The View Of And From Bruce McCandless While Conducting The First Untethered EVA And Preliminary Test-flight

My thoughts on the upcoming IFT-3 flight of Starship-Super Heavy

As of writing (12th of February), IFT-3 is currently scheduled to occur later this month, but it could still easily get delayed.

My prediction is that IFT-3 will probably achieve orbit and will probably conduct an internal propellant-transfer, but that the upper stage (SN28) will probably suffer a failure of some kind during reëntry, either being destroyed or deviating far from its targetted splashdown-zone.

It's safe to say that successful reëntry is unlikely on IFT-3. Here's why:

The Starship upper stage will be the largest reëntry-vehicle ever built.

This reëntry profile (a belly-first reëntry with four fins used for stability) is unique and has never been done before. Starship's belly-first orientation is inherently ærodynamically unstable, which is why it needs constant corrections from the four fins. It could get trapped in a nose-first or tail-first orientation, both of which might be more stable. Else, a loss of control would just result in endless tumbling.

We've already seen heatshield-tiles falling off during IFT-1 and IFT-2. In fact, more fell off the latter than the former due to higher ærodynamic pressures and engine vibrations.

A failure during reëntry would be consistent with the general pattern of testflight-failures established so far. Essentially, each flight is a failure, but less of a failure than the previous one.

Honestly, I don't know what could happen to the first stage booster (B10). SpaceX knows how to do boostback-burns and propulsive landings. It's seemingly just a matter of preventing the vehicle from blowing itself up. Engine reliability will probably determine the booster's success.

It'll be interesting to watch nonetheless.

The fate of the Artemis Programme now depends on the success of these test flights and in SpaceX rapidly developing and utilising this reüsable launch-system. Development has been ongoing for over five years now, and the vehicle has yet to reach orbit. The landing of astronauts on the Moon is scheduled for September 2026. How likely is it that SpaceX will have humans on the Moon in just two and a half years from now?

Rainbow Rayleigh Moon. Rayleigh scattering is responsible for this phenomenon.

We’re made of stars

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Blue Moon really should go first. It's a more practical, less ambitious design, with better inherent safety. We shouldn't splash out on the towering ambitious megarocket just because we can. That stuff should come later, once we've gained confidence and experience. That should be obvious.

NASA does not need a lander with a dry mass of 100+ tonnes to put 2–8 astronauts on the Moon. The lander's excessive size and mass actually make several problems, such as the hatch being 30 m above the ground and there needing to be a crew elevator system with no current plan for a backup if it fails.

Big spaceship does not equal good spaceship. Don't be fooled by spectacle and awe. Starship HLS is ill-suited to taking humans to the surface of the Moon. The best case for it is as a heavy cargo vehicle, perhaps in service of a Moonbase. Again, that comes later. Skylab after Mercury-Redstone, not before.

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.

Challenger thrusting, STS-41B, 3-11 February 1984.

1989: ‘Shuttle Evolution “Block II”’

(sorry for low resolution, I cannot find a higher-res version anywhere)

1989: A concept drawing for a never-realised next-generation Space Shuttle, capable of carrying 8 astronauts and possibly over 30 tonnes to low-Earth orbit. The most noteworthy feature is the detachable cockpit with engines which could serve as a launch escape-system or a lifeboat during an incident in-orbit. It was to use its lifting body, wings, and body flap to glide to a runway and presumably land on skids. The escape system would enable a crew's escape at any point during launch or orbital flight.

Comments and observations

The inclusion of this escape-system in the orbiter would necessitate a gap in the heatshield at the nose, one of the hottest parts of the vehicle during re-entry. That's obviously a big problem. Further, a pad-abort would seem to be very impractical. 3 seconds at 8 Gs would only send the capsule about 2 km high, probably not high enough to glide towards the nearest runway, especially with those stubby wings. Perhaps an emergency parachute system and a splashdown of the capsule would have been more sensible?

Other changes to the orbiter seem to be in the interest of improving gliding performance, such as two wing-tip vertical stabilisers instead of one tail-mounted one (to eliminate wing-tip vortices), shrinkage of the orbital manœuvring system pods by relocation of the OMS's propellant-tanks into the wings, and the addition of canards which would probably yield greater pitch-authority during landing.

The system also proposes replacement of the solid rocket boosters with liquid-hydrogen–fuelled boosters. These could provide a greater payload capacity, as well as greater control of thrust during ascent, and the possibility of an emergency engine shutdown, improving the crew's safety. The biggest and most obvious downside would be increased cost. The drawing doesn't specify whether the LFBs are intended to recover themselves by deploying parachutes, but what's certain is that saltwater generally damages delicate chemical rocket engines, so they probably couldn't just plop into the ocean like the real Shuttle's SRBs did.

The Moon is unconventionally beautiful

The Moon is round, blotchy, spotty, rough-skinned, 'imperfect'. Try and tell me The Moon isn't beautiful.

Take a picture of The Moon with your phone. Looks bad, right? Cameras have a habit of taking something beautiful and making it look bad.

[Image description: a dark, blurry iPhone picture of the Moon and some distant artificial lights. The only detail that can be made out is the crescent shape. End ID]

Some more facts about The Moon

The surface is darker than asphalt.

It isn't symmetrical. The farside has more craters and less maria than the nearside.

Some people see a face on it. This is known as 'The Man on The Moon'

It takes moonlight 1.2 seconds to reach Earth at the speed of light

I feel like the world could benefit from a realistic visual sci-fi that heavily focuses on characters and moods. Space as it really is has a huge potential for moods. The way in which space exposes humans to all number of dangers, physical and psychological, is something that has not really been explored enough.

I doubt that every space habitat will have spin gee. If we understand our current political system, we can assume that a freefall, non-rotating habitat would be cheaper to live in. People who decide to move to space for whatever reason will use their life savings to find a cramped, tiny cupboard in some space station.

Your bones get thinner. Your eyesight gets worse. Your blood pressure goes down. You don't feel as hungry. Your muscles shrink. Your skin loses all its tan from hiding in the dark. The tops of your feet get calicoes from hooking onto things.

You get depressed. Isolated. Claustrophobic. Tired of seeing the same room every day. Irritable. Irrational. Anxious. After a long time, atheists would turn superstitious.

These things have been explored a bit from what I've seen, but they seem to be background elements of some greater story. Maybe it's just not possible to make this topic the focus of a movie. The closest I've seen is Ad Astra, which is an okay movie.

We will eventually spend years in space. Someday, people will be born there. We will be sickly and depressed, even with spin gee. This would have signified the ultimate migration of human living from the natural to the mechanical. From death by biology to death by astrodynamics. Where you have to be a technical genius to not die if something malfunctions.

Space is not luxurious. People won't actively choose to move there en masse without a good reason. Migration into space will take hundreds of years.

Don't get me wrong, The Expanse is one of my favourite shows, but I don't watch it for the combat and politics.

crystalworksgallery on ig

Great shots of China’s Chang’e 4 lander, the first Chinese spacecraft to make a soft landing on the surface of the Moon. These were taken from the Yutu 2 robotic rover.

Interesting to note, the Yutu 2’s mission was supposed to last only 3 days, but it’s exceeded that by 362 days!

More can be seen at moon.bao.ac.cn