CurtisLeow t1_j6ahiea wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:51 PM

Reply to comment by Correct_Inspection25 in NASA's 'Mega Moon Rocket' aced first flight and is ready for crewed Artemis II launch by sasko12

At one point the SLS was going to launch the Lunar Gateway, the cargo to the Lunar Gateway, the Europa Clipper, and crewed Lunar flyby missions. The vast majority of those missions have switched, at least partially, to the Falcon Heavy.

You may not like it, but the Falcon Heavy's performance is very comparable to the SLS. It's good enough. The Falcon Heavy can't launch Orion into TLI, but it can launch Dragon into TLI. NASA is already paying SpaceX to launch Dragon into TLI, as I've already pointed out, as I've already linked. So nit-picking over performance to the Moon is a distraction from the reality. The Falcon Heavy has almost entirely replaced the SLS.

Correct_Inspection25 t1_j6ajvw1 wrote on January 28, 2023 at 11:09 PM

I love the Falcon program and the Merlin’s, but they fell short for economic heavy lift reuse beyond LEO/ and limited apogee GEO kg to orbit/deltaV. Starship and Raptor economics for heavy lift and deep space crewed missions are money better spent than upgrading SpaceX 2010-2012 technology for NASA.

Please provide SpaceX’s claims that the Falcon Heavy could make TLI in 3-4 days fully crewed with 26,000kg? All the articles I can find when asked, SpaceX told NASA and the press in 2018 if they couldn’t replace the SLS/crewed mission scope, and that the fully disposable Falcon Heavy theoretical max payload to TLI was 18,000kg, but without serious modifications, 16,000kg for crewed 3-4 day TLI transit.

Fun fact: This is shortly before SpaceX publicly completely abandoned upgrading the Falcon Heavy (BFR/Red Dragon) program, and announced the new starship architecture and Booster heavy lift program keeping only the Raptor engines in the late fall early winter of 2018.