SLS needs to work for now, but for the mission statement Artemis is setting for itself, they’ll need to replace the SLS entirely with something else. The space agencies want a permanent presents on or around the moon, and that simply isn’t going to happen with the rocket that costs 4 billion a launch.

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So criticize Starship on that point. That’s fair.

But the cost to risk ratio is absurd. The risk is nearing commercial airlines and they take the masses who are untrained in emergency anything, and doing so with crews that are nearly equally unable to actually pilot the craft without the computer. Or the back up computer. Or the back up to the back up computer. A trained crew with better systems will handle any issue better, and the reuse of Raptors (it appears so far) increases the assurance of safety, while keeping costs low.

The NASA requirement for escape comes directly from NASA’s own incompetence and bureaucratic inertia leading to multiple fatal errors, one of which at least was likely criminal.

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I’m not gonna tell you what to think, just letting you know that your own personal definition of what constitutes a space station is not matched by anyone in the industry. Well, to be specific, your definition here that Skylab, the Salyut stations including Mir, ISS, and the current Chinese station are not space stations. That opinion is not shared by people in the industry, but you are absolutely welcome to your own fan theory/head canon. 

ULA has been mumbling to themselves in a corner about engine parachute recovery since 2007 if not earlier, maybe even before the merger. It's not going to happen.

Umm, you are living in a non-Euclidian space.

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Working on Artemis II & III right now and let me reassure you we will be back to the moon!

I never made it without biting. Ask Mr. Owl.

It very well could have been, there was a plan for that 0,to convert the modules into a complete space station not simply a one-off orbiter. During the space shuttle program several former astronauts put forward a program called dry centaur, the idea was it would be possible to boost the large tank into orbit and convert them slowly into a larger space station, more like something von Braun had envisioned.

I think the real problem was that the public after the moon landing simply lost interest in the space program. Von Braun had envisioned an orbiting space station, we would launch from Earth to the space station then transfer to a lunar transfer module which would launch to the Moon and then a landern would go to and from the Moon and then that lunar transfer vehicle would come back to the space station.

I had everything that you used to come out of the Huntsville rocket Center about this unfortunately when I left for college my mother threw it all out as junk. I'm sure it's still available somewhere and it was fascinating they put a lot of thought into what they wanted to do. I don't know if it's true or not but I was told the whole purpose of the Germans who were building rockets for Hitler was really to launch rockets to the Moon. I often wonder what would have happened had the United States in the Soviet Union collaborated since we split up the German scientists involved

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We at NASA... Oh I didn't realize I was speaking to someone so exalted

Once again, von Braun, the man who was behind the program and envisioned the real space station didn't envision orbiting Porta John. You can call it whatever you want to that doesn't make it that. Although a child at the time I was highly interested in the space program and had everything I could get my hands on about it. We dropped the ball. Now you can pretend we didn't but I'm here to tell you that we did and we still haven't really picked it up again.

I'm going to say that in the end the science fiction guys from the 40s and 50s got it right, it's going to take private individuals with more money than they ought to have to get it going again. Although in the case of science fiction they were the ones that got it going in the first place. Eventually someone is either going to mind something on the moon or figure out how to mine an asteroid and then it's going to blow up. At that point in time you will see real space stations.

Calling Skylab a space station is like calling Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621 a metropolis. I get it you work for NASA and you're butt hurt that somebody out in the general public doesn't think that that joke of a project was a real space station, I don't even think they called it that at the time. They obviously didn't value it because they could have kept it in orbit much longer rather than letting it crash back into the Earth, Australia if my memory serves

I followed the Skylab missions, I even had a copy of the orbiter. That's the word it was an orbiter. I knew if I ran my mouth long enough the words would find me. You're not going to get me to change my mind and I'm sorry your feelings are hurt however calling Skylab a space station would be like calling Scott's expedition to Antarctica a success, he wasn't even first, nor did anyone live from his party.

You can defend Skylab all you want it was viewed as a failure of initiative by those of us in the public who were firmly behind the program. I don't even think the space station was occupied for a full 6 months total, that's hardly a space station, you couldn't even call it an outpost.

Have about zero knowledge of what either of you are debating about, but enjoy the discourse and thank both for not using profanity to defame each other!

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I saw them land on the Moon and hope to live long enough to see them land on Mars. It's been a wild ride.

Skylab was built using parts from Apollo 18, 19 and 20 that never flew to the moon as it was supposed to. The Apollo program got cut short due to politics, costs and waning public support. Skylab is what became of Apollo's leftovers.

> Well I hate to break it to you but I and many other people like me don't consider Skylab to have been a space station

At NASA we considered it a space station, but it's exciting to see folks out in the community with their own takes because even if their conclusions don't match that of the nations flying stuff to space, they're still engaged.

Why can't an Apollo module be converted into a space station?

Well I hate to break it to you but I and many other people like me don't consider Skylab to have been a space station, it was an orbital Porta John. Many of the astronauts that were in it didn't have very good things to say about it afterward. It was the we give up move by the United States space agency and here we are 50 years later and we barely have launched systems when we should have established bases on the moon

My parents? Did you not understand me saying I was alive when they landed on the moon? I was really into this stuff and I'm here to tell you that no one considered Skylab a space station at the time. We were actually told it was a stopgap measure until they could put up a real space station and once again based on what von Braun wanted to do there is still nothing in orbit resembling that, there's nothing up there that's even close.

Now maybe it's not feasible, it's not my area of expertise, but von Braun believed it was doable in the 60s so I'm going to go with him. America had the best Nazis you know

Kinda hard to do that when you live in a big city

I would love to see , or know that my former bosses Apollo - Soyuz astronaut LtGen Thomas Stafford and Mr George Abbey are somehow involved with Artemis Program

> Skylab had absolutely nothing to do with the space station that it was envisioned by von Braun Warner von Braun

Nobody here said it was, and up above you didn't say that either, you just said 'space station'. Words have meaning, and your opinion on what is and isn't a space station is something to which you're entitled. In the meantime, I think most of the world will probably go with definitions by the people who actually go to space. Russians, Americans, and Chinese currently all have space station hardware on orbit but no doubt there's possibly a contingent of folks who will take an anonymous redditor's definition over theirs. I can't quantify how big of an audience that is because I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your parents and other folks who want to encourage you, but it's totally possible it exists.

I am going by the things that used to come to me via my grandfather from the Huntsville space flight center, Skylab had absolutely nothing to do with the space station that it was envisioned by von Braun Warner von Braun. Rather than a full-blown space station that could support many people they basically sent up a porta John. I don't know if you were alive at the time but I was and there was great dissatisfaction in those of us who were very interested in the space race. You can paint whatever picture you want but Skylab was sort of an orbiting science station it was not a space station. A space station in my opinion still doesn't exist. The ISS while a noble project, still falls far short of what von Braun had envisioned and I'm guessing could have made happen had they allowed him to do so.

> Nothing about Shuttle should be repeated.

Like a crew launch system without emergency escape mechanism? It is going to be hard to get NASA to accept one if there are alternatives.

What I mean is that Starship, like the Shuttle, doesn't satisfy that requirement that NASA put on Commercial Crew.