It's not really a Moon mission if it doesn't land on the Moon, is it?
But imagine mankind would finally put man on the Moon...
I was just thinking yesterday - wouldn't be nice if first man in the space was Russian, first man on the Moon (supposedly) American and first man on different planet/Mars was Chinese. They sure can pull it off.
I know there are readily-observible NASA debris scattered across the moon. Heck, it's even likely that we've already sent a few Americans up there before (perhaps not as early as '69, but eventually... yeah.sure.fine.).
But why go, even if "again?" Why even have gone in the first place (outside of USSA Space Race posturing)?
What is the point? Even if we discovered the goldliest of oils, deep within moonmantle, it would be absolutely cost-prohibitive to transport commercially between our masses. Perhaps the only use I can think is nuclear waste/bombs (for disposal/testing).
I watched a news piece about this and alot of people are calling for more testing before sending a crew up. Every mission has risks but there seems to be real concern about the vehicle's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Blessings and good luck to the whole team.
There is a window on the 2nd. But you don't aim for the second half of the launch period and hope you make it, you aim for the start to allow time to resolve issues without waiting for the next window (which is the end of the month).
That's probably a "layman's terms" translation of a more technical term NET April 1, which would be "Not Earlier Than" and is widely used in the industry.
Being a few months behind schedule is forgivable for human space flight.
If a SpaceX Falcon blows up on the pad, that's one thing. It's expensive but they accept that risk to move faster. At least they gain knowledge of what failed, to do better next time.
You can't apply that mentality once a human is piloting it however. That's how you get Columbia, Challenger, or Apollo 1.
> If a SpaceX Falcon blows up on the pad, that's one thing. It's expensive but they accept that risk to move faster. At least they gain knowledge of what failed, to do better next time.
Assuming it's not carrying a SpaceX Crew Dragon with crew onboard ;)
Also, it's a bit of a dated metaphor. Falcon 9 is by most accounts, now the most reliable rocket in history and is pretty design-locked. The modern metaphor is SpaceX Starship :)
In a month is why. It seems if it was fixed that fast it was easy to find. If it was so easy to find, why was it not found. These are the types of questions that seem to make NASA push things further than just a month. So again, it seems fast to me
It feels fast to you because you don't know what happened, and you are asking questions that have been answered by NASA already in public.
It was easy to find because they knew what valve was leaking.
It was not found beforehand because they don't have the ability to do the tanking test without rolling it to the launch pad and its very hard to know how a system responds to liquid hydrogen.
Starship 3 first launch will be in April as well https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2026/03/11/spacex-st...