What sort of testing and duration will be needed before NASA will trust
to put people on a Starship and land it on moon and return to "gateway" ?

I take it SpaceX will need to land a Starship succesfully and take off
from Moon and prove it can dock ? How many times could it need to do
this before there is trust in the platform?

Obviously for Apollo, the LEM was manually driven to land, so they
couldn't remotely test it so the first landing had to be tested. But
prior to this, they had "iteratively" tested the Apollo platform with
various tests around Earth and then one trip around the moon.

Just curious how Starship would be tested for a mission that is quite
different (though it does the same weekend camping trip capacity as Apollo).

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On 14-Mar-22 11:20 am, JF Mezei wrote:

What sort of testing and duration will be needed before NASA will trust
to put people on a Starship and land it on moon and return to "gateway" ?

I take it SpaceX will need to land a Starship succesfully and take off
from Moon and prove it can dock ? How many times could it need to do
this before there is trust in the platform?

Obviously for Apollo, the LEM was manually driven to land, so they
couldn't remotely test it so the first landing had to be tested. But
prior to this, they had "iteratively" tested the Apollo platform with
various tests around Earth and then one trip around the moon.

Just curious how Starship would be tested for a mission that is quite different (though it does the same weekend camping trip capacity as Apollo).

As things are, the lunar Starship will only be used to transfer crew
between the lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon, and vice-versa. It
will not re-enter Earth's atmosphere, and will not have a heat shield
that would allow it to.

One might indeed wonder why Starship cannot do the entire job (other
than compromising Congress's pork barrelling), but that's how the
contracts stand.

Sylvia.

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On 2022-03-13 22:30, Sylvia Else wrote:

As things are, the lunar Starship will only be used to transfer crew
between the lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon, and vice-versa.

Landing such a huge grain silo on the moon with undefined landing gear
still needs to be tested. Ensuring that once landed on rough ground, it
can take off, reach orbit and dock with that gateway thing is another
big test.

And if this is to be more tha a single weekend camping trip, what sort
of testing will make NASA comfortable re-using the Starship for multiple
moon landings and take offs?

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On Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 2:12:05 AM UTC-4, JF Mezei wrote:

On 2022-03-13 22:30, Sylvia Else wrote:

As things are, the lunar Starship will only be used to transfer crew between the lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon, and vice-versa.

Landing such a huge grain silo on the moon with undefined landing gear
still needs to be tested. Ensuring that once landed on rough ground, it
can take off, reach orbit and dock with that gateway thing is another
big test.

And if this is to be more tha a single weekend camping trip, what sort
of testing will make NASA comfortable re-using the Starship for multiple
moon landings and take offs?

I am uncertain why you always need to use such sarcastic tones when asking rhetorical questions about SpaceX. Did you get turned down by them for employment?

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