Hey everybody checking back to the Elon Musk podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, the shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neuralink. And I'm your host Will Walden. One more thing before we start, Google Podcasts is being discontinued by Google. So if you want to continue getting episodes of the Elon Musk podcast, please check us out over at YouTube Music.
Search us out over there and that's where you'll be able to find our our podcast through Google products. Thank you so much for understanding. I had no control over this. Google pulled the Google podcast app off of Android. And I want to let you know where to continue finding the show over at YouTube Music, search
for Elon Musk podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about Spacex's HLS mission to the moon, NASA's Orion spacecraft, and how things may completely change for the Artemis missions going forward. Now, originally, NASA wanted SpaceX to launch the lunar HLS Starship to moon orbit, where it would dock with the Orion spacecraft and the HLS ship would take the astronauts down to the surface of the moon. Now, something drastic may be changing in the near future.
There's been murmurings that behind closed doors, NASA is discussing a low Earth orbit transfer of astronauts between the Orion spacecraft and the Starship HLS. Now, these are unconfirmed right now. They haven't released anything about this yet. But Ars Technica posted an article about it. And Eric Berger is very reputable and he was the one that posted this article. What may be happening with the
Starship in the Orion? So let's just wind it in a little bit because we have to understand what the process is of getting the HLS Starship to the moon first. OK? So first they have to launch a fuel depot or a fuel fuel, a few fuel depots for the actual Starship to fuel up in low Earth orbit before it gets to the moon, before it launches to the moon. In NASA, it said somewhere around 10:00-ish. In SpaceX, Elon Musk said somewhere around 10 to 15. So we're going to go on the low side.
We're going to say about 10 depots will be launched to low Earth orbit, where the HLS Starship will dock with them and fuel up before it goes to the moon. Then the HLS will be fueled up and possibly in between the fuel and going to the moon. Like that step right there. Astronauts will fly on an SLS rocket to low Earth orbit and then dock with the Starship. Now, we're not sure if this is
even feasible right now. We know that this is going to be a thing in the future, but there are some caveats to this that could make this a more impressive mission and also could save NASA billions of dollars in the future. You're asking yourself, why do they need the SLS rocket if it's not going all the way to the moon? That's what I'm asking myself too. If the Orion capsule could be retrofitted to be on top of a Starship or on top of a Dragon or Falcon 9 instead of a Dragon
capsule. That's a possibility. But you're also probably thinking, why don't they just use a Dragon capsule and dock that with a Starship? Because Dragon capsules already go to low Earth orbit and they can dock with the International Space Station. So that seems like the logical next step, right? Not quite yet. So there will be a possible mission with the Orion spacecraft and the HLS Starship?
Because they need to test this out to see if the Orion can actually dock with the Starship while in space. Because that's what they're gonna be doing in the Moon's orbit. And the Dragon capsule cannot go to the moon and dock with the Starship and come back to Earth. It just isn't feasible. It doesn't work like that. The physics don't work. The Dragon capsule is not built
for that. So they need to use the Orion capsule or some other capsule that could be created in the future for docking with the Starship and then coming back to Earth. So once the astronauts are on board the Starship, then three or more astronauts would fly their way to the Moon's orbit, where they would land on the
Moon's surface. And then when they're done with their science and experimentation on a lunar surface, they would fly back up and dock with the Orion capsule or the moon station, transfer the astronauts again, and then from the Orion they would come back down to Earth.
The HLS rocket would stay either in the lunar orbit or docked with the moon station until the next mission and possibly just land on the moon and wait for another HLS rocket to come up because there's a limited shelf life for these things while they're in space and orbiting in the moon. So could land it on the moon and it could become a habitat for future astronauts. Now, the good thing about going to the moon in the HLS is that you're not cramped like the
Orion spacecraft. The Orion spacecraft, even though it is a modern marvel of engineering, there's not a lot of room. You can't really move around a lot. You can't really do much and you can't really stretch a lot. There's no there's no room for activities there with the HLS Starship. It's 9 meters around, 30 feet around.
It's a massive ship. And if they can construct this so the astronauts could just fly all the way to the moon on the HLS rocket, seems like it's totally doable, then they could land the Starship with the astronauts on board and it would be a much better experience for the astronauts. They could have more experimentation time because the HLS rocket could have more room for experiments and it's a low Earth orbit experimentation while they're waiting.
Or they could do experimentation all the way to the moon and while they get to the moon, while they orbit the moon and when they land on the moon. So the experimentation time and the experimentation mass of experimentation could be much bigger than just going in the Orion space capsule. Because it seems, I don't know, it seems like this is a win win. We've been talking about this for a long time.
I know a lot of space reporters were like, why do we need Orion when Starship's going to low Earth orbit anyway and they're going to dock with Starship and then go didn't make a lot of sense. So we've been talking about this for a long time. But since there's murmurings within NASA now about this happening, it's this totally a
possibility. They're going to need to launch a few SLS, few more SLS rockets before they change completely over to the Starship because Starship can do everything that SLS can and possibly even more. It's, it looks like a bright future for HLS Starship. Now the first mission that these astronauts may do, because they can't go into the Starship immediately then fly to the moon. This they need to test this thing out.
So the Polaris program was going to test a docking from a Dragon into a Starship and do some low Earth orbit experimentation and check out to see if the Starship is feasible for low Earth orbit or moon travel. And that was going to be the initial docking and testing phase. So there's a possibility that the Orion could, or maybe even a
Dragon could do this dock with the HLS. 2 astronauts would transfer into the HLS Starship, while two others would stay inside the Dragon capsule and do testing from there. From a distance. They could do maneuvering, they could do some burns, they could do orientations, they could possibly even do an Eva, which doesn't make a lot of sense from a Starship standpoint, but it might be something they do in
the future just for testing. Then they could redock with the Dragon capsule and then come back down to Earth. So they have to test the Starship out before they get it to the moon. So the HLS Starship is that might be the first Test of this series of tests. Then that HLS Starship could fly to the moon and do a test landing on the lunar surface just to make sure that there's no astronauts on board in case something bad happens.
So let me know down the commas below what you think about this 'cause it seems like a logical step forward. Like why would they even use the Orion capsule in low Earth orbit to test this when they have a Dragon capsule? Or they do need the Orion capsule to go to the moon and come back down to earth. So I can totally get that. I totally get that part. But everything else seems very
logical. Dock in Earth orbit and make sure that everything's OK with the Starship and command a gigantic spaceship between the Earth and the moon. That sounds like a no brainer to me. 150 to 200 feet long Starship. It's a massive ship, can do all sorts of sciencing all sorts of engineering on your way to the moon and in low Earth orbit while you wait and then head to the moon. Sounds sounds great to me. Let me know what you think down in the comments.
Now, does this make the SLS rocket unsustainable for the billions and billions of dollars per launch that it costs? I think it does. I think it does because if the Orion spacecraft only has to go to low Earth orbit, they can launch it from another rocket. Whether it's a ULA rocket, what it whatever, it could be a star or it could be another SpaceX rocket, who knows. I'm not sure exactly what the configuration would be, but the SLS rocket is a jobs program.
It makes America a bunch of money. And these people are spread across the whole nation making and designing, building, engineering, all of these parts to build this massive SLS rocket. So the SLS rocket is a jobs program as well. So they would lose tax money and they would lose funding if they get rid of the SLS rocket. So I don't think they're going
to get rid of the SLS rocket. They may use it for deep space exploration or something like that in the future and just shift over to Starship and SpaceX for the time being for the moon launches. And maybe SLS will be more Mars and further out into the solar system in the future. But we know that Starship will be capable in the future of going to Mars as well. So there's really no reason to use SLS anymore if this is true, other than super far out like
science missions. It's a massive rocket and Starship can do everything the SLS can do and then more. So I think this might be the end of the SLS program. This might be the beginning of the end of the SLS program. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I'd greatly appreciate it.
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero. And please take care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.