that his heart goes out to everyone. Or something
A spacex ally is appointed chairman and guts a project that would've outshone them. Tired of the blatant corruption happening in this country.
I don't think you're educated on the matter because landing on the moon with the mission plan that they set out requires the lunar gateway to be in place, it is not and likely won't be for a long time. It was going to be impossible to land on the moon by the third mission (unless significantly delayed) no matter who was in charge. Like all ambitious space missions in history, it will be delayed, delayed, and delayed again. Sadly that's how it has always been.
You shouldn't confidently spout incorrect information
"The aerospace safety advisory panel recommended that Nasa rethink its objectives for Artemis III, ........ The panel said that the call for a revision was urgent, “given the demanding mission goals”."
The ~~fucking~~ safety advisory panel suggested the change ~~moron~~ dude, not Isaac. But yes fuck Elon cuck the pos ket head
Edit: removed unnecessarily rude words
Like all ambitious space missions in history, it will be delayed, delayed, and delayed again. Sadly that’s how it has always been.
Unless I'm grossly mistaken, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were pretty much on schedule. I don't know about Skylab, if we consider it separate from Apollo. I think things started to become less tight with STS (Shuttle).
You could be right. I have not been alive that long and I must admit I'm not super educated on the exact timelines of many older programs. But in my lifetime, all the exciting programs have been delayed by a lot.
I guess I confidently spouted some incorrect information if you were right.
Ah yes, the humongously successful SLS. Totally not a bottomless moneypit. And absolutely no corruption involved in keeping it alive.
Except SpaceX is part of that mission, or was?
The highly successful Starship is to be the lander. They just need to get one to orbit first.
You got them on a technicality. But multiple test articles have pretty much reached orbit, intentionally just missing orbit so they would renter in a known location should something go wrong, and something has gone wrong most of the time.
I'm excited for the staship program because it's the most exciting spaceflight development in my lifetime, yes fuck Elon but that doesn't change the facts of how exciting the program is for a space lover. The upcoming launches with v3 hardware are going to be very exciting, hopefully most of the kinks have been resolved.
The more pressing issue IMO is that they haven't really shown any of the landing hardware, which will be substantially different than the Starship articles they are using for testing now.
SpaceX is going through the same problem tesla currently has. All the talent that created its good products is either burnt out or already left the company. Their outputs will continue to decline while being in stark contrast to their promises imo.
Their hiring process is also atrocious and scares off any good engineers, and with Elon's cocksucking arch, those disillusioned enough to tough out working there are very few these days.
I totally get your point, but I don't think SpaceX has any engineer problems. They've had a lot of issues with their test articles, but as far as it seems, that's sort of by design using the move fast and break things philosophy, which obviously isn't good in some ways. But it worked for the Falcon 9 landings, and it's going to work for starship, and all the detractors and haters will say nothing in five years when Starship is an extremely successful program.
I think a lot of people fail to see the extreme space fans and engineers who are super into space are willing to suffer through some of these things to work on what is actually the most incredible space program in our lifetime. I wouldn't do it. I'm not an engineer though, and I really do fucking hate Elon Musk. But I say it again. Starship is awesome, and it's going to be extremely successful, despite what you may believe now. SpaceX has a very long history of proving the haters wrong, in fact I can't think of a single example when the haters and people saying "its impossible" ended up being right long term
Probably for the best under the current administration. They'd try to build an ICE detention center with Trump's face large enough to be seen from Earth. None of the astronauts would survive.
As much as I'd love to see someone on the Moon, I'd happily wait until Trump is dead just to avoid allowing him to claim it as his personal achievement.
I swear he would issue some kind of bs executive order saying they had to wear MAGA hats in the orbiter or something fucking stupid.
And they would put some fucking flat earther in charge of the project, resulting in some additional ecological disaster of epic proportions.
He'd make them leave a plaque with his name on it up there. Or a little model trump tower, so there can literally be one on the moon.
Breaking News: Trump Orders NASA to Drill For Oil On Moon
i mean, weren't we going to drill for helium anyways?
Can't tell if serious. 😆
it's moon plans. no one makes serious moon plans
I don't follow this subject, but I can only imagine this is in part due to the DOGE cuts?
Whatever the reason, I don't think that going back to the moon at this time is a good idea. Especially if all we're going there for is to exploit whatever resources it has.
Especially if all we’re going there for is to exploit whatever resources it has.
You may misunderstand this part. There’s no way any mineral resource is worth mining on the moon and bringing back to earth. Even tritium has no actual documented presence and would only be useful if we had nuclear fusion.
It’s more circular. Supporting humans in space will always be stupendously expensive, but a huge part of the cost is launching stuff from earth. The best way to make space cheaper and more reliable is to be able to use stuff already there, instead of bringing it from earth.
If you can find water and have sufficient energy, you could make your own water not only for humans but to grow crops, oxygen, even rocket fuel. That alone could save billions of dollars and make a huge difference in being able to sustain a successful program
It’s also due to the fact that Boeing seems to no longer be capable of building a spacecraft that doesn’t constantly fucking break, and the regime is conscious of the fact that killing the entire crew of the first manned mission to the moon in nearly a half century would be Very Bad Optics.
And if that wasn't bad enough SpaceX is basically dead in the water. Presumably because Musks general radiation of incompetent malice has probably purged anyone who could've made their shitty rockets work without being spread across the fucking gulf.
How are the dead in the water in this context?
A lot of the Moon mission hinges on Starship being a reliable machine that does all of the things Musk promised. I have no doubt that SpaceX in time could build something good, they do have a lot of good people working there. But the time lines given by Musk to the government in order to get the contracts weren't viable. And as usual Musk overpromised about the capabilities.
One of the biggest doubts at the moment is about Starship being able to go to the Moon. The plan was to send up a Starship into LEO, then send up another Starship to refuel the first one. That way it would have enough fuel to go to the Moon and work as a lander there. It doesn't need to do much, just get to the Moon, take the people to the surface and get them back into Lunar orbit.
The issue with this is, a lot of things need to go right in order for this to work. You'd need two functioning Starships, they need to both launch into the correct orbit and rendezvous. Then they need to dock and transfer fuel, undock and separate. This is pretty much never been done, so they would be doing something new, but in theory it can be done. Hard and experimental, but in principle achievable.
However when calculations were made, it turns out once you put a Starship in the right orbit it's not possible for it to have enough fuel to fully refuel another Starship. So Musk said they would simply stretch a Starship and use it as a fuel station. Nobody is really sure if this stretching is even possible, as this wasn't part of the original design, but let's say it is. Now the mission become more complicated still, you'd need the Starship that does the Moon mission. Then you'd need the fuel station ship and another ship to fuel that station. And all of this has to work and be timed properly for the Moon mission to work.
But then further calculations were made and nobody is sure how many Starship launches would be required to fill up that fuel station. Partly because Starship isn't finalized, so the exact specs are unknown. But back of the napkin calculations put the figure at something like 6 launches. A big problem is the fuel used is very hard to store for any amount of time. As it's cryogenic, it needs to be kept cold. On Earth this is done by using very thick and sturdy pressure vessels, combined with a bunch of machinery and off-gassing. But in space this gets harder, since the pressure vessels need to be light, they can't be as sturdy. And there isn't room (both in volume and weight) for all of the cooling machines, which would require too much power and cooling themselves to even work. So we end up with only off-gassing to maintain temperature. This usually doesn't matter, on Earth the fuel that's lost gets replaced right away up to the point of liftoff. After that the fuel is used to fly the mission and usually the rocket's main fuel tank is empty after that. This puts a lot of time pressure on the whole thing, that fuel station in orbit is losing fuel all of the time. So it's a race to fill it up faster than it's losing fuel. So those 6 missions need to be flown within a day or maybe two. And if it turns out the amount of fuel being delivered is lower than expected or the loss is higher, there would need to be 12 fueling missions within a day. Not strictly impossible, but not exactly easy. And the not knowing is making people nervous.
They are so far behind schedule, on a system that hasn't been finalized, let alone tested, it's very doubtful they could do it anywhere in the near future. Nasa has since asked other companies if they could build a lander if SpaceX can't do it. But canceling the whole landing part is an option as well.
I think it's not one Starship in LEO to refuel the one going to the moon but 8 to 12, depending on how much fuel they loose. It's super complicated and error prone.
Yes, it was sold as being one Starship in LEO, one Starship to refuel it and off it went. But now they're onto this plan with a ship to do the mission, a ship with a different design to act as a fuel station and then at least 4 fueling missions, but more likely 8 to 12. It's ridiculous really, to expect all of this to work out.
At the same time Nasa can't get SLS to do what they want and that's just a single mission. A more complicated one for sure, but still a single mission, not a dozen within two days.
Can you source it as being sold as 1? AFAIK it was never sold as 1. There might have been planning where they thought 1 would work, but not sold.
You had me in the first sentence.
tl;dr: SpaceX might be good enough to launch relatively cheap equipment into space but that's about it.
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I think one of the reasons they wanted to go back to the moon was to find the 30,000 missing Epstein files that name drumpf. When drumpf found out the mission objectives, he cancelled the mission.
heard those files can be found inside polar lunar craters were the sun never shines
No. The SLS program has been a complete shitshow from the start and getting people to the moon in Artemis III was never a realistic prospect. If anything, Isaacman is trying to salvage the project by injecting some realism.
It looks like they just got a bit too ambitious too soon. They’ve been struggling with glitches and stuff. They still want to, they just need more time.
Other countries are gearing up too though right?
If the US isn't there, China and others will be.
IDK what resources are on the moon itself, but asteroids seem to have loads of accessible minerals.
Honestly, I'd prefer these were harvested from asteroids rather than delicate ecosystems on Earth.
Frozen water in/underneath craters IIRC. A potential llace to manufacture fuel there
I guess killing the project outright is likely not an option without angering Congress. There has been so many issues and delays with this rocket that I really hope the capsule heat shield holds up during re-entry and the astronauts all survive.
I guess killing the project outright is likely not an option without angering Congress.
You miss some headlines over the last year?
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