Yes, they lost the technology. The last Apollo mission was over 50 years ago, the people who achieved it are retired or dead, and engineering drawings alone are not enough to build a new Saturn V (or the landers, suits, etc). Not to mention all of that is outdated technology by now.
NASA is now building the SLS, a modern(ish) heavy lift rocket meant for moon missions, among other things. But for a couple decades in between there was this obsession with the Space Shuttle as the primary launch platform, and the Space Shuttle wasn't of much use beyond low earth orbit. And with the Soviets focusing on space stations after the Apollo landings there wasn't any competitive aspect to going further either.
There were obviously lots of unmanned missions to the moon and other places in the solar system, but manned activity was limited to low-earth orbit for the last 50 years, so the capability to go further withered.
It's more like we've lost the engineering. The technology is all still there but now greatly improved. From welding techniques to computer components the whole exercise in in manufacturing would be a huge undertaking to rebuild because we aren't manufacturing any of those old technologies anymore so that would be a problem. Or you have the problem of re-engineering the whole rocket with modern components and manufacturing techniques.
We can build medieval castles all day long with concrete and steel, but if you want an actual stone medieval castle, we don't know how to do it.
The Saturn V rockets were very risky, NASA got extremely lucky with them the first time but no longer have the same tolerance for risk. Even if they still had Saturn V rockets ready to fly today in their inventory, it would not be an acceptable option today.
I don't even think we've lost the engineering. We've lost the risk tolerance. Apollo was a risky program, people dying was considered acceptable. The US just doesn't work like that any more.
No, we don’t. Let me introduce you to OSHA and their buddy worker’s comp insurance.
I ran an industrial facility that had been in operation since the 40’s, safety used to not even be a concern. If it operated in 2000 the way it did in 1950’s, or even in the early 80’s, they’d be out of business.
According to that article the astronauts would go to orbit in an SLS then get into the Starship lander in orbit. Is that just for political reasons so there's some point to the SLS?
Yes, on Falcon 9/Dragon. That differs from Starship w.r.t. human-rating in a few ways:
- Dragon can do an emergency abort, by (a) accelerating away from the booster and (b) parachuting down to a soft-landing. Starship's upper stage is so massive that such acceleration and soft-landing seem out of reach (ideally an emergency-fallback-everything-has-gone-wrong mode shouldn't rely on tricky maneuvers like their landing flip!). There may be ways around that, e.g. using an ejectable module, but it would all need designing, building, testing, validating, etc.
- Falcon 9 needed to prove its reliability by performing many successful uncrewed missions. Starship will need to take the same approach, but hasn't managed any yet ;)
- SpaceX had to stop making changes/improvements to Falcon 9, since NASA would reset the successful-mission-count back to zero after major changes. SpaceX was willing to do that, since they had another rocket to focus on (Starship). Also, it helped that Falcon 9 had already exceeded their expectations by the "Block 5" design (which is why Falcon Heavy hasn't seen much use; Falcon 9 is very capable on its own!). Even when Starship is reliably launching, it will likely undergo design changes for a while.
- Getting Starship to the Moon will need in-orbit refuelling. That's untested, and more dangerous than docking and crew transfer (which is now routine), so it makes sense to launch the crew separately and transfer them to an already-refuelled Starship. This doesn't add much complexity, since refuelling requires multiple launches, orbital rendezvous and docking anyway. The choice of crew launcher is then arbitrary: SLS, Falcon 9, Soyuz, Starship, etc.
(Earth) launch and landing will be the hardest parts to get crew-rated, if they ever are. Perhaps the only human-rated approaches will be smaller, safer systems like Soyuz (or some modern replacement on that scale), with immediate transfer to a Starship or space station once orbital. Given its cargo lifting capacity, and station-sized living space, that would still be a great improvement over today (although maybe not enough to pay back SpaceX's costs)
And spacesuits, NASA has been impressively ineffective at getting any kind of new spacesuit designs going, they're still just cycling between the leftovers from the shuttle.
Apparently, they can't do their lunar spacesuits until they do their lander
> What's more, delays to Starship have knock-on effects because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems.
Ironically, Starship has the same problem Shuttle has, basically limiting it on its own to LEO. The payload stage is too big and heavy.
The solution to get Starship and Shuttle beyond LEO is the same: either use up the fuel required for landing and expending the vehicle or orbital refueling.
The difference is that Starship is so cheap it makes both of those options feasible. Shuttle's reusability was supposed to make it cheap, but it ended up costing $1.5 billion per flight.
There is another thing sets apart Starship from other launch systems: relatively wide availability/manufacturability of its fuel outside of Earth. You won't find kerosene or hypergols on Mars or Ganymedes, but methane can be produced fairly straightforwardly there.
Not easier to handle, though. Keeping methane in a tank or moving it across some distance is fairly straightforward, as the problems regarding natural gas storage and transportation were solved a long time ago.
Hydrogen is notoriously tricky to even keep in one place, much less pipe across some distance.
> The difference is that Starship is so cheap it makes both of those options feasible. Shuttle's reusability was supposed to make it cheap, but it ended up costing $1.5 billion per flight.
But that's exactly what people believed about the space shuttle before it launched as well. Let's wait to see Starship actually work before predicting it will be enormously cheap. As it stands, that cheapness is entirely predicated on a completely unrealistic level of reusability (multiple launches per day with the same rocket, when even Falcon 9 requires weeks or months between launches of the same rocket).
You don't have to take Elon's word to know that it'll be cheap. It's being built in the open air under dozens of cameras streaming 24/7 on Youtube. Calculating the time & materials cost for Starship is straightforward.
The problem is not the same...Shuttle's main engines were dead in orbit after jettisoning the main tank. Only OMS thrusters were working and it landed unpowered, gliding to the surface (more like a controlled crash). It would never make it to orbit with the main tank attached. There was no possible way to fuel it, no engines and OMS was not usable beyond LEO.
You have full powered engines in orbit on Starship, "just" need to fuel them :)
> If it used a more advanced technology, it should have been able to at least fly to the Moon
That's erroneous reasoning. More advanced technology does not imply more advanced capabilities in every respect. The shuttle was not designed to go to the Moon, it was designed for other purposes. It doesn't have the delta-v to reach the Moon, nor would it have any way of landing on it, nor any way of returning even if it could land.
Think of it this way; much of the technology on a modern container ship is more advanced than that on a dreadnaught battleship. That doesn't mean a container ship is any good at blasting other ships out of the water; they aren't built for that.
Why even would they want to send the Shuttle to the Moon? That sort of mission is just a political stunt, the scientific research done there isn't worth the expense.
If the country with the most reasons to call "FAKE!" during the Cold War didn't accuse NASA of faking the launch... why are you? The government lies all the time but this is a ridiculous hill to die on.
The descent phase wasn't very long, and the astronauts were kind of busy during that time. That left just automated cameras, which tended to be lower quality (NTSC or worse). So, yeah, we have few photos of the descent, just video of lousy quality, and it's perfectly understandable why.
NASA is now building the SLS, a modern(ish) heavy lift rocket meant for moon missions, among other things. But for a couple decades in between there was this obsession with the Space Shuttle as the primary launch platform, and the Space Shuttle wasn't of much use beyond low earth orbit. And with the Soviets focusing on space stations after the Apollo landings there wasn't any competitive aspect to going further either.
There were obviously lots of unmanned missions to the moon and other places in the solar system, but manned activity was limited to low-earth orbit for the last 50 years, so the capability to go further withered.