Space News Live 60

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:01][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Welcome to the Space Dot Up livestream.

[00:00:35]I do this livestream every week at the same time. So, if you're watching live, thank you for watching live. And if you're watching later, thank you for doing that. So, first of all, let's bring up the banner. I'm at uh @space_dot_up. You can find me on X. Uh so, I post links to my videos on there.

[00:00:53]Um so, please follow Please follow if you're on X. And before we get into the the videos, so uh the the my usual What I do usually every week is I recap my videos with slides, images, uh and videos from the from those the videos I've done already. And um I I read out comments from um uh comments people have left and any chat messages. So, that's the usual format. So, first of all, we have someone in the house. And we have Joshua uh uh Joshua Hashaw. Uh first time watching live. Thank you for watching live.

[00:01:34]Do appreciate it.

[00:01:36]So, before I get into the videos, let's just go over a few terms NASA and the other space agencies love to use acronyms and don't always explain them in the livestream, so I'll just explain them now just so everyone's on the same page.

[00:01:52]So, Artemis uh is NASA's moon base plans. We'll be talking a lot about um the moon base uh in this live stream. Um The two videos I've done this week were on the LTV pivot.

[00:02:05]That's the moon rover pivot. Um and then we're talking about the update to the Artemis moon base plans based on a NASA conference this week. So that that is the plan.

[00:02:20]And also space news.

[00:02:22]Um so RHU stands for radioisotope heating unit or hot rocks in a box. It's just basically a box that is warm. It's kept warm because there's radioactive elements inside. They give off uh heat and that can be used to heat a lunar lander or a lunar rover. So that's that's an RHU.

[00:02:45]CLPS or CLPS, commercial lunar payload services. You pronounce it CLPS. And this is just NASA's um commercial approach to landing payloads on on the moon. Basically a private company develops a lunar lander um and then NASA buys payloads to go on a lander and the private company is responsible for operating, uh developing the lander and so on. So there's been four of those missions.

[00:03:14]Only one's been completely successful.

[00:03:17]That's Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission. The other The other three have either failed completely or not been 100% successful.

[00:03:27]And there'll be a CLPS 2.0 coming along.

[00:03:30]ISRU, in situ resource utilization. It means living off the land. It means using local resources, moon, moon soil, uh and processing it to produce useful uh materials. That could be like cement-like material for construction or metals or oxygen or something like that.

[00:03:50]And LTV would be talking about a lot. A lunar terrain vehicle it just means moon rover. It's it's what NASA calls moon rovers. So, LTV. And in fact it that goes straight into the first video this week, which is on the LTV pivot from NASA. So, NASA originally wanted to buy one gold plated moon rover. I call it gold plated meaning very very expensive. It does everything you want it to do.

[00:04:20]But um it was going to cost probably billions.

[00:04:23]Um so, they pivoted away from that into having multiple simpler uh rovers. Um so, we're going to talk about that in in in this video.

[00:04:35]So, So, you got a you got a rover on the moon and you want to go from the landing pad to the habitat. You want to survey the area. You want to um you know, look for a good base of operations. You want to find local resources. And for that you really need a rover and uh this this slide kind of uh helps explain.

[00:05:00]So, you can see this big circle. This is Shackleton crater. The the green star is actually the the South Pole. That's it literally where the South Pole is.

[00:05:09]You got the small circle here. This is how how far an astronaut could walk in a day, 2 km. Uh and that's being generous.

[00:05:17]Um so, that's the amount of distance you can explore of the area you could explore. Um and then this much bigger circle is how much area you could explore if you could drive, if you have an LTV.

[00:05:31]So, LTVs can travel at 10 km an hour.

[00:05:35]So, if you're driving if you're driving in straight line for 1 hour, you can you can travel 10 km. In practice it's less than that cuz you'd have to zigzag. But basically you can you can travel a lot further with a with a rover.

[00:05:49]So, you can get a lot more science done, a lot more exploration. So, that's that's the the reason you want to use a rover.

[00:05:58]Uh NASA has made it clear with this pivot. So, this is change. Originally, the the LTVs would be um basically, the service would be bought by NASA when NASA astronauts were on the surface. Uh if they needed to teleoperate autonomously operate the LTV, they could do it from Earth. And they would just buy hours or days of use.

[00:06:22]So, that's changed. Now, phases one and two, uh the rovers are for exclusive use by NASA. And only at phase three in 2032 uh are these LTVs opened up to commercial users. So, that's a negative for space startups. They can no no longer rent out a rover for a couple of hours or a couple of days for use. Uh they now have to wait until phase three.

[00:06:49]NASA's got exclusive use for the first two phases. Uh the reason I think NASA's doing that is they think they need a lot of moon rovers. They need carry out a lot of activities.

[00:07:00]Now, putting payloads on the surface and basically scouting the area, surveying the area, and also doing site preparation.

[00:07:10]Moving rocks and pebbles out of the way, clearing the ground. And so, that's going to take a lot of time and a lot of rovers. So, I think this is why phase one and phase two are now exclusively for for the for NASA.

[00:07:26]So, one thing I I didn't include in this video is is that there are the three contenders.

[00:07:35]Uh you have Astrolab with a Flex Rover.

[00:07:37]You have Intuitive Machines with a Moon Racer. And you have Lunar Outpost with an Eagle.

[00:07:45]And we have we have Hill of Dirt 6023. Doesn't that kind of make sense for NASA to make sure they secure the base and to be able to focus on getting ready before turning them over to companies. It does make It does make sense. I agree. It just isn't good for far space startups because they were planning or they had access to these LTVs for their own purposes and now they've lost access. And if they were to put their own lunar rover on the moon, that would be very very expensive and small startups couldn't afford to do that. So it's It makes sense for NASA, but it It's not good for small space startups.

[00:08:30]So anyway, so what I didn't include in this video and it was pointed out to me is that Intuitive Machines, in addition to their premium moon racer, have introduced smaller rovers. So there's a moon finder and I think a moon ranger. These are cut-down more basic versions of their premium version.

[00:08:53]And also, in the case of lunar outpost, you have this version called Pegasus, which is a cut-down version of the eagle. So this is a slim slim slimmer lighter LTV and this is because of NASA's pivot.

[00:09:10]They're asking for lighter weight rovers and I think we have a slide making that clear.

[00:09:18]Um Actually, it's not this one, it's this one. So this is a slide from NASA's ignition event in March and this is where the pivot happened. So they're talking about crewed vehicle to extend extra vehicle activity. That's basically crew in an uh a in a suit. So, the these rovers are unpressurized. You can see like it's not a pressurized area. You're They're fully kitted out with a space suit.

[00:09:47]And um this allows them to basically traverse uh greater distances, up to 10 km, maybe more than 10 km. Like these rovers can travel 10 km/h. But because they're in a space suit, which has 8 hours of life support, and in practice for safety margins, probably 6, 6 and 1/2. You could probably travel for 2 hours, do 2 hours work, then travel back another 2 hours. So, maybe you could get 20 km, 15, 20.

[00:10:16]Um and he notice here 500 uh kilo maximum rover mass. So, that will be important later on in my second video.

[00:10:24]But you can see NASA's specifying the maximum mass of the rover is 500 kilos.

[00:10:31]And it can traverse slopes up to a minus plus or minus 20 degrees. On the moon, it's very rugged. You've got hills, you've got divots.

[00:10:39]And it must be able to survive 150 hours in shadow. There's lots of craters. Um there's no sun.

[00:10:47]And especially that's where the lunar resources are likely to be to be found. So, rovers do need to be able to handle uh darkness for a certain amount of time. And of course, every 2 weeks, the sun sets for 2 weeks. Um so, if the rover can't handle that, then it will just die. Uh which doesn't make which means it's not that useful uh because it happens every 2 weeks on the moon.

[00:11:11]And maximum speed of 10 km/h.

[00:11:15]And this is the procurement. So, the phase one will be very light um rovers.

[00:11:22]Uh that was what NASA was saying anyway at this point. And um basically that's phase one. Then phase two, they will on-ramp some more vendors. so it won't just be the three in all so far. Potentially other companies could bid with their own moon rover designs.

[00:11:41]And the NASA foresees competitions every 18 to 24 months for future rover deliveries as moon base capability needs to evolve. So basically phase one is the first first phase. And there'll be a few rovers on the moon. But then phase two it will ramp up. I think seven more rovers and then phase three an additional four rovers. And these rovers are getting bigger, they're getting more capable, they'll have a robotic arm.

[00:12:08]They'll be able to survive longer on the moon. They'll have a 10-year life lifespan. So you're getting to the the more the fully fully complete moon rover that NASA wanted originally. But that will only be in phase three.

[00:12:25]And so we've gone over that. And here's the slide on mobility.

[00:12:30]So it says here less complicated rovers in phase one just one year design life and NASA is the only user. And basically even though these are simplified rovers, they must be autonomous and they must be able to be teleoperated either locally or perhaps from Earth.

[00:12:47]Just like a NASA operates the the the rovers on on Mars.

[00:12:53]So phase two increased reliability, increased logistics and science payload carrying capacity and the ability to do move regularly lunar soil. At least to demo the ability to move soil. That's scooping up soil, perhaps that kind of thing.

[00:13:11]And also we'll have the JAXA pressurized rover.

[00:13:16]That's from the Japanese space agency.

[00:13:18]That will be phase two.

[00:13:20]And an exploration rover. I think Canada is also providing some kind of rover.

[00:13:26]And also power cable deployment demos in phase two. Then in phase three you get the the premium moon rovers, 10-year lifespan design with a robotic arm and with RHUs, radioisotope heating units, that will keep the rover warm during the lunar night. So, you may not be able to operate them during the lunar night, but when the the day comes back, when the sun comes back up, you'll be able to operate them again. And the rover doesn't die over the lunar night, basically.

[00:13:59]And then we have a hill of dirt 46423, when do you think the JAXA Toyota pressurized lunar cruiser will be ready?

[00:14:06]I think it'll be in the 2030s.

[00:14:09]I phase two I think starts 2032, 2033, something like that. So, it will be in the 2030s. It's a very very capable rover.

[00:14:18]Basically, you can drive long distances.

[00:14:21]You can go you can work in a shirt sleeve environment inside the rover. It has an airlock to go outside. So, it's a very very very very capable rover and Japan will get two astronauts to the lunar surface in trade for use of that rover. So, that's it's great.

[00:14:39]And then we have SBboom4285, could it be that Intuitive Machines will be awarded a contract now since it's the only LTV provider that doesn't need Blue Blue Moon to land these LTVs and can use its own landers. Well, that's a very very good point and that got that plays more into my second video.

[00:15:02]But because of the incident that happened this week, NASA's whole Artemis plans, LTV plans are now up in the air. Who knows what's going to happen.

[00:15:13]I will I will be doing a video next week exploring some of the implications um because it's not clear what's going to happen.

[00:15:22]But as um as SB Boom says, maybe NASA needs to change its LTV rods.

[00:15:31]Um Um who knows, right? But I will I will talk about more more about that in the second video. Um And then Chrissian saying, "What do you think, guys? Just Bezos just did have insurance on that rocket?"

[00:15:47]Um Yeah, it's a very bad situation.

[00:15:51]Uh it's probably going to take them Uh I heard it could take 15 months. Someone who works on those launch pads says, "Best case is 15 months um to rebuild the pad." But um That's We'll talk more about that in the in the second video. So, And this is the kind of thing you'll be be doing on the moon. You'll have multiple rovers. You'll have astronauts.

[00:16:15]Um notice the sun's very very low in the sky in the lunar South Pole. The sun only gets 1 or 2 degrees above the horizon. So, you get these long long shadows.

[00:16:25]Um But yeah, these rovers are great for moving around. And you get a lot of science done, a lot of exploration.

[00:16:33]They can carry payloads. So, anyway, that is the um I think that I've covered the first video. This is the NASA LTV pivot. So, the pivot is from gold-plated, very expensive, single rover to multiple, simpler, lighter rovers. So, that is what NASA decided. And this is the first video I did. So, let's just see what people what kind of comments people left. And then we'll get into the second video, which will explore some of the um some of what happens based on the the the Blue Origin explosion.

[00:17:10]So, anyway, Wingsley was saying, "It's great that all these commercial suppliers are working on all of these G Wiz high-tech equipment, but there has to be a plan for what they're going to do with it. And some hope that this isn't going to be canceled and forgotten in the next administration. Also, what are Europe, Japan, and India doing in all of this? Are they also contributing hardware for the moon? What is Europe's role in Artemis? Japan's? India's? Is there one? So, as as we as one chat message just said, um I had to bring it up here. Where is it?

[00:17:46]Uh Hill of Dirt said, "Uh when do you think JAXA's Toyota pressurized lunar rover will be ready?" So, that is what Japan is doing. That is Japan's major contribution to the Artemis moon base is a pressurized rover being built by Toyota. And you can travel long, long distances within it, hundreds of kilometers. Um Astronauts can stay inside. It's pressurized. They can work in a shirt sleeve environment. They can also suit up, go outside. So, that's a great contribution by Japan. Europe is providing the Argonaut cargo lunar lander capable of landing 1 and 1/2 tons, which may be helpful with the LTV situation, the moon rover situation, which we'll get into in a minute. But, Europe's Argonaut lunar lander could be very helpful there.

[00:18:37]That's I'm just saying.

[00:18:39]They're also providing the multi-purpose habitat that is the habitation module.

[00:18:43]So, this will be the first permanent habitation module on the moon provided by Italy.

[00:18:48]Um That's a bilateral arrangement. It's not ESA.

[00:18:53]But, it's a European contribution. In terms of India, I'm not aware that India's um uh contributing anything at the moment, but they do have launch vehicles, which again could be very useful at for Artemis.

[00:19:07]So, going on um second paragraph, the promo the promotional videos, especially the Lockheed Martin clips, uh which is Oh, yeah, I don't have it in the moment.

[00:19:18]Oh, here it is.

[00:19:20]So, this is a this is an image from the Lockheed Martin um promotional video, and it was on their water-based lunar architecture. I did a whole video on that which you can watch. But, basically, this is the Lockheed Martin um so, he's referring to that.

[00:19:35]So, the Lockheed Martin clip shows what looks like a lunar crater made into a moon base, industrials industrial site.

[00:19:42]Seems to suggest, to me at least, a base with possible dozens of astronauts stationed there.

[00:19:49]That's the futurism at this point. It's probably the 2040s.

[00:19:53]But, if that's the eventual goal, it implies a flying cadence far greater than even today's on the drawing board commercial vehicles I'm going to be ready for. So, I want to do a video on this next week.

[00:20:07]And this is if NASA wants uh high a high number of operations, high flight cadence, it's going to need to maybe think about um the technology and the hardware it uses.

[00:20:19]That's all I'm saying is like I don't think their current approach will allow for high high number of flight operations.

[00:20:28]In my personal opinion. But, that will be a video next week.

[00:20:32]So, Dr. Robert Zubrin, president and co-founder of the Mars Society, said NASA during the Apollo era was purpose-driven. He also said that during the Space Shuttle era, NASA became vendor-driven. The difference between these two approaches is that purpose-driven means spending money to accomplish a goal, while being vendor-driven means NASA is is coming up with goals to spend money.

[00:20:57]Okay, fair point. And the bottom line is what's the plan? What's the timetable?

[00:21:03]Who is going to do what? Are we still vendor-driven or are we purpose-driven?

[00:21:08]So, you know, all good questions. So, the second video will be on NASA's moon-based plans. We got an update, phases 1, 2, and 3. So, that will hopefully help explain the plan a bit more, the timetable. We do have the phases. That's now all changing because of the explosion on Blue Origin. Blue Origin's rocket exploded. So, all the plans have changed, unfortunately. Who is going to do what?

[00:21:35]That's changed as well. Blue Origin is basically out of action. Will not be supporting the Artemis space plan for the next year or two, realistically. And um that's that's the situation, unfortunately. And then we have this uh Matsuura G 21. Uh I uh basically have to comment in Spanish, but in English it reads, "Really, the strategy of having several different suppliers is excellent." And that's basically referring to Where am I? Where am I?

[00:22:06]And that's basically referring to having multiple suppliers for moon rovers rather than just one, which is a great uh it's fantastic approach. It's a better approach. So, that's good news from NASA.

[00:22:19]Um So, let's move on to space startup news. So, this was kind of like moon-based themed as well, but because I was talking about NASA in the first video, I talked about NASA in the next video. I kind of concentrated more on Europe's contribution. Uh I think as Wingsley said, "What's Europe contributing?" So, you can see here, this is a stylized version of the ESA Argonaut uh cargo lunar lander. So, this is one contribution from from ESA, the European Space Agency.

[00:22:54]They're also working on a remote outpost study. So, this is basically you don't want to land on the rim of Shackleton crater because it's dangerous and if you don't get your calculation right, you go into the crater and crash. So, you want to land on a kind of flat area, not too far from the from the crater and then you want to drive up to the rim of the crater to do science. So, the idea is you could land some kind of remote outpost much closer to the crater. You drive from your base camp on your lander to this uh remote camp and then you can camp there for a week or two. You've got basic power, you've got communications.

[00:23:38]You you know, you've got an airlock. Um so, it's kind of like a remote a remote base. So, European Space Agency is looking at this concept. Initially, it'll be for robots.

[00:23:49]It'll keep them warm over the lunar night, but eventually, you could have crew staying here for a week or two.

[00:23:56]Uh so, that is a possible contribution from uh from ESA. And we also have the European Space Agency's Argonaut cargo lander.

[00:24:08]So, someone asks I've just got a bit further. Let me go a bit further on this one.

[00:24:14]Um okay.

[00:24:17]Let me just go to the beginning. Yeah, here it is. Here it is. Here it is. So, someone asks uh what vehicle is launching the ESA Argonaut vehicle. And you can see in this frame exactly what the vehicle here is. This is a Ariane vehicle. This is a heavy launch vehicle uh from Europe and you can see that if you count the boosters, 1 2 3 4. So, this is called Ariane 64. It's It's Ariane 6 with four side boosters and this is the vehicle that is used to deploy the Argonaut there. You can see it's deployed from the second stage and then it travels through space to to the moon and then softly lands hopefully on the surface of the moon. And it can deploy 1 and 1/2 tons of cargo. You've got a ramp. You've also got a robotic arm on the side. You can see that arm on the side.

[00:25:08]Uh and then yeah, it can collect collect lunar soil.

[00:25:13]And then it it goes back Notice now. So, notice the a robotic arm on the side. And that can collect samples from rovers. And then pass that to an ascent element. That can then blast off. This case, this is the lunar gateway, so that's gone. But potentially, you could fly back to Earth with a lunar sample, just like China does.

[00:25:36]And then you could then analyze that sample uh uh uh in a lab on Earth.

[00:25:44]And then we have Chris uh Chris Brian 105 saying, "I hope Blue Origin can recover from the mishap quickly." Well, Jeff Bezos has a lot of money, so I I think they're not going to run out of money, but I think it's going to take 1 to 2 years.

[00:25:58]Likely. Um if you saw the overflying videos, you saw the videos um and the photos of the the the landing pad, sorry, the the launch pad.

[00:26:08]Uh there's there's just uh it seems completely destroyed. Even though the lightning tower, that's a lightning protection tower, that's not That didn't collapse.

[00:26:17]It's bent. The metal's bent. Um so, it looks in a bad way, to be honest.

[00:26:22]Um So, anyway, that is So, I've covered the um Okay. I've covered the the remote base camp concept from Europe. I've covered the cargo lunar lander. And this is um the multi-purpose habitat by Italy.

[00:26:41]So, there's a bilateral agreement between NASA and Italy as to manufacture this multi-purpose habitat. And this is a habitation module. So, there's pressurized volume in in the module, so astronauts can stay there a week or two, and they can also move around. It has It has wheels, and it has power and so on. So, this is probably the first semi-permanent habitation on the moon in the multi-purpose habitat, and that's from Italy, and that gets them one one astronaut to the surface of the moon.

[00:27:17]So, that's three contributions ESA uh ESA is looking at.

[00:27:22]So, I talked about that in the space news. I also talked about uh Isar Aerospace having a um potentially looking to Canada for a spaceport. I think it is in Nova Scotia, and MLS, the Marine Launch Services company, is working with Isar Aerospace, a leading European space startup, uh with their Spectrum rocket. And uh I think do I have Yeah.

[00:27:49]Let's bring up this video just so you get an idea.

[00:27:52]This is where Isar Aerospace is launching from at the moment. It's a two-stage rocket.

[00:27:57]They launch from um Andøya, Norway. It's Arctic conditions, as you can see, very, very cold, which limits their launch capabilities, right? Launch possibilities because of high winds. Um they can't fly that often.

[00:28:12]Uh they're trying to fly a second time this year. They flew a first time last year, and it crashed after 30 seconds.

[00:28:20]This is the launch pad, but they're looking for a launch pad in Canada now.

[00:28:24]Um so, okay, you get the idea.

[00:28:27]So, we'll see where that happens. Um so, that's Isar Aerospace, and let's see what people are saying in the comments. So, we had Wingsley saying, "How is the Italian habitat module going to be transported uh to the moon?" So, we saw in the video it's Ariane 64. Ariane 6, yes. SpaceX Starship, no. Blue Origin's New Glenn, no.

[00:28:50]Blue Moon Lander, oh.

[00:28:54]So, Blue Origin's New Glenn and Blue Moon Lander to be announced. The Italian habitat module reminds me of concept that Lockheed Dynamics Alpaca Lunar Lander swapping out a spacecraft habitat module for a module for a module Lunar habitat module with rover as a kind of payload. Too bad Alpaca Alpaca never got developed. Maybe ESA pursue that in future years.

[00:29:18]Well, it's the Argonaut cargo lander.

[00:29:21]Um So, I I did like the Alpaca Lunar Lander. It was very low, easy to get to the surface. So, I I did like the Dynetics Lunar Lander. Um so, maybe that will they will propose that again in the future. Also, how is Argonaut conveyed from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit? Does Ariane 6 offer an upper stage that can get the job done? Yeah, we saw in the video there's an upper stage.

[00:29:45]Um Ariane 6 4 is a heavy lift vehicle, so it will be able to propel and deploy the Argonaut to the moon where it will land will land on the moon. So, And does Ariane 6 Yeah, so we've covered that. And then Andre Popoff 6958, it would be a good idea to make adapters for a residential modules to connect sealed Lunar rovers. That would be a good idea and it's an idea that Redwire is looking into. Redwire is working on did work on an international birthing and docking adapter for the Lunar Gateway.

[00:30:22]That's going to weigh, but the work they did potentially could be um could be modified to act as a mating adapter between two Lunar habitats. So, you've got two habitats dropped on the moon, you put them together, then you have this mating adapter which basically allows you to go between them.

[00:30:41]Potentially also from lunar rovers such as JAXA to the lunar habitat and you have a mating adapter. So, Redwire is looking into that. It's something NASA is definitely interested in having in basically what they call side docking. That is you dock all these lunar habitats on the surface together.

[00:31:01]So, yep.

[00:31:03]That is something NASA is definitely interested in and is working on.

[00:31:08]And we have SB Boom 4285. Do you think that Falcon Heavy can carry the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander? So, there's been commentary on this from Eric Berger who initially said no because the um the blue the blue the blue Blue Origin Mark 1 cargo lander needs to be backfilled with hydrogen from the upper stage. Then he modified his article to remove that. So, my understanding is that's not true.

[00:31:38]You don't need to backfill uh the the Mark 1 cargo lander.

[00:31:43]But I think still think there will be many many integration issues trying to put it in a Falcon Heavy.

[00:31:49]So, I think there would be a lot of work.

[00:31:52]1 year plus, 1 to 2 years, plus extra funding. And the same goes for Ariane 6, uh launching it on Japanese H3, uh Indian launcher, uh Starship or whatever. I think the integration work would be quite difficult.

[00:32:07]So, I'd say no to that, to be honest.

[00:32:13]And then Christine saying, this is a very good question. I think Wingsley saying, when are we going back to the moon? What's the plan?

[00:32:19]Why are we going back to the moon? So, like is it vendor driven? Is it purpose driven? Is it just to do so or is there a solid future behind it?

[00:32:28]My understanding is it's to live to live there, to go back permanently, and to use the local resources, and to figure out how to live on another uh celestial body, and then take those lessons and go to Mars. Uh because the moon is 4 days away, Mars is 6 months away, so you want to learn all your lessons on the moon first. So, when you go to Mars, you're not surprised as much. You have rovers already. They can withstand the dust. You've got habitat modules, and um you know how to process local resources to produce uh useful uh construction materials. So, that's the idea. It's a lot easier to learn that on the moon than going to Mars.

[00:33:16]And a lot cheaper, as well.

[00:33:18]So, anyway, the second video I did this week is called NASA's moon base just got hit hard. New Glenn explosion changes everything. So, I'd written the script, and then the explosion happened. Which means I had to go back and kind of change what I said because a lot of what I said is now changed, and delayed.

[00:33:37]Uh All of NASA's Artemis plans are now are now put back because Blue Origin was a key player both for cargo and crew.

[00:33:46]They're one of the HLS providers, the human landing system providers. So, you have SpaceX's lunar Starship, and then you have Blue Origin's Mark II crewed lunar lander, which launches on a New Glenn rocket.

[00:34:00]New Glenn rocket is gone.

[00:34:02]We don't know whether the engines were were at fault. So, that could take a year or so uh you know, uh uh more before we know. The launch pad, the only operational launch pad Blue Origin has, is gone. And So, Blue Origin is completely out of the picture in terms of supporting uh NASA Artemis for at least a year, if not 2 years.

[00:34:26]So, now NASA is totally reliant on SpaceX on lunar Starship, which is a long, long way from being able to support the mission because it hasn't done refueling.

[00:34:36]Um it's not operational yet. There's no lunar starship. So, there's a lot of work to be done.

[00:34:43]So, the situation is not good.

[00:34:46]So, anyway, this is from the the the conference that happened this week. And one surprising thing to me is just the size of the the moon base. It's this shaded area here. So, this is Shackleton crater. This big crater that is Shackleton crater.

[00:35:01]Uh and I think this is Dirk Bogarde here. And then you have this connecting ridge. And this is the probably the number one candidate landing site. I'd say it's connecting ridge between those two craters. There's um a true peak of eternal light.

[00:35:16]That is an area sunlight area that is exposed to the sun 90% of the time.

[00:35:22]It's practically always sun sun hitting this area. So, you want to land in one of these peaks of eternal light. And I think this is on the connecting ridge.

[00:35:32]But this would be a 100 square miles.

[00:35:34]So, there's a pretty much a huge area that is the NASA Artemis space camp. And that would include your habitats, your lunar landers, uh your rovers, your power systems, nuclear reactors, landing pads, all kinds of assets over perhaps a hundred hundred square miles or something something like that.

[00:35:58]And basically a very large area.

[00:36:01]This is from the NASA ignition event.

[00:36:03]So, you can see NASA has a lot of activities planned out on phases one, two, and three.

[00:36:08]All this will likely change now because of Blue Origin, but this was the idea.

[00:36:14]And basically you want to build up to something like this. So, you have in the foreground you have some kind of uh power infrastructure.

[00:36:24]Uh and you'd have a you'd have a power grid. You'd connect the solar panels to the nuclear reactor with high high voltage DC cables. Then you would have these habitats, pressurized habitats, with a lot of regolith piled on top to protect you from the the cosmic background radiation and solar flares and meteoriting packs and so on. Then you'll have these rovers basically. So this is something what like the moon base would look like, something like this anyway.

[00:36:57]And we have an upgraded slide. This is from this week. So you can see phases one, two, and three. So phase one is 2028-2029 and then 2029 to 2032 or 2033 is phase two and then 2020-2032 beyond is phase three. This is likely to slide to the right. I think by one or two years to be honest.

[00:37:19]Um realistically, I think these these these are time scales are not correct anymore.

[00:37:28]Um So that's one of the slides. Then we have this slide. So they're talking about the capabilities. So you've got mid-size cargo delivery. This is talking about maybe um ton or more.

[00:37:41]Um maybe one to three tons. So that would include ESA's Argonaut, one and a half tons. It would include the Blue Origin Mark One cargo lander, which is three tons to the lunar surface. Obviously, that's not going to happen anymore. But we do have Impulse Space that is working on a three-ton lunar lander that will be available in 2028.

[00:38:03]Fingers crossed.

[00:38:04]So NASA will still have a three-ton capability uh for the moon by a private um space startup, Impulse Space, by 2028.

[00:38:15]Uh also there'll be uh Nova-D lunar lander. That's two and a half tons.

[00:38:20]That's from Intuitive Machines.

[00:38:22]Then they have power. They're talking about a power grid, so that would be vertical solar array towers. It would be nuclear reactors, maybe one, maybe two, and maybe some other things like fuel cell systems. Honda is working on those.

[00:38:36]Sierra Space is working on fuel cell systems as well. And also um RHUs and RTGs, radioisotope heat units and radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which generate a small amount of electricity.

[00:38:51]Then we've got cargo mobility logistics.

[00:38:54]That's your lunar landers and your lunar rovers.

[00:38:57]And then Pathfinder habitation. That's your lunar That's your habitation modules. So that would be the multi-purpose habitat from Italy and JAXA's lunar cruiser.

[00:39:10]SB Boom 45, are there any concerns regarding China in these moon base plans? What if China also wants to land in this area? China does want to land in this area. In fact, if we go to this, China will be landing their Chang'e lunar rover here on the rim of Shackleton crater, which is exactly where Blue Origin's Mark 1 was also going to land.

[00:39:34]So both the NASA and the Chinese lunar lander was scheduled to land on the rim of Shackleton crater this year.

[00:39:41]So China will win that race because their Chang'e They're I think they're on version 7 the Chang'e.

[00:39:48]So it's very successful lunar lander.

[00:39:50]It's been to the far side. It's collected samples. It's returned the samples back to Earth. And now it'll be landing on the rim of Shackleton crater this year, and NASA won't be because of the Blue Origin mishap.

[00:40:03]So yeah, there is definitely concern.

[00:40:06]And China seems to me at this point, I think can we agree they're going to win the space race?

[00:40:13]I think they're going to land 2030, maybe 2029 if things go well. And NASA is basically going to be put back by a year or two, uh realistically.

[00:40:25]Uh we'll we'll see what happens, but it's looking that way to me.

[00:40:30]And um we also had this video from NASA. So, this is the lunar south pole.

[00:40:37]Um and you can see Shackleton there. And you've got various craters.

[00:40:42]So, you get to get an idea of the lay of the land.

[00:40:45]You've got flat areas, and then you've got the craters where the lunar water ice is likely to be.

[00:40:51]Um so, this is all the the area around the lunar south pole. It's quite a small area. So, we'll have problems with China. China's decided they are going to build their base in the lunar south pole. NASA's going to build the base in the lunar south pole. And the area is not that big. And the number of places uh candidate places are quite small.

[00:41:14]There are four um peaks of eternal light. These are places where the sun always shines, more or less. There's only four of them.

[00:41:24]So, I I think um it's quite likely China and and NASA and the Artemis partners will be working quite closely together.

[00:41:36]Can China technically claim the Shackleton crater? No, because of the outer space treaty. You can't uh you can't own property on the moon. But what you can do is keep have a keep out perimeter, especially if you land a nuclear reactor, because, you know, for safety, you want a safety zone. You have safety zones for nuclear reactors on Earth. So, you could have a safety zone on the moon, if you land a nuclear reactor. And and the US has plans to land a nuclear reactor pretty soon. And that would be the perfect excuse to have a keep out zone.

[00:42:14]So that's what's going to happen.

[00:42:17]Um I I think we can all agree that will be the plan from from NASA.

[00:42:23]And if you saw the video I did, NASA had this slide far moon fall drones and they had a perimeter.

[00:42:32]They had the word perimeter. So the idea is these drones basically uh you drop them at your perimeter of your moon base and it's kind of like stay away, China.

[00:42:44]This is the perimeter. This is our moon base. So I think that's potentially what the moon moon drones the moon fall drones will be used for.

[00:42:53]I mean, they used the word perimeter for a reason, right?

[00:42:56]So that is the situation with um the LTVs.

[00:43:03]Basically, there are three providers.

[00:43:05]There's Astrolab with a Flex Rover and a smaller version now. Not sure.

[00:43:10]It's called CTV1, I think.

[00:43:12]Crew Sorry, CLV1. Crew Lunar Vehicle 1. The idea they'll be a two and a three. It's a lightweight version of their Flex Rover.

[00:43:22]Intuitive Machines have cut down versions of their Moon Racer called Moon Finder and Moon Ranger.

[00:43:29]And Lunar Outpost has a cut down version of the Eagle called Pegasus.

[00:43:35]So there there's still a big problem though because as I I showed you in the slide for the first video, the maximum size maximum mass of these rovers was 500 kilos. I mean, I showed the slide. It was 500 kilos.

[00:43:54]But both LTVs awarded were 1 ton.

[00:43:58]That's double the maximum mass. So NASA has doubled the mass of these rovers, which means they cannot be launched on anything other than a Mark 1 cargo lunar lander.

[00:44:11]They can't They can't launch on on a Nova-C or a Intuitive Machines uh Nova-C or a Griffin um or the other lunar landers, a Blue Ghost.

[00:44:23]They can only launch on a Mark 1.

[00:44:26]And the two companies they selected are the two companies that that uh basically have to launch on a Blue Origin rocket.

[00:44:34]So, the whole point of the award is now useless because the rovers are too heavy. So, either NASA has to enforce a 50% mass reduction, which doesn't seem like a viable option to me, or they ask Intuitive Machines uh can we launch these LTVs on your Nova-D lander? Or they can choose Intuitive Machines um rover um which can launch on their Nova-D and would launch on a Falcon Heavy. So, a Falcon Heavy Nova-D lunar lander, 2 and 1/2 tons, 1 and 1/2 to 2 and 1/2 tons.

[00:45:13]Um so, that is the path forward, I think.

[00:45:17]But then, Intuitive Machines have not successfully landed a lander on the moon. They've tr- tr- uh they've tr- uh they've tried twice, and both times it toppled over. So, now they're building a heavier, uh more massive Nova-D.

[00:45:31]Um but who knows when that's available, and so far Intuitive Machines Machines have not successfully landed on the moon. So, that's the situation, which is not great.

[00:45:43]Um so, that's where we are.

[00:45:48]And uh Christian saying uh the crater has to be small, tall, and deep so it creates permanent shadow at its bottom to keep the water water frozen vapor in the soil. So, the Shackleton crater, I believe the crater depth is 4 km.

[00:46:03]And from one side of the crater to the other is 20 km. So, this is much deeper than the Grand Canyon. It It's It's very very difficult to get to the bottom.

[00:46:14]I don't even know how how NASA's going to get to the bottom other than landing at the crater base.

[00:46:21]Because it's 4 km deep uh and 20 km across.

[00:46:25]So, yeah, I I don't know how they're going to do that.

[00:46:31]Um uh what is wrong with the old rover?

[00:46:33]Maybe it's still too good to drive. I think talking about the Apollo era. So, there's there's more up-to-date rovers now.

[00:46:40]Um yeah, plus the the old rovers are not available. Um but I I the problem is not the rovers.

[00:46:47]The problem is delivering delivering them safely to the lunar surface. Um so, anyway, that is the situation with the rovers. Uh it's all a mess.

[00:47:00]The two awarded rovers cannot be launched um on anything other than a Blue Origin New Glenn um vehicle and a Mack One a lunar lander.

[00:47:11]So, NASA will have to make other changes.

[00:47:14]They'll have to change things again. I don't think the mass reduction is very viable.

[00:47:19]Um so, either they'll have to change lander and change rocket. Falcon Heavy is suitable uh for launching the Nova-D.

[00:47:27]Um so, we'll just have to see what happens.

[00:47:30]It's a It's not great with what happened with Blue Origin.

[00:47:33]Um I will have a video next week talking about um the implications and path forward for NASA.

[00:47:41]Um so, let's get into the what people saying anyway.

[00:47:46]So, we have SB SB Boom 4285. Could Falcon Heavy carry the Blue Moon lander?

[00:47:51]I don't think so in a reasonable time frame. It's probably 12 to 24 months uh our basically integration and additional funding uh to to make it happen. Um So, I I don't think that's any a quick thing to do. And nitrous Nitro area saying it could, but it would take significant modification either the Mark 1 or Falcon Heavy's infrastructure or both. Yeah. 12 to 24 months. Then we have Solis 1171.

[00:48:21]Yeah, we are not going back to the moon until the early 2030s. I think that's correct. NASA needs to set back the landing date uh cuz they're using way too much new technology that hasn't been tested yet and expecting it to be ready in such a short amount of time.

[00:48:38]Like look how long it took Artemis 2 to launch when it was supposed to launch in 2022. And the situation with SpaceX Starship, it's nowhere ready to go to the moon.

[00:48:49]It's not been kitted out. There's no life support. Uh it hasn't proved autonomous docking. It has not proved the refueling capability. It's several years away, I think. And you'd have to do um you'd have to do the uncrewed demo first anyway.

[00:49:04]And it requires 10 or 15 refillings in low Earth orbit, which means you need high cadence of the tankers uh first. So, I think it's many years away, two or three years away at least. And then Wings Lee's saying it is safe safest to assume that New Glenn is grounded for an indeterminate period of time.

[00:49:25]We do not know how long because at this point we do not know the exact cause of how long it would take to remedy whatever ails New Glenn. What happens if it's the engine?

[00:49:35]What if is it a some kind of design fault with the engine and they have to redesign the engine?

[00:49:41]This may sound like speculation, but I would dare say that Mr. Bezos and his Blue Origin operation are incentivized to remedy New Glenn with deliberate speed.

[00:49:53]They will need their first and only commercial vehicle to be put in operation as soon as possible. In a pinch, it should be possible for Blue Moon Mark 1 to be used as an Artemis 4 vehicle by launching on SLS. Whether or not it would be possible to launch a Blue Moon Mark 1 on a Vulcan Centaur or a SpaceX Falcon Heavy is anyone's guess.

[00:50:13]Um yeah, and also the idea if you you could use um Blue Origin for the crude crew lander, Blue Origin has no experience with life support systems. So, it seems to me that's many years away.

[00:50:28]And then we have we have uh Charles the Infinite 6272. Looks like there'll be no human on the moon until SpaceX flies its version of the lunar lander. Right now, it's just SpaceX.

[00:50:42]Blue Origin has zero experience with human survival in space, nor has it ever been able to dock with or resupply the International Space Station.

[00:50:50]Blue Origin has done nothing that would make me believe that they are even remotely dependable in the near term. I wouldn't count them out just yet though, and I certainly do think that Bezos is determined to succeed in the space sector, but they simply don't have the data and the experience that can only come from both successful iteration and failed iteration. Basically, they need to blow up a lot more rockets at all stages of launch and landing.

[00:51:18]I I think that's true. That's how SpaceX builds reliable launchers.

[00:51:23]If they end up blowing blowing up their rocket a lot of times, learning all the failure modes, and then eliminating them or mitigating them. That's how they they've done it in the past. It seems to be a very successful way.

[00:51:37]That's exactly what they're doing with the Starship now. It's blowing up, but eventually they will figure out how to make it not blow up and make it very reliable.

[00:51:47]And then we have uh JAXA maybe send the rovers in two or three pieces to the moon and assemble them there.

[00:51:55]Maybe NASA needs to come up with some kind of creative workaround. Um they're blocked at the moment on the lunar rovers and without lunar rovers it's hard to do site pre- preparation, excavation, uh um basically um surveying, prospecting. You need a rover for all of those activities. And right now NASA has no way forward. So, I'll do a video next week in more detail in more detail about that.

[00:52:23]But basically I've said everything I want to say at this point. So, if people have any concluding thoughts uh you know final final comments, uh I'll I'll bring those up. But basically next week I want to talk about um how NASA is approaching the Artemis base camp and and maybe a better way or let's just say there's maybe a different way they could approach the Artemis moon base plans so we get more reliable hardware and we get higher frequency operations uh because what's happening what they do now is not working um and uh China's going to be on the moon a lot sooner than NASA in my opinion.

[00:53:05]So, anyway uh let's see what what are people saying?

[00:53:12]So, yeah uh Christian's saying we're not saying uh robot first to prep a safety spot on landing pad. We're just going to land and go from there. What if we have to move the habitat to a better spot like 100 200 m? Well, the multi-purpose habitat and JAXA's lunar cruiser both are wheeled so they can move around. They have pressurized area and they can move around on the surface as well.

[00:53:34]Um but I think you definitely do need lunar terrain vehicles. Um so I think NASA has to have those. So, they're going to have to figure out how to get those rovers onto the moon and uh without using Blue Origin.

[00:53:48]So, that is situation.

[00:53:51]So, anyway, thank you for watching.

[00:53:54]Oh, let let me bring myself up here.

[00:53:57]Where am I? There I am. Thank you for watching and um next week I will definitely do a video. The first video will be on um how we go forward with the NASA Artemis uh plans, which have basically been completely um turned on the head because out of Artemis now for a year or two.

[00:54:20]Um so, NASA is now totally dependent on SpaceX and the Starship vehicle for crude return to the moon.

[00:54:29]So, anyway, that's the situation and thank you for watching and I will see you next time.