The Moon is the next target for dozens of researchers and the occasional billionaire like Elon Musk, who asserted that human beings will reach the Earth’s satellite again in 2024, and yes, it will be largely thanks to him.
Last Saturday, the leader of SpaceX was optimistic about the progress for the Starship lunar landing project, which he is carrying out in the company of NASA, to achieve a new trip to the Moon.
The Moon 2024 or earlier
The billionaire was questioned by the Twitter account ‘Everything Artemis’, who asked him if he expected to have Starship ready to take the human being to the Moon in 2024, to which Musk replied “Probably sooner.”
According to CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz, NASA paid $ 300 million to SpaceX on July 30 for Starship, which undoubtedly represents a significant agency allocation for the project.
This was confirmed thanks to the link on the federal website USASpending.gov , which is responsible for documenting government spending.
So far, $ 439.6 million has been paid to SpaceX, of what is considered a $ 3 billion project.
Bezos still against Musk
Despite the US government confirming that Musk and SpaceX would be the only ones involved in the project, awarding it the only lunar landing contract for its Human Landing System (HLS) program, Amazon boss Jeff’s Blue Origin space organization. Bezos has not stopped showing his dissatisfaction with the decision.
Blue Origin claims that Spacex received special treatment upon receiving the NASA contract.
“We are particularly concerned about the lack of flight availability reviews in the SpaceX proposal,” Blue Origin wrote in a statement to Fox Business. “SpaceX’s complex approach requires 16 consecutive launches with only three total flight readiness reviews rather than one for each launch, which is consistent with common industry practice. Flight readiness reviews are critical to safety and are especially important with reusable vehicles and multiple launches in rapid succession. ”
After the statement, Musk responded on Twitter to the uncertainty of Blue Origin, assuring that the 16 Starship flights are “extremely unlikely.”
“The payload of the orbiting spacecraft is ~ 150 tons, making a maximum of 8 to fill the 1,200-ton tanks of the lunar spacecraft,” Musk said. “Without flaps and heat shield, Starship is much lighter. The lunar landing legs don’t add much (1/6 gravity). It is possible that it only needs half its capacity, that is, 4 tanker flights ”.
However, Musk made it clear that if all 16 flights were needed, Starship could do it without problem.
“SpaceX made more than 16 orbital flights in the first half of 2021 and has docked with the Station (much more difficult than docking with our own spacecraft) more than 20 times,” Musk added.
There is no doubt that the return of man to the Moon will be a milestone in history, so it is normal that Bezos does not want to step aside to be able to appear in the new books. However, the effectiveness of SpaceX in reaching Earth’s satellite remains to be seen.