[00:00:00.

190] - Speaker 1
Let's talk about how human beings are going to return to the Moon in this decade. The Artemis
program is spearheaded almost entirely by NASA, with a few partner space agencies and private
companies helping out along the way. Chief among them all being SpaceX, who are tasked with
delivering the lunar starship vehicle that will actually allow astronauts to touch down on the Moon's
surface for the first time in over 50 years. As with all things in the spaceflight industry, the Artemis
program is in a constant state of flux. Timelines and flight plans are being revised and rewritten as
different variables come into play. It can be a bit difficult to keep track of. So today we are focusing in
on how SpaceX and NASA are going to return a human presence to the moon. Even though SpaceX is
essentially just functioning as a NASA subcontractor in the grand scheme of the Artemis program,
they are also responsible for delivering the biggest, most powerful, and arguably, most important part
of the entire moon landing mission, the lunar starship. The human landing system is a giant missing
piece in the NASA equation. They have the SLS launcher to provide the muscle to lunar orbit, and they
have the Orion spacecraft that can support the crew of four on a trip around the moon and bring them
back home again safely.

[00:01:25.070] - Speaker 1
But they don't have any vehicle in their line up that can carry the crew down from Orion to the moon to
the surface and send them back up again. So they outsource that job to the private sector. Back in the
olden days of the Apollo program, NASA was able to fit a small lunar lander into the same rocket that
launched their Command Module. The landing craft was stashed away in the cargo fairing of the
Saturn V just below the service module. Once the upper stage of the rocket was coasting in orbit, the
service module and capsule would separate together and fly out a short distance. Then come around
and return to dock the nose of the command module into the lunar module. Then once they were
connected, the service module thrusters would extract the lander from the upper stage of the rocket,
and they would all fly to the moon together as one unit. Also, this was the 1960s, so that whole
maneuver had to be performed manually by a pilot. No automation available. Logistically, that whole
system just doesn't work for the modern Artemis program. For one, the SLS doesn't offer the same lift
capability as the old Saturn V.

[00:02:29.570] - Speaker 1
The Apollo era rocket could deliver 43 metric tons to the moon, while SLS maxes out at 27 tons, which
is enough to send the Orion capsule and service module, but not much more. Sls has more thrust at
liftoff than Saturn V, but a lower weight capacity. You might be wondering, what's the deal with that?
Put simply, rocket equations are a nightmare. We're going to come back to this in a minute, so just
keep that in mind. But even if there was more power available, NASA doesn't want to just get by
anymore with a flimsy little stow away moon lander. The whole point of Artemis is to establish a
strong and permanent human presence on the moon. To do that, we need the sturdy as landing
vehicle possible, one that can deliver heavy infrastructure while also supporting a crew for their
weeklong excursions to the lunar surface. This is where the Artemis program becomes a tale of two
gigantic rockets. Spacex was awarded the first human landing system contract by NASA because
their vehicle was by far the biggest and most powerful option. It may not have been the most
practical, but at the same time, SpaceX had already been making good progress on launch hardware
like the Raptor engine and had a very solid track record of success with Falcon Nine and Falcon
Heavy.

[00:03:45.640] - Speaker 1
So NASA took Elon Musk at his word that his people would get it figured out by 2025. And they've
been doing a pretty good job at that so far. Starship flew for the first time in April 2023, and then it
exploded, which was not ideal. But that's not the end of the world either. Spacex can chalk that up as
a learning experience and will make an even better attempt sometime later this summer, maybe as
early as June. The lunar starship that is going to fly to the moon will be pretty similar to the designs
that we've seen so far being tested at Boca Chica, but with a few key differences. The most
significant being that the lunar starship will never re enter Earth's atmosphere, so it won't require the
black heat shield or the big aeroflaps at the nose and tail of the upper stage. Those won't serve any
function on the moon. After shedding that excess weight, starship will need a bunch of upgrades to
function as a lunar lander, chief among those being a new set of landing legs. There won't be any
chopstick armed Mechazil towers waiting on the moon. The spinny legs that we saw on the earlier
starship prototypes won't do either.

[00:04:50.610] - Speaker 1
The lunar starship needs a wide, stable footprint to land on, something more similar to a Falcon Nine
booster. And the ship will also require landing thrusterss as well. We've seen these in a few
renderings mounted on the side of the vehicle. These are going to be necessary to steer the ship on
its descent to the lunar surface. Starships designed to land on Earth and Mars use aeroflaps to steer,
but there's no air on the Moon, so that doesn't work. The Moon doesn't have very much gravity either,
so it's also very likely that the Raptor engines are just too powerful for landing on the Moon or even
launching from the surface. Not unless we want to add another crater to the Moon's complexion.
Spacex will also need to devise an elevator system for their lunar starship. Since the lower two thirds
of the 50 meter tall ship are taken up by fuel tanks, the crew are going to need some help to travel the
30 odd meters that separate them from the ground. This is also going to be critical for deploying
payloads to the lunar surface. Luckily, the gravity on the Moon is one sixth of the Earth, so the lift
doesn't have to be particularly strong, just reliable.

[00:05:57.520] - Speaker 1
Above the cargo hold will need to be a crew quarters. That should be no problem considering the
gigantic nine meter wide empty space left at the top of the ship. For just two people, it's going to be
plenty spacious for a weeklong stay on the Moon. All that SpaceX really needs to do is furnish and
pressurize a few levels within the upper fairing. They have a well proven life support system from the
crew dragon capsule that just needs to be scaled up a bit for these relatively short duration Moon
landings. Figuring out a Mars life support system for Starship is going to be the hard part. And then
lastly, they just need a small docking port up in the tip of the nose cone, something that SpaceX can
also just lift from the dragon capsule. This is how the Orion crew will link up with the Starship and
transfer between vehicles. All of that stuff we just talked about is going to be a ton of work for
SpaceX to accomplish over the next two years. But there is still one more significant hurdle to
overcome. Remember, we were talking earlier about the rocket equation.

[00:06:55.970] - Speaker 1
There is more to putting stuff into space than just raw power alone. The Starship Super Heavy
Booster offers up to twice the thrust of the old Saturn V, and it can deliver twice the payload to the
Moon, 100 metric tons. And that payload also comes wrapped up inside a gigantic nine meter wide by
50 meter tall stainless steel spaceship. But there is one major caveat here. On its own, using only the
fuel that it launches with, Starship cannot go beyond low Earth orbit. By the time Starship gets just a
couple of hundred miles above the Earth's surface, it runs out of gas. So in order to go any higher, like
say to the Moon, Starship needs to refuel. Specifically, it needs a lot more of the cryogenic liquid
oxygen and a bit more liquid methane. So before lunar Starship even becomes a legit possibility,
SpaceX actually needs to first perfect the tanker starship. The tanker variant is going to be a totally
stripped down upper stage vehicle. No wings, no heat shield, no legs, no cargo fairing, just fuel tanks
from top to bottom. But even with the extra large tanks, the ship will need to burn most of its own fuel
just to reach orbit.

[00:08:07.130] - Speaker 1
That means that a reusable filler ship will have to go up and dock with the tanker to add more oxygen
and methane to the reservoir. But again, even carrying nothing but fuel, the ship still has to burn most
of it just to reach orbit. So it's going to require multiple docking manoevers just to fill one tanker ship
with enough propellant to then refill the lunar starship with enough to get it to the moon. That's going
to get really expensive really fast unless SpaceX can master the fully reusable upper stage ship. Elon
Musk has said it can be as little as four tanker trips. Others have claimed as many as 16 launches will
be required to fill one lunar starship. And before the lunar starship can be verified for human
spaceflight, SpaceX will need to perform one uncrewed demonstration landing on the moon prior to
Artemis III. This puts a lot of pressure on SpaceX to deliver not just one functional starship that can
make it into orbit and come back down again in one piece, but they have to make a lot of them, and
they don't have a whole lot of time left to do it.