SpaceX's Lunar Starship: Built Different (HLS Comparison)

let's take a look at the three moonlander designs nasa is currently funding starting with the spacex lunar starship spacex's lunar version of the starship can be very confusing because the starship's claim to fame is that it will be a stepping stone in human evolution as we become a space faring civilization by enabling much easier and cheaper access to space by being rapidly reusable like your everyday vehicles you know your airplane your car things that you don't just throw in the garbage after taking one trip with it but the first starships that land on the moon won't be equipped to return to earth at all for reuse spacex's official images of the design show no heat shield for atmospheric reentry and no wings to control a descent for an earth landing why would they design it like this so that they can get the most bang for their buck when it comes to landing humans and cargo on the moon's surface you see while the other two landers might get you from lunar orbit down to the surface with 5 or 10 tons of payload and that's being generous these specialized starships would in theory be able to touch down with a hundred metric tons inside of them and don't be fooled by the official artwork of the three designs next to each other here's my more realistic comparison to help show the contrast between these concepts elon musk specifically said that in order to get the maximum amount of payload to the moon per trip that the general starship design would be drastically changed by removing the heat shield the wing-like surfaces that musk refers to as flaps and in his words the big gas thruster packs which is quite puzzling to me because the way i see it that should include removing the sea level rapture engines from the starship's design but sea level raptors are shown in spacex's official imagery of the lunar starship concept despite not being the right tool for the job at any time during a hypothetical artemis spacex moonlander mission so the regular starship design gets lifted from the earth's surface and up most of the way into space by the super heavy booster where the starship would continue to accelerate to orbital velocity on its own by using its vacuum rafter engines the regular starship might not and we're not sure but might not use its sea level engines until after it reenters the atmosphere for landing at the end of its mission which this proposed wingless and shieldless lunar starship will never ever do of course if you've been watching the prototype testing spacex has been using sea level rapture engines exclusively for the test flights in 2019 and 2020 but that's only because they're testing the systems without the super heavy booster so they need to lift off using the sea level engines just to get the lightweight prototype vehicles off the ground to perform the airborne tests and i say lightweight because so far the prototypes have had no real payload it's a little bit like testing an empty cargo plane and only filling it up with a small portion of the fuel it would normally need when starships start carrying heavy payloads to space including the lunar starships on their way to the moon to become airborne at all they'll need to be lifted by the tremendous thrust of a super heavy booster equipped with a roaring platoon of sea level rapture engines regardless of engine configuration the point is that the specialized version of the lunar starship won't return to earth to be reused but it's not going to be discarded either the concept is for it to be reused for multiple ascents and landings at the moon and my favorite part which has been confirmed by elon is that instead of getting thrown away after it's served as a lander the lunar starship can remain in service on the moon as a seriously sizable habitat in our depiction of the spacex lunar lander concept eric x and i decided to configure a commodious interior for eight humans to live in remember the orion capsule only holds four but showing a capacity for eight just seemed right for such a large vessel the next video in this moon mission series will be a tour of the interior so make sure you're locked on the channel and subscribed we'll circle back to spacex after we introduce the other two human lander systems that are up for review the ilv and alpaca unlike spacex blue origin is not alone in their endeavor to build a lander for nasa which is why it's called the ilv or integrated lander vehicle originally jeff bezos who founded amazon in blue origin unveiled a lunar lander called blue moon in may of 2019. later that year blue origin announced that they've partnered up with three other companies to form the hls national team you see the blue moon lander by itself can't support humans it's literally a platform with legs and it's meant to be a one-way descent stage you can think of it as a modern and more sophisticated version of the descent stage section of the apollo lunar module which at this point is still the only descent system ever to have landed humans on non-earth ground like the apollo descent stage of which six are littered across the earth gazing face of the moon the system blue origin is developing would be a throwaway stage configured as a standalone lander for cargo it would use davits to lower payloads like rovers off of the platform once it's on the moon's surface and davits are a very nice simple yet elegant solution for this they're a type of crane used on boats for the human rated ilv a larger more capable version of blue origins lander would piece together with a reusable ascent stage built by lockheed martin lockheed martin was originally planning their own design which similarly to spacex's idea would be a fully reusable single stage moonlander except it would only deliver one metric ton of payload to the lunar surface and still have enough propellant left over to get astronauts back to lunar orbit even with that more conservative capability goal it's really nice to see a reusable one-stage concept coming not from spacex but now as part of the national team it looks like they've split their design apart and will be providing only the crew cabin and descent elements which will be put together with blue origin's non-reusable descent stage so if the national team's lander is to be exclusively used the ascent stage is designed to be refueled and reused in lunar orbit but a new descent stage would have to be launched from earth and discarded on the moon for every single trip to the lunar surface but wait there's more orion the astronauts ride from the earth's surface to the moon and then back to earth later will only get as close to the moon as its planned near rectilinear halo orbit this is one reason that the entire integrated lander vehicle would need to be a three-stage system with northrop grumman building the third piece which is called the transfer element artemis astronauts will board the ilvs ascent stage either from gateway or directly from their orion capsule while orbiting the moon and the aforementioned nrho they would then utilize the transfer element's propulsion to bring the lander down to a low lunar orbit before separating and i guess being discarded i couldn't actually confirm if the national team's plan includes the reuse of the transfer element at this early stage of the design so i won't blame you for being slightly disappointed that this is basically a revamped three-stage version of the old apollo lunar module design with only one piece being reusable but if you look closely at the descent stage it's fully equipped with well thought out modern subsystems like gas accumulators hydrogen fuel cell charging and cubesat deployment systems also the ilv does have a couple of advantages over the spacex design including not needing an elevator or pulley system okay so last and actually fully leased with regards to size which can be a good thing in space we have alpaca built by dynetix and 25 subcontractors dynetx has already done a bunch of work for nasa like building the universal stage adapter that integrates sls's upper stage with orion this is the lander option that has the fun staging system with side mounted drop tanks which puts the crew habitat super low to the ground the lowest of all the options past present and future in fact allowing the astronauts to explore the lunar surface by taking a nothing burger few steps down a set of stairs with railings instead of spending time taking long elevator rides or climbing lengthy ladders and bulky space suits under weird 1 6 gravity for each eva to get to the moon alpaca can be lifted into space and brought all the way to lunar orbit in one shot on its own designated sls rocket if one were available and paid for or alpaca can be launched on ula's vulcan centaur side note as of now vulcan hasn't flown yet and its first launch on the books is scheduled for summer of 2021 when it will deliver a robotic lander holding 28 payloads to the moon's surface as part of nasa's clips project now if alpaca flies on a vulcan centaur let's say in or around 2024 it would be cheaper than sls of course but because vulcan can't lift as much mass as sls the dinette xlander will need to launch with its propellant tanks empty and then be filled up in low earth orbit by two additional vulcan centaurs which is a little bit like spacex's refilling plans the filler up vulcan launches would be carried out only two or three weeks apart to prevent too much cryogenic propellant from boiling off remember just like when you boil water on your stovetop and it expands and escapes the lid of your pot liquid super cold propellant also expand and become a gas as they warm up even if the temperature they warm up to is still super cold we still call it boiling when a liquid becomes a gas which again just like the water on your stovetop causes it to expand in volume so much that the gas cannot be contained at operational pressure levels without intervention which is why you see so much venting when we watch rocket launches so in this vulcan centaur alpaca scenario over the course of three launches the vulcan rockets only deliver alpaca to low earth orbit and fill it up with propellant from there alpaca would be on its own and would need to use some of its freshly filled propellant to get from the earth to the moon it may be able to use a very small minimal amount of propellant to take a slow transfer trajectory to the moon since it would still be uncrude at this point one idea is to have alpaca save as much propellant as it can and take a leisurely three month long cruise through cis lunar space instead of what was a three-day journey for apollo astronauts by the way apollo astronauts flew to the moon on a trajectory that would have taken them far past the moon if the moon wasn't there for them to be captured into lunar orbit with the help of engine burns upon arrival so let's talk about crew capability the genetics lander can hold four astronauts but it would be pretty tight and only be used for four for a taxi service like to and from the surface but for living alpaca can host only two astronauts for a one week stay on the moon i can't confirm the national team's capability but the original lockheed martin concept that it looks like their ascent stage is based upon would support four astronauts for two weeks on the moon as mentioned the spacex option is a veritable tower standing at 12 to 15 stories tall depending on how you measure a story and eric x and i created a starship interior a while back that holds 64 humans and a starship on the moon could probably sustain that much life for at least a few weeks although power might be an issue the average human consumes a lot of power per day but for our lunar starship concept we thought eight would be the sweet spot which is a whole two orion's worth of astronauts so all of what we've shown and discussed so far has been the product of nasa awarding spacex dynetix and the blue origin led national team almost a full billion dollars combined to develop the designs for their moon landers these awards are study contracts which are supposed to last 10 months and when that 10 months is up at the end of february in 2021 it's believed that nasa might proceed by selecting one of the three lander options to continue funding i have my own opinions and i'll tell you why i think nasa should and will pick not one but two of the designs for humans and continue funding the third just for cargo but first then feel free to pause to put your initial reaction in the comments which one of these landers would you want to be inside of if you were touching down on the moon if you're a spacex fan or not try to put your preconceived notions aside and let us know what your personal preference is based on what you've seen many people find it puzzling that considering everything we know about the plans the artemis mantra is going back to the moon sustainably or going back to the moon to stay and it's nice that all the lander options have some element of possible reusability but there are a few other factors for nasa's decision of course including price reliability and timing and speaking of timing nasa is still trying to get boots back on the moon by the end of 2024 even without gateway when they realized gateway probably won't be ready in time nasa clarified that for early artemis missions an orion spacecraft can deliver crew directly to one of these commercially developed landers for short trips to the moon and then meet up again later to come back home but farther into the future nasa promises that there will be sustainable artemis missions that utilize gateway as a staging post and orbital science lab while building a sustainable base camp in the south pole region of the moon so for my thoughts i want nasa to continue funding and overseeing the development of the national team's ilv and the spacex lunar starship the short answer for why is that the ilv seems like the safest bet and spacex is just making too much tangible process with impressive and unproven tech for nasa to ignore them personally i'm partial to the spacex concept because i'm an optimist and i prefer a challenge the lunar starship is sleek and it dwarfs the competition by sheer size maximizing the amount of payload delivered to the moon it would be reusable as a lander and then as a substantial lunar habitat once launched from earth it becomes a single stage spacecraft making it the only lander concept capable of taking multiple trips from lunar orbit down to the surface and back without literally breaking itself apart into pieces and throwing some of itself in the trash plus i really like the off axis thrust from the mid body engines these special thrusters support the single stage reusability by kicking the lunar dust and rocks away from the lander with their rocket exhaust instead of shooting the exhaust straight down at the moon's surface which can cause lunar material to jump up and damage the vehicle during landing and ascent one day in the future we'll have landing pads set up on the moon where any rocket that's reusable that relies on vtvl propulsion will be welcomed by the way i have to apologize for this engine burn animation the exhaust won't look like this thanks to the vacuum of space when it exits the engines it will form a big plume that's barely visible like in this example oh and we haven't touched on air airlocks at all yet i have a whole video called airlocks 101 which goes over the wacky procedures that apollo astronauts had to go through to depressurize and repressurize the entire crew section of the lunar module for each eva and it seems that alpaca and the ilv won't have airlocks either during the tour of alpaca's mock-up you can see that there's a section by the front door that looks like it can serve as an airlock but that's actually where the flight controls are so yeah this area could double as an airlock but keep in mind that airlocks on moonlanders would be especially useful as mud rooms because as far as we know when you explore the moon lunar dust and debris gets everywhere in fact the national team loves to point out that their lander's very long ladder isn't as bad as it seems because climbing it at the end of each eva and the fact that it's up so high will help keep unwanted lunar material outside where it belongs now the lunar starship's habitat is not only even higher up off of the lunar surface than the other landers but their design also includes not one but two airlocks imagine this entire deck depressing and repressing assuming spacex perfects their tech and makes their next gen launch system infrastructure work including rapidly reflyable boosters pushing tankers up into space to refill lunar starships the only real disadvantages with the spacex concept that jumps out at me is that taking a long elevator ride for each eva would be pretty inefficient and the fact that their lander would be a single stage vehicle seems really futuristic but it can be argued that it's less efficient than discarding spent stages especially for the early artemis missions but hey for the sustainable artemis missions if they can succeed in refueling the lunar starship while it's orbiting the moon or even replenishing the liquid oxygen using the moon's local resources who's to say that a single one of them won't land on and descend from the lunar surface many many times without needing parts replaced that's sustainability of course some might argue that having big empty propellant tanks underneath your permanent moon base habitat is less desirable than having those same tanks also doing nothing on the moon but completely out of the way you know if they were discarded like a few kilometers away i do like the idea of alpaca's side mounted tank jettison design that keeps all the engines as part of the intact lander and presumably allows alpaca to be refreshed to be reused quite simply by attaching new flanking tanks and refilling the more central tanks i also like how the pressurized crew cabin is so close to the ground but it is really small in comparison compared to the other options only supporting two astronauts for a one week stay on the surface that's not what i would call going to the moon to stay i do think that the dynetics option is absolutely killer for cargo drops they've published artwork showing a cargo version and aside from looking like something straight out of star wars it seems like a really smart design it will certainly be limited by the amount of mass it can carry to the surface but it would be able to hold large volumes like prefab structures and just lay them down on the moon's surface like a sky crane helicopter however no matter what alpaca brings to the surface the engine configuration seems like it could be problematic for kicking up lunar material towards the lander and yes the national team's design also has its descent engine pointing straight down at the moon's surface upon landing but once it lands its descent stage won't fly again the whole bottom section basically shields the crew cabin and descent stage from any moon material being displaced by the descent engine's blastings which by the way is a beautiful engine i'm a big fan of the few things that blue origin has been working on including the blue moon lander despite it being a throwaway stage and blue origin has a lot scheduled for 2021 that i'm super excited for so i think that choosing the national team's ilv option for further hls funding is pretty much a no-brainer for nasa and one of the reasons is that the ascent stage and all of its control panels are being designed by lockheed martin the very same company that's building the orion spacecraft as mentioned before the ilv has some pretty cool modern features the liquid hydrogen that boils off from their main fuel tank will be funneled around the liquid oxygen tanks to mitigate locks boil off and then after that instead of getting released out into space it gets to do triple duty by being sent to an accumulator to be stored in hydrogen fuel cells that can be used as a power source by our artemis astronauts also since the ilv uses liquid hydrogen in the first place it's a better candidate than the lunar starship for eventual isru on the moon while spacex's operations are the most vertically integrated and their lunar starship design seems to be the most sustainable and they do have the most recent experience with propulsive vertical landings the national team has draper up their sleeve which is the company that will be providing the guidance and flight avionics for their integrated lander draper has a long history and 50 plus years ago they provided the guidance systems for the apollo program yeah that's right if nasa selects the national team draper the company that made the only guidance system that has ever landed humans on the moon would be back at it now there were a couple of other bids that didn't win one of the three study contracts from nasa in 2020 including one from boeing you know the company that's raking in cash and not exactly showing the desired results as the prime contractor for sls there are also many companies that are foregoing the tough challenge of a human rated system and are focusing on landing cargo on the moon that will support the humans as part of nasa's clips project we already mentioned the peregrine mission earlier flying on vulcan's maiden flight you also have mastins xl1 flying on a spacex falcon 9 at the end of 2022 that will map some of the moon's composition and temperature and also deploy a small rover that will search for water another very interesting cargo delivery to the moon is the intuitive machines mission featuring the nova sea lander also scheduled to fly on a falcon 9 but in october of 2021 and this one will support the headline grabbing car race on the moon event nova c will land two five and a half pound remote controlled race cars that make up only eight percent of the hundred kilogram payload that it will carry to the moon's surface the race cars themselves will be partially designed by six teams of high school students and the rest of the payload will be part of laying the groundwork for sending astronauts back to the moon so back to astronauts to wrap this up so far nasa has awarded blue origin's national team the most funding for hls studies and as i've said nasa probably sees the ilv as the least risky choice no one's ever launched an empty genetics lander and filled it up with propellant in space and no one's ever yet refilled a starship in low earth orbit let alone with something like 12 tanker launches which by some estimates is what will be needed to get the lunar starship all filled up so that it can get 100 tons of payload to the moon's surface and still have enough propellant left to get back into lunar orbit after landing so yeah no one's ever done most of the things that spacex is proposing and nasa only gave spacex 135 million dollars for the lunar starship development which was based on spacex's bid and did come as a big surprise to many who thought that nasa wouldn't give spacex anything for this speaking of cash money i love you all and in an effort to not waste your time so far i've refused all of the sponsorship offers i've gotten small stars content will always be free on free youtube and our numbers on patreon and youtube membership that provide access to exclusive content have been seeing some growth so we're not starving yet i did want to show you this gem which was sent to me by a couple who run a small etsy shop called bohemzo it comes with its own stand and it's a great addition to my desk if you want one you can find a link to their shop at bohemzo.com in the description and they didn't pay me to say any of this but they reached out to me said they love the channel and they sent me this model in exchange for mentioning it in a video so i want to thank them i want to thank the old subscribers the new subscribers the likers the commenters the sharers their patrons the rocket launch members and everyone who helped me with this episode especially eric x hatem lauren and pierro thanks for making the small stars channel great and happy 2021 open your mind and reach for the stars you

Channel: smallstars

Views: 380,880

Rating: 4.9107323 out of 5

Keywords: gravity link starship, spin gravity, artificial gravity, spacex, spacex news, starship, mars, NASA, space, orbit, deep space, science, rocket, elon musk, raptor engine, Space Shuttle, spacex starship, the expanse, space station, spacex station, station, voyager station, voyager, gateway, orbital, von braun, lunar starship, moonship, spacex lunar starship, spacex launch, HLS, National Team, ILV, ALPACA, Dynetics, moon, moon lander, landers, built different, lunar, blue origin, comparison

Id: DERc_LOzmkc

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ScaryAswang]

Interesting. I wonder how concrete the plans are? I think it would be interesting to just leave the Starship there, make it a moon base. That would also increase the payload, not having to launch from the surface.

[u/Navoan]

Hadn't seen anything from him before, thanks for posting.