The stainless-steel dildo was never going to the Moon - or Mars.
NASA has announced that the moon landing scheduled for 2025 is on hold, because the primary contractor for the landing portion - SpaceX - is far behind on its project milestones. The FAA has suspended further launches from the Boca Chica station, after the last "heavy" took off and blasted the launch pad to smithereens (some good engineering there!) and then self-destructed in mid-air after the booster stage failed to separate.
Space-X employees were stunned, until they were instructed to cheer. Every failure is a success!
The entire concept makes no sense. One company (Boeing) had been hired to build a rocket to go to the moon, and than another company - SpaceX - had been hired to build a "moon lander" but instead built this monstrous stainless-steel dildo which was supposed to go all the way to the moon and back. As icing on the cake, NASA awarded yet another contract (for even more money) to Jeff Bezos to make a real lunar lander. I guess NASA wanted a backup plan.
The antics of SpaceX in Boca Chica have some wondering whether the real goal all along was failure. Fail big and then ask for more money. And maybe the whole design was destined to fail. The rocket uses a plethora of smaller engines, which was the technique the ill-fated Soviet lunar rocket attempted. The Soviets were not adept at making large rocket engines, so they used a ton of smaller ones. The problem with this approach - as any Engineer would tell you - is that the power-to-weight ratio suffers. Suppose instead of putting a 200-HP engine in your car, GM decided instead to put forty 5-HP lawn mower engines in there? Yes, there is super-redundancy, but it would weigh far more and take up the entire car with the engines and their support hardware. Imagine just the weight of 40 starter motors!
If you ever visit the Air & Space museum, they have one of the Saturn V engines on display. Actually, it is just 1/4 of the bell housing and three mirrors to give you the impression of the overall size. The engine is so huge they it would take up far too much room in the building. But five huge engines was a better bet than 30 smaller engines. The big problem, of course, is making sure at least most of those 30 fire.
The Soviets failed at this, and SpaceX copied a failed design, as opposed to a successful one.
As a NASA official noted, just getting the stainless-steel dildo into orbit is half the battle. They then have to demonstrate they can refuel the thing in orbit, which means proving they can launch a refueling station into orbit and then autonomously refuel with cryogenic fuels in orbit. Then they have to go to the moon, land on an uneven surface with a tall, tippy rocket (that has a history of exploding on landing). Do all that, in unmanned missions, without failure, and we're set to go!
2025? It ain't happening. And NASA has blown a lot of money on a failed project and even more money an unproven company (Blue Origin) in trying to develop a lander. Of course, none of this is without precedent. Grumman struggled with their lunar lander back in the 1960's and their Apollo capsule was so rife with defects that it killed three astronauts. Space exploration is not for the feint of heart. And every component was awarded to the lowest bidder!
The thing about SpaceX is that they are making so many rookie mistakes - apparently on purpose. With the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, for example, the launch pads were constructed (and enormous) with blast deflectors that were flooded with millions of gallons of water, as Engineers knew that the blast from the rocket exhaust could destroy even hardened concrete. Space-X put in a concrete pad that apparently wouldn't support a mobile home, much less moon-rocket exhaust.
It is almost like they expect this thing to fail. The last launch, for example, sounds this way. It appears they were unprepared to really move to this next stage (no pun intended) but went ahead anyway in order to meet contract milestones. Blowing up rockets is progress, of sorts - and the early history of rocketry in the US (and abroad) is full of blow-ups. But that was back in the 1950s, when we had analog control systems or very primitive digital computers. We've learned a lot since then, right? Or is SpaceX doomed to re-learn every mistake made by their predecessors?
Maybe it is Billionaire hubris. People fall-bass-ackwards into a pile of money and confuse their good fortune with genius. They do dumb things like building their own submarine or buying a money-losing social media company for twice its actual value (and then imploding it like said same submarine).
The other half of SpaceX has had some success - launching cargo and even manned capsules to the ISS and of course, launching their "Starlink" satellites which clutter up the sky. We've seen a lot of campers who are "remote workers" using Starlink, and it seems to work well. Sadly, Musk has used this as a political football by withholding or threatening to withhold, service from the Ukraine (lest he piss off his Russian friends). With "Return to Office" it remains to be seen whether "Project Managers" (WTF is that job, anyway? No one can tell me in 10 words or less!) will be allowed to roam the country in motorhomes for much longer. And whether Starlink can make money from rural subscribers remains to be seen. The 5G cellular hotspot may be the deal-killer for Starlink, as satellites are expensive to launch and you have to keep launching them to make the whole thing work. Look what happened to satellite radio and Iridium. Neat products, but no one wanted to pay the high prices for the services.
Maybe post-bankruptcy, it might work.
But it makes you wonder - did SpaceX have real aspirations for the stainless-steel dildo, or was it just some sort of stalking-horse to get a lucrative government contract? Because even if you fail at it, you still get paid and you can always use the excuse space travel is hard. And of course, you can always ask for more money, right?
Bear in mind that you and I, as taxpayers, are paying for this. And it ain't working and it appears to be half-assed - particularly the last spectacular failure. I mean, did no one think to design a proper launch pad? I am sure someone mentioned this, but as a private company, we'll never hear the actual truth as Non-Disclosure Agreements will prevent any whistle-blower from coming forward.
Maybe it could be made to work, but is it the best design going forward? Traditionally, most Engineers have viewed space travel in three modes - Earth to Orbit, interplanetary travel, and lander. It makes little sense to design one space craft to do all three, when you can assemble in orbit, a craft that travels between planets or between Earth and Moon, with passengers transferring from a craft designed to go from Earth to Orbit. Similarly, it would be easier and less costly to design a craft to land on the Moon (or Mars) than to have one craft do all three functions. This was sort of the approach we tried with the Apollo missions, the only difference being, we didn't have the hardware in orbit to try the three-tiered approach. But we did realize that the Apollo command module and capsule were ill-suited for a lunar landing, and designed a separate craft for that.
Space-X is boldly going in a different direction - and failing miserably at it. Despite its plethora of rockets, the Stainless-steel dildo requires a huge booster to put is porky mass into orbit - a mass that is largely unnecessary for the mission. A primary design criteria for any Engineer is to reduce weight and complexity whenever possible. It seems Space-X is going in the opposite direction - creating a bloated rocket that is a one-size-fits-all solution to orbital flight, moon landings, and eventually, trips to Mars.
They are answering a question no one is asking.
Maybe I am wrong about this. It would be cool if Heinlein-like rockets were jetting about the solar system from planet to planet. But that was, of course, science fiction. From a practical standpoint, launching the entire deal from Earth and then returning it there makes little sense.
But I guess we'll see - maybe in 2030 or so - when the Chinese have laid claim to the Moon!
Thanks, Elon!
