Because if you launch something from Earth, you inherit the Earth’s orbital speed around the Sun. At that point, whatever you launched will just continue to orbit the Sun. It takes less energy to accelerate to a solar system exit trajectory than it does to scrub off all of the excess velocity and end up on a trajectory that intersects the Sun.

There’s a point at which you learn more from actually building something and putting it through its paces than simulating. It’s a tough balance to strike , no argument there. Simulating until you’ve covered every conceivable edge case and failure mode is ludicrously costly and time consuming. Relying entirely on yeeting shit and seeing how it fails risks missing the edge cases. But so far, I’ve seen little reason to doubt that SpaceX has found a working balance between simulation and practical testing. They’re certainly progressing faster than the industry historically has and the F9 has had no failures, even partial ones, in over 200 flights. That’s a track record that most launch vehicles can’t meet. It’s definitely possible there’s a 1/1000 flaw in the Falcon 9, but until it actually happens and they lose a rocket and/or a payload (gods willing it won’t be crew), it’s nothing but a hypothetical “but what if…” scenario.

No they didn’t. They had, a mockup of an empty shell into which they might eventually fit the vehicle. And they still have that.

Blue Origin: “Here’s renders and a papier-mâchė model of what our lander will look like. It’s assembled together in lunar orbit, from an automated cargo ship, our own lander and another Orion.” Note that this isn’t what they won the option b proposal with.

SpaceX: “Here’s renders of what our lander will look like. We have a full scale prototype out in Boca and we’re blowing it up to see if our math and simulations are right on how much pressure the tanks can take. It’ll require some modifications, such as larger landing legs and dedicated landing engines.” And their HLS proposal isn’t a vehicle carried in the Starship’s cargo bay, it is the Starship.

what you’re failing to understand is that this 2.94 billion dollar bid was already AFTER they were informed of the budget changes.

I can find no source for SpaceX’s initial bid being higher, let alone 2x higher (to meet your claim that they bid on the same level as BO, not even gonna consider Dynetics).If you have one, I’d like to see it. And if it is the case that SpaceX was picked because they were willing to slash their bid in half, then I would expect BO’s follow-up litigation to be based around that. Instead, BO focused on the claim that NASA didn’t give their proposal proper evaluation and consideration.

I doubt minimizing corporate loss was Lueder’s motivation there. Presumably neither Steve Cook or Jeff Bezos offered Lueders a large enough bribe job matching her qualifications.

That wasn’t my point. The point was that if their proposal had been closer to the budget set aside for the award, as opposed to being double the budget, they might have been contacted to see if they could complete the contract for the lesser amount.

SpaceX didn’t need a mockup to present. They had prototypes of the base vehicle and a proposal for necessary modifications to perform the contract duties and an established track record of developing ambitious rocket engines and launch vehicles. BO had bits and pieces of other things they were gonna bolt together and a pretty model of how it’ll look like, we swear, scout’s honor. But if you’re talking about the Blue Moon that eventually won the secondary bid, that’s not what they initially proposed.Blue Moon Mk2 is a variant of a lander that’s been in development since 2016, so two years longer than SpaceX’s Starship prototypes. The one that’s planned for a lunar landing this year, Blue Moon Mk1, isn’t the one they bid for HLS. It’s a robotic lander, smaller than the HLS’s Mk2. So fancy that, they won a HLS contract when they bid a variant of something they were already working on, much like SpaceX did. And remember, BO is developing a lander. SpaceX is developing a fully reusable super heavy lift rocket, an interplanetary transport craft and a lunar lander as part of the same package.

AFTER being told to do so. That’s the entire problem. Blue Origin and Dynetics both came forward and said they’d gladly match that bid, but since they didn’t get the special information that was only given to SpaceX, they couldn’t know this.

Finish reading my post. SpaceX’s initial bid was 2.94 billion and the final award was 2.89 billion. Again, they agreed that they can do the job for 50 million less than what they originally bid. BO’s and Dynetics’ proposals would’ve suffered a much larger hit. And sure, BO got the secondary contract for 3.4 billion, after rethinking their entire proposal. So why did they not submit that one in the first place? If they had, they might have gotten a similar call.

Is it? Starship has been in development since at least 2012-ish (as the “mars colonial transport” or “its” or “bfr” or a few other names). It hasn’t done a succesful mission yet. ULA’s Vulcan was anounced in 2014, and it works just fine. So I don’t really think it’s actually faster or better, but it IS more showy.

The first time Starship was spoken of was in 2012, yes. The very first idealistic designs of it. The design that’s actually being tested is from 2018. So 5 years to go from “Alright, this is what we’re gonna do” to full stack flight testing. Roughly on pace with their previous rockets, the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 took about 4 years.

Absolute and complete lie. Its exactly the opposite. SpaceX did not, and still DOES NOT have a solid design or mockup of HLS. Dynetics and Blue Origin had both.

Blue Origin had (and still has) no experience with human-rated capsules. Their proposed lander had to be assembled in lunar orbit or launched on another SLS. The Dynetics lander was over its own mass budget. It was literally too heavy to do the job it was being proposed for. Meanwhile, SpaceX proposed a derivative of what they were already working on. Blue and Dynetics had no practical development done on their landers, they would’ve relied on the HLS award to even get started on actual development.

The problem is that SpaceX had a bid at the same level of the others, but they lowered it when Kathy Lueders gave them a call (and not the other parties) to lower it. This is spelled out in NASA’s own document:

SpaceX’s bid was just under 3B. Blue Origin bid at a bit under 6B. Dynetics wanted 9B. This information is freely available online. SpaceX was also given the least in design development funding, with 135 million versus Blue’s 579 million and Dynetics’ 253 million. It’s not terribly shocking that a company with a good track record and the lowest bid wins a contract.

No, the contract stated that anything between zero and three were options, based on funding. They said the goal was two, but then budget was reduced. Nobody was told this. The number of contracts was also reduced to one as a result. Nobody was told this. And then Kathy Lueders gave SpaceX a call, and not the others, to share this information.

They needed a lander contract. The entire Artemis project was already fucked when it comes to the timetable, but delaying the HLS contract would’ve made things even worse. And when the budget got cut, they negotiated with the one bidder who was deemed most likely to still get the job done with the lower budget, as opposed to the other two whose bids were wildly over what NASA could give them. SpaceX bid at 2.94 billion and the final award was 2.89 billion. Again, BO bid 6 billion and Dynetics bid 9 billion. Losing 50 million is an easier pill to swallow than getting half or a third of what you need.

Point 1: SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development. With the Falcon 9, that process proved wildly efficient and successful, culminating in a launch vehicle so reliable that it’s cheaper to insure a payload on an F9 that already has multiple launches under its belt than a brand new booster. And they’re turning enough of a profit to develop the Starship largely on internal funds, seeing how the early Raptor flight tests were before the HLS contract.

Point 2: Just adding, the Raptor engine is the first full-flow staged combustion engine to ever get off a testing stand and actually fly. The engineering complexity of these things is on the level of the Shuttle’s RS-25.

Point 3: SpaceX were the only ones with more than designs and mockups to present, and they had a reliable track history from working with NASA on the commercial resupply and crew projects. And I see no problem with awarding a contract to a bid that actually fits into the budget.

Point 4: Multiple options was always part of the plan. NASA wants redundancy, so that if one of the providers runs into problems, the other provider can continue (and perhaps even take up the slack) instead of everything coming to a grinding halt. For a perfect example, look at the Shuttle and Commercial Crew programs. The Shuttle got grounded and since it was NASA’s only manned launcher, they had to bum rides from the russians. In contrast, the CC contract was awarded to Boeing and SpaceX. With Starliner’s continued issues, SpaceX has picked up the slack and fulfilled more than their initial contract in launches, instead of NASA having to bum rides from the russians again. The initial HLS contract was supposed to go to two providers, until the budget got cut. Blue’s bid was always the favorite for the second pick.

I think in two languages and sometimes one of them is better for expressing my thoughts, even if it’s not the language that we’ve been using for the conversation so far. And sometimes it just happens mid-sentence.

Russia’s inability to conquer any of its neighbors is irrelevant. The possibility of them even attempting is unacceptable if you share a border with Russia. Sure, maybe Putin can’t hope to depose your government, but the destruction and deaths before his failure are still a horrifying reality that’ll take years, possibly decades, to recover from.

As for why Sweden felt the need to join, despite not having a single meter of border with Russia, it’s because Finland felt the need to join. The two countries are tightly bound and do not want to end up on the opposite sides of a war. Now they’re much less likely to.

First off…

So I have no idea how you can pretend that you are doing them a service by actauly actively stopping them from making their own choice to go where they can for search of better life.

Now, perhaps it’s creative interpretation on my part, but it came across as you implying I’m arguing for their best interests. Apologies, if that’s not the case.

Secondly, whether you like it or not, there’s more to consider than the lives of these refugees or any that would follow. National security and the security of the Schengen zone. The very likely tensions and conflicts between the refugees already housed here and the newly arrived Russians. I assure you, when emotions run high, it won’t matter if everyone involved are innocent civilians. And our own history of Russia attempting to use the local Russian population as a weapon. That was under Putin’s rule, I don’t find it unreasonable to think he’d do it again.

And finally, I’m not letting you ignore the inconvenient fact that we don’t have the resources. It may not have been the point of the article, but it’s most definitely a factor in the decision. Because the reality is that these people would need help, because practically everyone who was rich enough to snag plane tickets, or had VISAs, and wanted to leave has already left. They did that over the first year of the war. These people need housing, food and healthcare, none of which they can provide for themselves. The reality is that if we let them in, we have a sharp spike in homelessness. Soon after, a spike in people needing healthcare. Around the same time, a rise in crime, as some of the refugees are unwilling or unable to get jobs. Followed by another spike in people needing healthcare. And during all that, families freezing to death in the streets. But I suppose all of that is fine if they’re searching for a better life, yes?

Just out of curiosity, where are you from?

You’ll note that at no point did I claim that turning them away is in their best interests. I’d appreciate it if you stopped telling me what I said.

And yes, forbidding them passage through the country is what “closing the borders” means. Very astute of you. Not like they’d get to go anywhere anyway, seeing how they have neither a Schengen VISA nor a EU passport. So all those masses would be ours to deal with. Again, we don’t have the resources to do that. It’s a point you seem intent on ignoring.

And how can someone so unfamiliar with the situation preach, with such conviction, to the uneducated and clearly right-wing xenophobic untermenschen who actually have to deal with it?

You speak as though we’re closing the borders with a giant “fuck you” to the people on the other side. We can’t help them. Can’t. Not won’t, but can’t. We don’t have the resources to help them. You can talk about the EU being rich as fuck all day, but the reality on the ground is that we have nothing left to give to help these people, because all that wealth isn’t here. We’re stretched thin as it is.

You ever heard the saying “Don’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else warm”? Because that’s what you’re proposing.

You are clearly unfamiliar with Estonian winters. The days are below freezing, often in double digits. Anyone not sheltered will freeze to death. And where, pray tell, would we shelter them? Refugee shelters? Full of Ukrainians. Hotels are full of Ukrainians. There’s a Ukrainian family living across the street from me, because a call went out for private residences to house Ukrainian refugees and my neighbor took his family and moved in with his parents. There’s nowhere left.

But please, continue to tell me how we’re not doing enough by giving all the help we had to give to the first victims of this war.