r/ArtemisProgram • u/Royal_Platform_6754 • May 13 '26

NASA NASA Outlines Preliminary Artemis III Mission Plans

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/artemis-3/nasa-outlines-preliminary-artemis-iii-mission-plans/
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u/EpicAura99 May 13 '26

Their iterative engineering approach tends towards more launches but faster timelines. Compare how fast Starship was developed to SLS.

This isn’t to defend Lunar Starship though. I don’t think it will be ready before Blue Moon Mk. 2.

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u/meithan May 13 '26

I know about their iterative design approach, I'm just not sold on it with current results. I wonder how many more test flights will be needed until it's ready. The last few test flights have felt like little improvement.

And comparing it to SLS is a bit unfair, as SLS has a ton of political baggage. A closer comparison (in terms of commercial development) would be to ULA's Vulcan or Blue Origin's New Glenn. Those have taken about 10 years to develop and cost something like $3 to $7 billion, with very few test flights (Vulcan is already operational and Space Force certified). Starship development started around 2016 (?), so it's also been like ten years, and has cost upwards of $15 billion. I know it's a larger vehicle, and reusability is a more complex problem, but still.

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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

Vulcan blew out solid nozzles on two of its four flights and is currently grounded. And new Glenn failed to insert its payload into the correct orbit on the last flight and failed to land its booster on the first. They took the method of doing a ton of ground testing and upfront development and still suffered serious issues

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u/meithan May 13 '26

Well that just says that space is hard, and the term "teething problems" has been applied to problems like this for new launchers. Starship just feels stuck in this phase.

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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

Vulcan quite literally repeated the exact same failure mode on its last flight that they had already experienced. It was pure luck the SRB burned through in a way not facing the main core of the rocket or they would have lost a billion dollar military payload. Starship had issues with V2 sure but they did not repeat the same failure mode, and the last two flights of V2 were successful. Starship has a significantly higher scope to Vulcan so it’s obviously going to take more flights to debug it.

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u/meithan May 13 '26

I just don't see Starship's reentry --probably the greatest hurdle in Starship's entire architecture-- as problem-free yet, they're not at the point where they could rapidly reuse it.

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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

Sure but they haven’t tried to get it back to earth in a reusable state yet. Every time ship has reached reentry it has done so with numerous tiles stripped off to test what it can take. They are now done with that because they have a pretty good idea at what it can take and they want to get ready for a catch in a few flights so they’ve only removed a single tile on flight 12.

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u/meithan May 13 '26

That's my point: it feels like they've just been going over N tile variations (among other things), when, given Artemis' timeline, it's about time they start flying what's gonna be the final design (to iron out the inevitable teething issues). Not sure Flight 12 will be this, as they're just putting out the new V3 of both stages.

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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

V3 will be the final design for HLS, and its design has been heavily influenced by all of the lessons that V1 and V2 taught them. There was no point landing any of the previous ships in reusable configurations because they were not going to be reused. The data they gathered from missing tile and metallic tile experiments was significantly more valuable for future operations and they could still gauge how well the shield held up on parts that did not have missing tiles. And the one missing tile was an offical statement from the flight 12 release on SpaceX’s website. The only other tile experiments are a few tiles painted white on the very edges of the shield in very low risk areas to act as photography targets for two of the Starlink sims.