![In this illustration, SpaceX's Starship vehicle is seen landing on the Moon.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Starship1-800x450.jpg)
NASA
Last Friday, NASA awarded a $3.4 billion contract to a team led by Blue Origin for the design and construction of a second Human Landing System to fly astronauts right down to the Moon.
The announcement capped a furious two-year lobbying campaign by Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos to acquire a coveted piece of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA also notched a giant win, gaining the competition with SpaceX it hunted for landing services. But there’s a more profound takeaway from this.
After losing the initial lander contract to SpaceX two years ago, Blue Origin did not only bid a lower cost this time around. As an alternative, it radically transformed the means by which it might put humans on the Moon. The Blue Moon lander is now completely reusable; it can remain in lunar orbit, going up and right down to the surface. It can be serviced by a transport vehicle that might be fueled in low-Earth orbit after which deliver propellant to the Moon. This transporter, in turn, might be refilled by multiple launches of the reusable Recent Glenn rocket.
To be certain, that’s of hardware that has yet to be built and tested. But after we step back, there’s one inescapable fact. With SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship, and now Blue Moon, NASA has chosen two vehicles based across the concept of many launches and the aptitude to store and transfer propellant in space.
It is a remarkable transformation in the best way humans will explore outer space—potentially the most important change in spaceflight for the reason that Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957. It has been an extended time coming.
“We knew these were the best ideas a long time ago,” said George Sowers, a professor of mechanical engineering on the Colorado School of Mines. “It’s gratifying to see folks coming around.”
What’s the large deal?
For just about the whole history of spaceflight, humans have tried to brute force things. It took a rocket to place a small satellite into space. It took an even bigger rocket to launch humans. And it took the humongous Saturn V launch vehicle to ultimately put two humans on the surface of the Moon. The plan was all the time to pack the whole lot needed for a mission—including propellant—onto a single rocket.
But this seems to be a very, really inefficient technique to do things. Imagine you need to drive from Miami to Alaska without stopping at a gas station. Even with an efficient automobile, it might take about 150 gallons of gas. Well, a tank that big won’t fit into your trunk. No problem—you will drive a full-size pickup and put a 250-gallon tank within the bed. It matches, barely. But there is a problem. You have added an additional ton to your truck, and your fuel efficiency drops. So now you’ve to drag a big trailer with a good larger gasoline tank. That is the tyranny of the rocket equation.
“The further you need to go in space, the mass of the propellant increases exponentially,” Sowers said.
Large rockets can be incredibly expensive. For instance, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket alone costs greater than $2.75 billion per launch, and that does not include the value of a payload.
The answer to this problem involves several steps. The primary is distributed launch. Two Falcon Heavy rockets, or 4 Falcon 9 rockets, can launch as much mass as NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. The worth for either option could be substantially lower than $275 million, or one-tenth the price of a single NASA launch. This exists today, and more partially reusable rockets are on the best way.