Nasa award SpaceX moon landing contract

[chris_leyson]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56781556
That came as a bit of a surprise. So are NASA still going to use SLS to get the astronauts into lunar orbit ? NASAs source selection statement is here https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf
SpaceX also got the contract to put two sections of the lunar gateway into orbit on Falcon heavy launches.

[rdl]

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis-team/

I'm a little disappointed that Dynetics Alpaca is left out, but I'm sure SpaceX will get the job done. Obviously cost was a major factor as was the amount of testing SpaceX included in their proposal.

[chris_leyson]

I had thought that Dynetics would get the contract followed by Blue Origin because the Starship upper stage has a dry mass of 115 tonnes and that is going to need a lot of fuel for ascent and descent. Maybe allow an extra 100 tonnes for fuel, I couldn't find the figures for a fully fuelled upper stage. That's one hell of a lot of mass to slow down even at 1/6G. Good luck SpaceX

[obuone]

Dynetic have negative weight budget, they cant lift the craft off the ground.

Scott Manley made very nice video on the topic