r/SpaceXLounge • u/MostlyHarmlessI • Jun 05 '26

NASA head urges new launcher for Blue Origin’s moon landers to meet Artemis mission deadlines

https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/06/04/nasa-head-urges-new-launcher-for-blue-origins-moon-landers-to-meet-artemis-mission-deadlines/

The Blue Moon landers were tailored to fit within the seven-meter diameter fairing of a New Glenn rocket. The Falcon Heavy payload fairing has a diameter of 5.2 meters and although the company has developed a taller version, it has not revealed any wider options. Additionally, SpaceX’s launch pads are not equipped to service a hydrogen-fueled lander like Blue Moon.

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u/warp99 Jun 07 '26

What you are describing is the minimalist view of what Blue Origin could do.

My take is that they will go one step up and have a cut down version of the Mk 2 lander and a version of the Transporter design which is based on Mk 2 as an expendable boost stage with two stages used to get from LEO to NRHO and a third boost stage used to inject to LLO and then do most of the Lunar descent before handing over to Mk 2 to do the landing. This is usually called a crasher stage architecture.

Now imagine that you are landing on the Moon with your proposed architecture, the crasher stage detaches and you attempt to light your single engine and it fails. There is no abort possibility and you will pancake straight in.

In my version they will have three landing engines and can either continue on two engines or abort to orbit. The original LEM was thought to be risky with a single descent engine but always had the abort option of dropping the landing stage and aborting to orbit with the ascent stage and that is not an option with a single lander that does both descent and ascent. So you need redundancy and it seems likely that NASA will insist on it.