Yesterday, N.A.S.A. announced the selection of SpaceX as the constructor of the Human Landing System (H.L.S.) to ferry astronauts to & from the surface of the Moon beginning with 2024's Artemis III mission. The H.L.S. Starship beat out more Apollo Lunar Module-like H.L.S. concepts from Dynetics & Blue Origin. I'm inherently leary of Starship's single-stage architecture & not encouraged by the rate at which Starship prototypes keep exploding upon landing during test flights over Texas, but I see little option but to trust that the eggheads at N.A.S.A. know what they're doing. SpaceX has done a bang-up job with the Dragon 2 capsule (in both Crew & Cargo variants) & the Falcon 9 rocket. Starships keep exploding & the Super Heavy rocket has yet to fly, but there are goods reasons to think these systems will eventually be as reliable as the Crew Dragon-Falcon 9 combination, which is set to ferry the Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station (I.S.S.) next week.
Bonus! Song o' the Day: Human Landing System
Frank Sinatra, "Fly Me to the Moon" from
It Might As Well Be Swing (Space Cadet Mike Papa Whiskey)
We are now halfway through a busy April of crew rotation aboard the I.S.S. Last Week, two Russian cosmonauts & an American astronaut blasted off to & arrived at the station aboard
Soyuz MS-18 (the
Yu.A. Gagarin, the first indication I've ever seen that the Russians name their capsules) & today a different trio of two cosmonauts & an astronaut landed safely in Kazahkstan aboard the
Soyuz MS-17 (the
Favor). Next week, the Crew-2 mission of four astronauts—two Americans, one Japanese, & one European—is set to launch to the I.S.S., withe the Crew-1 mission of four astronauts—three Americans & one Japanese—set to return the week after next. Two down, two to go. What a time to be alive!
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