If it can be refueled in LEO, a Starship tanker could be put in orbit about the moon and serve as an excellent refueling station for much smaller landing and ascent vehicles. This rules out landing Starships on the moon until astronauts can prepare the necessary facilities.īut there is an alternative Artemis application for Starship that is extremely attractive. Unless a prepared landing pad were provided, this would blow a large crater below the Starship during landing.
Furthermore, landing a Starship on the moon with 100 tons of cargo and the 120 tons of propellant it would need to return to the Gateway (without its cargo) would require at least 120,000 pounds of thrust. Each of these would need to be enabled for flight from LEO to the gateway by three further tanker flights, for a total of 20 Starship launches for each piloted lunar mission.
But then to land on the moon, discharge its cargo, and return to the Gateway would require a further 400 tons of propellant delivered to the Gateway, or four trans-lunar tankers. This could be supported with three tanker Starship flights to LEO. To refuel it is LEO to fly to the Gateway with its payload of 100 tons would require 300 tons of liquid oxygen and methane (LOx/CH4) propellant. Starship is estimated to have a dry mass of 100 metric tons. This latter application of Starship is not a good idea. Accordingly, SpaceX has released artwork showing the booster being used to land and take off from the moon. Under its Artemis contract, NASA is funding the company to create this additional capability. To go beyond low Earth orbit, however, it would need to be refueled in space. The SpaceX Starship, now aggressively being developed with the company’s own funds, is the obvious choice for the Artemis launch vehicle, as it offers a payload capacity similar to the NASA Space Launch System at less than one-tenth the cost. Accepting these as now the primary options for Artemis, how might they best be used? The companies were SpaceX, which proposed a variant of its Starship reusable launch system, and teams led by Blue Origin and Dynetics, which each offered much smaller dedicated lunar landing and ascent vehicles. On April 30, NASA announced the award of close to $1 billion in funds split between three companies to develop human landing systems for its Artemis moon base program.
0 kommentar(er)
