I thought LiFePO4 is a lot less energy dense then LiIon, to the extent that it is probable only really useful in fixed location applications (home battery backup, solar/wind time smoothing). Which is all great stuff, but not really going to make a low cost EV.
Am I wrong about that, or is the research towards bringing the density up?
Hmmmm, at first blush that doesn’t do a lot for me. Then I skimmed it, and ok, yes it has been “just a few short decades away” for decades. But as it says we have shaved a decade or two off of that time horizon. Which i since.
Then my pessimism caught up, (1) it is basically just asking people when they think it will happen, not actually citing any particular reason it will happen. Not even “we spent a huge amount of money so surely now! (aka I’ve been putting money into the slot machine for an hour now, surely any minute now I’ll win it all back!)”, and (2) if it has taken ~40 years to go from “2-4 decades” to “1.5-2 decades” that means in another 80 years it will only be five years away!
I’m not sure we are going to make it 80 years without cleaning up our climate act. Granted, maybe we will clean it up without some sort of ultra low pollution energy source we can basically just replace our current energy sources with and carry on much like we always have.
Well, hey, I guess at least me estimating 80 years beats me estimating “never”, so that is something?
I’m surprised they didn’t try something like the route the USSR (eventually) came up with which gave them more time on the Moon without stretching the technology too far.
The last Soviet plan was to use two N1s. The first would carry a braking stage; the second would carry a crew in a heavy L3M lander. They would dock in lunar orbit, descend, do some sciency stuff for a couple of weeks (not forgetting to put up a flag), then fire the L3M on a direct ascent for the Earth.
Unfortunately - and this is where the stretching the technology came back to bite them - it all relied on the N1 being upgraded to the N1M specification with hydrolox engines for all but the first stage. Even though the engines were test-fired, the entire programme was effectively cancelled in 1974.
Scientists are getting more optimistic that this thing they’ve been getting more or less optimistic about at various times is going to happen a bit sooner than they thought previously.
therefore:
It’s actually getting more likely to happen sooner.
doesn’t quite work for me.
Seems somewhat lacking in intellectual rigour.
I just linked to it as part of the joke about fusion power/better batteries being x years away.
From where I sit this is sort of what SpaceX is doing right now, only more complex (depot, tankers) and trying to stretch their existing and flight proven technology further (transfer of cryogenic fuel/oxidiser in microgravity, multiple re-lighting of vacuum optimised engines, minimising boil-off in a hard vacuum, docking massive spacecraft, …).
Nothing really exists yet except the booster, and that’s a long way from being mature, reliable and powerful enough.
Then, getting the stack rated for crewed flights. Not for the tankers and the depot, obviously, but those have to be very reliable too, otherwise the tight launch cadence can’t work.
Sure, a lot can be done parallel - if they have the resources, i.e. engineers and test/launch sites.
But a crewed Moon landing using Starship? Not within this decade.
