If it’s gonna be done, it’s gonna have to be Musk that does it.
180 Days for a SpaceX Starship Moonbase
There is a proposal to use the SpaceX lunar starship as a rapidly deployable moonbase. It could be completed 180 days after the SpaceX lunar Starship lands on the moon.The payload area of the Starship is about 1000 cubic meters. This proposal would tip over the lunar Starship and cut it open to use three times as much volume and enable it be buried for radiation shielding.
NASA and Thales Alenia just rolled out their first Moon Base concept for the Artemis project. Why do we need a tiny module when we have over a thousand cubic meters in Starship? Does this base have any use at all?
Does it really matter? It’s nothing but pie in the sky, a pipe-dream. NASA can’t even get a man into low-earth orbit anymore.
Via Insty, who quips: NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR. Heh, indeed. Now about those Jetsons-style flying cars we’ve all been waiting for, Elon…
Which reminds me of a humorous incident from a cpl-three weeks ago. I was trying to access a shopping-center wheelchair ramp blocked by one of those damned Teslas, see. Thankfully, the driver was still in the driver-seat—her BF/husband/whatever had dashed into a restaurant to grab their go-order while she waited, it soon developed. Anyhoo, as she backed out of the way for me the car made that burbling beedle-beedle-beedle noise originally produced by the Jetsonmobiles in the classic old Hanna-Barbera cartoon. I just about fell out laughing at that, and I’m still laughing.
I solemnly swear to you here and now, that Tesla sounded so exactly, precisely like the above I have to conclude that Musk must have licensed a recording of it to use in lieu of the exhaust note typical of an ICE. Good going, Elon!