Ice on the Moon

The only practical way to have any kind of cislunar habitat is going to be utilizing lunar water for cosmic ray shielding lifted from the poles using 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth. Since a capsule would require around 400 tons any acceptable amount of living space for even a small crew is going to mass well over a thousand tons of just water to start with. A true space station would not only protect against dosing but also debilitation with tether-generated artificial gravity. The definition of “true” being a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G).

It follows the only practical way to place these kinds of water-shielded compartments into space is a double-hulled “fat” wet workshop since this will already be stressed for one gravity and the outer propellent layer can handily contain the water shield. These Fat Workshops are going to require an even more powerful iteration of the SLS than is being considered now lifting well over the 130 metric tons specified. And of course the critical hardware is a semi-expendable Robot Lunar Lander that can convert lunar ice into propellant and make as many trips as possible bringing water up.

Once a pipeline for these true space stations is operating then docked landers can be used as propulsion modules to allow Lunar Cycler operations and a fleet of Cyclers will create a constant flow of personnel and materials to and from the Moon. Each one of these several Space Stations and likely half a dozen or more Cyclers would mass several thousand tons and a state sponsored program of expanded SLS launches the only practical way to establish this permanent Cislunar human presence and infrastructure. Space “entrepreneurs” are not going to do it.

Out of all the hardware listed such as the Super Heavy Lift Vehicle (SLS) and Fat Workshop and Robot Lunar Lander, the most important piece of the puzzle missing is a cryogenic propellent engine in the 2 million pound thrust range. Either that or the unlikely option of a much greener solid fuel booster. When this F-1 class SHLV engine appears it will be a signal we are ready to commit to a real space program.

Those 147 need to resign. And Fox News shut down. And Trump imprisoned. Most important, Americans need to understand these conspiracy theories are lies used to manipulate them. Trust of the fifth estate must be restored. That means Facebook has to come clean and turn off those algorithms driving people insane. And it better happen quick. Instead of one Timothy McVeigh, we have thousands of them looking for their opportunity right now.

At this moment, 4:30 in the evening in Arizona, the D.C. curfew is going into effect and the police are moving in to move everyone out of the Capitol. The news is saying the rally where Trump incited the mob to march on the Capitol was organized by “Women for Trump.” This is disquieting to me because the Russian Revolution started with women marching. And a woman was shot and killed during the storming of the Capitol though the details have not been released. The races in Georgia have been called and the democrats have control of the senate. Trump praised the mob saying they were special and loved and to go home. Not very sincerely in my opinion. Trump was visibly happy. And calls for the 25th amendment to be enacted to remove the President from office are being talked about.

On the epiphany, during the year the Christmas star reappeared, with the pandemic and the fires that burned across the west, Americans voted against the populist strongman. But those that did not…tens of millions…are wondering if this is the moment that their grievances will be addressed. That those not white enough or evangelical enough or free market capitalist enough might now be “purged.” A black and a Jew were elected in Georgia of all places to take control of the senate- and this will only fuel conspiracy theories. Both my wife and daughter are scared and crying.

7:00 Ben Sasse is cracking jokes and giving a feel good speech- after acknowledging a woman had lost her life on the premises only hours previously. Some of them actually laughed. And there are reports of the cabinet considering the 25th amendment and removing Trump. And members of the Trump administration resigning.

I now realize the power the millions of Trump supporters believe they wield- the power of the bully, of the narcissist, of the sociopath, of the psychopath, wherever they fall in that arc. My wife told me last night the Korean proverb of the Buddhist monk: the monk that is unhappy in the temple needs to move, not the temple. On the forum where I comment on space flight I am relentlessly trolled by a gang of libertarian cyberthugs. Why do I keep going back there? In my workplace I am unhappy with the laziness and incompetence of my supervisors and coworkers. I need to find another job. And in regards to the nation I am a citizen of, I have been thinking quite clearly in terms Truth and Power. There is the Truth that is and the Power that does.

There are those with a worldview that leans toward utilitarianism:

The doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority, the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct. It is in one sense the embodiment of the Christian life.

There are those with a worldview that leans towards objectivism:

The philosophy that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (see rational egoism), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism.

So… pursuing ones own happiness through capitalism does tend to enable people to make jokes in the same building a woman died by violence a few hours earlier. It is the power that ignores what does not make one happy or trivializes that which distracts from the pursuit of ones happiness. The truth is the greatest happiness for the greatest number can only occur when the death of a human being is not ignored and the fact that an election was not “rigged” is accepted.

12:32 in Arizona and I am watching congress vote on “the objection” and looking at the number tallies go up. Those Republicans who are supporting Trumpism must never be forgotten or forgiven and voted out.

137 republican traitors in congress and only 64 that are not is my last count at around a quarter after one Arizona time.

01:30 in Arizona and here we go, Pence and Pelosi are standing side by side and down goes the gavel. 7 senate traitors- and the objection is not sustained.

And now we go through the 50 states…And now it is over.

I think it is becoming clearer and clearer that the left is about truth and the right is about power. Truth being the people at some point cannot be manipulated into being wage slaves for the rich and demand redistribution of wealth. Power is about money being the god of this world and the rich craving absolute authority over this world, which they believe they own, as their property.

The invaders, alien beings worshiping a dead god, their destiny, to attempt to enslave the Earth, their only purpose, to make it their world.

Somehow I must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun.

This election is over and all this is actually about the next election. If we do not respond to this then it could be the end of America in 4 years. All of these Trumpists must be held accountable. It has gone way way too far and now we have to go back. America is divided as it never has been before except during the civil war. The only more dangerous time was during Reagan when nuclear Armageddon threatened civilization.

(CNN)All 10 living former US defense secretaries declared that the US presidential election is over in a forceful public letter published in The Washington Post on Sunday as President Donald Trump continues to deny his election loss to Joe Biden.The letter — signed by Dick Cheney, James Mattis, Mark Esper, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Chuck Hagel, Robert Gates, William Perry and Ashton Carter — amounts to a remarkable show of force against Trump’s subversion efforts just days before Congress is set to count Electoral College votes.”Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived,” the group wrote.

Just saw on the news he signed the coronavirus relief bill. Thank God. Maybe that means this is all really going to be over soon. If he would just concede…

“Sine qua non” is an interesting term concerning the military. Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945. On November 1, 1952, the first fusion device, followed by Castle Bravo, a deliverable version, on March 1, 1954, arguably made war, as it had been known, impossible.

Except for the subsequent delivery systems of bombers, missiles, and submarine missiles, this would seem to make most military forces no longer worth the money spent on them. But instead of only these mutually destructive nuclear weapons the cold war saw uncounted trillions of dollars thrown at a universe of military hardware.

Helicopters were my life for about 14 years. They do things nothing else can but as a warfighting machine the easiest things to shoot down there is. The reason “only” 5000 were shot down in Vietnam was the triple canopy of jungle shielding them much of the time. Likewise the Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 for the simple reason the missiles now in use will shoot them down in droves on the first day of hostilities and they will go nowhere near the enemy after that first day.

With quantum communication links the drone is now the combat aircraft of choice. Even without secure communications they are fairly capable of being sent on strike missions preprogrammed like a cruise missile and do a better job than human pilots. This is the age we live in and much of what the public is told about the military is misinformation used to promote an agenda. Like keeping pilots employed flying F-35’s. Missile defense is one of these multi-billion dollar scams that has generated so much revenue that even though it does not work it goes on and on.

Weaponizing Earth orbit with smallsat constellations is an incredible mistake knowingly made simply in the interest of greed and enabled by corruption. That proliferation is actually what “Space Force” is all about. That is the reality.

Starship is a variation of the Shuttle concept that does not expend a tank. How well this is going to work is not really clear….and it probably will not be the “game-changer” it has been hyped as.

The SLS is a straightforward remake of the Apollo concept and unlike Starship, future iterations with recoverable liquid boosters and engine module (only expending core tankage), could become what the Space Transportation System should have been. This could make sending large payloads direct to the Moon every couple months for decades to come a reality.

For close to a decade the NewSpace fans have demonized the Moon because a certain entrepreneurs rocket was pretty much useless for anything having to do with a lunar return. When evidence for lunar ice was found in 2010 NASA should have immediately focused on the Moon and abandoned the dead end of LEO. Pandering to the NewSpace business plan has set space exploration back a decade and why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Much of the unhappiness with anything having to do with the Moon is simply a legacy of that NewSpace brainwashing.

Your crystal ball hopefully has a crack in it. It is not just the 42,000 refrigerator-size starlinks; tens of thousands of “micro-sats” in the 200 pound range and other constellations will be going up trying to cash in on beaming cat videos to Eskimos. This whole field of dreams is also connected to the defense industry and a new kind of cold war proliferation these companies are depending on revenue from when everyone finds out there are not enough Eskimos to pay for it. As for this being “good” for anyone, it is actually an unnecessary service that is dangerous and a bad idea in so many ways that it never should have been entertained. The strip-mining of Earth orbit.

“I’ve been in favor for some time now of using a tax-“

The libertarian crazies on this forum, and there are a couple dozen at least, will automatically troll you when they read that sentence. You are about to get a lesson in freedom of speech. That is, “freedom” is a code word for “greed” to Neoliberals, and “liberty” (as in libertarian) is code for “NO TAXES/NO REGULATION.” It is all about absolute greed and money as the god of this world. And you are not even mentioning that.

“-you don’t have much business telling others what’s good enough for their uses-“

You are right…my business is keeping this planet, with me and mine living on it, from self-destructing. 100,000 pieces of space junk is a significant step away from that goal. You might be one of a hundred million that consider money the god of this world and your personal pleasure and convenience all that matters- but I am not.

Yes. The selling point is latency. Otherwise a much less problematic GEO solution would be the obvious better path than tens of thousands of smallsats.

It was a field of dreams created to satisfy the eternal craving for convenience on the cheap. Unfortunately there is no cheap and this is going to end badly.

“The president also opposed provisions in the NDAA to rename military bases that honor Confederate officers and language that restricts his power to use military construction money for other projects.”

His legacy is bases named after traitors, so named due to the political influence of racists, and a rusty wall that keeps nobody from going over, around, or under it. And a military force that risks no members in the field yet enjoys all the privileges and prestige of those who do- his way of spitting on the military he considers suckers and losers.

Unfortunately, more and more things above this world tend to destabilize the fragile state of Mutually Assured Destruction that has existed since the early 60’s.

Things that destabilize and cause catastrophes are always overlooked until after the worst has happened. Not only smallsat constellations but the small cheap rockets used to launch them are…dangerous. No doubt about it. Unless you want to make money…then no such talk is tolerated of course.

“Well, the people in USA can only dream about having an health care system for everyone and other social benefits than the ones Scandinavian people have. And yes, these countries are capitalist countries that care about their population and they are the proof that capitalist economy and protective social system are not two system that mutually excluded each other.
So, the USA could have a very efficient and universal affordable health care system for all its population but greed and egoistic culture is too much there.”

I kind of like you off the bat but your those-who-stay-in-the-cave Ayn Rand Fountainhead rant tells me we will likely not be friends. Too bad.

You know…your hero might be doing what the mysterious forces of fate have allowed him and he thinks, like most over-achievers, he did it all himself. And he believes his way is “the right way.” But sometimes what seems so right, after working so long and so hard to achieve it, turns out to be wrong. And most cannot accept that.

After ten years of watching the Musk Cult badger, bully, and lie…and knowing Elon is surrounded by enablers egging him on to ever greater egoistic heights, I tend to automatically look at the opposite of whatever he is doing.

And it turns out that would be better for everyone much of the time. Really.
Consider it disobedience to the fan club. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnodcLLEZw4

Weaponizing and proliferating in Earth orbit is a huge mistake.

There is no calling it good. You are making the same argument that led to over 69,000 nuclear weapons ready to incinerate civilization at the height of the cold war in 1986. We are now down to less than 18,000. Still enough to crash the global infrastructure which would result in the deaths of billions.

If you think better internet is worth the risk…

The best book I have read to date, and I have read more than a few, explaining the big picture concerning the right in the U.S., is “Democracy in Chains.” The lady tells the story as simply as it can be told and it is complicated but not too hard to understand for most people.

In a nutshell, it is all about greed and lies and connects directly with slavery. That surprised me but it is true. The Neoliberal dream is a world where everything is owned. Proponents will not admit it but this ultimately includes people. This was why “compassionate conservatism” had to go hand in hand with the Bush era “ownership society” at the turn of the century. One was the lie hiding the naked greed of the other. And lying is what they do like the rest of us breathe.

The right is the 1% conning the rest of us into being wage slaves. Nothing more. Redistribution of wealth is the blasphemy the Neoliberals who worship money as the god of this world will not tolerate. Taxes are redistribution of wealth and almost everything, EVERYTHING, we are being fed by the corporate-owned media has something to do with eliminating taxes on the rich. That is why they mention it only enough to emphasize it is not on the table. Truth.

I would add that it is not so much the problem I have with sociopaths like Musk and Bezos as those who worship them. The NewSpace Cult is made up largely of gullible libertarians who are toxic individuals living in a fantasy world of superhero billionaires.

They are not heroes. They might have been decent people before it went to their head, but how they treat their employees (which is really how they became rich), and the minions feeding their egos, have made them a problem for the human race, not a solution. This is not a new problem. The Guillotine was the solution in France and the modern world will fall apart if that happens again.

For close to a decade the NewSpace fans have demonized the Moon because a certain entrepreneurs rocket was pretty much useless for anything having to do with a lunar return. When evidence for lunar ice was found in 2010 NASA should have immediately focused on the Moon and abandoned the dead end of LEO. Pandering to the NewSpace business plan has set space exploration back a decade and why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Much of the unhappiness with anything having to do with the Moon is simply a legacy of that NewSpace brainwashing.

The “wealth generation” and vast incomprehensible and obscene personal wealth of Musk and Bezos comes from low corporate taxes and low wages paid to their employees. Which makes what you wrote largely meaningless and a distraction. That was then and the Reagan Revolution is what created the present in which the middle class has largely been destroyed.

“If those taxes returned it wouldn’t really effect a company like SpaceX or Tesla-“

You might think that but I doubt your view is accurate at all. Everything is not poured back into the company; It all goes into people pockets. The least of it into the employees. You have a romantic view of your hero. Now I understand. He spends money to get what he wants Vlad; read to the end to see how that works.

But, as I said, it is not so much Musk and Bezos, it is the Cult that surrounds those with incredible wealth. Wealth that at one time was acknowledged by almost everyone, except the robber barons, as the singular greatest danger to democracy. A century of free market voodoo economic mythology has deceived the citizenry.
It is an evil religion and that is the actual fact.

If anyone doubts that all they have to do is look at “Citizens United.”
https://www.brennancenter.o…

“Citizens United allowed big political spenders to exploit the growing lack of transparency in political spending. This has contributed to a surge in secret spending from outside groups in federal elections. Dark money expenditures increased from less than $5 million in 2006 to more than $300 million in the 2012 election cycle and more than $174 million in the 2014 midterms. In the top 10 most competitive 2014 Senate races, more than 71 percent of the outside spending on the winning candidates was dark money. These numbers actually underestimate the impact of dark money on recent elections, because they do not include super PAC spending that may have originated with dark money sources, or spending that happens outside the “electioneering communications window” 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election.

Finally, because they can hide the identities of their donors, dark money groups also provide a way for foreign countries to hide their activity from U.S. voters and law enforcement agencies. This increases the vulnerability of U.S. elections to international interference.”

Unfortunately the spacex fanboys are a malicious gang of thugs and will not “be respectful.” Coastal Ron, the Godfather of them all, years ago actually threatened a blog run by a Lunar Geologist on Air and Space magazine with legal action because they were criticizing spacex. They shut the comments section on the blog down. Truth. If you go to America Space or Spaceflight Insider you will find little or no commenting because those running those sites long ago began serial deleting all comments due to spacex fans trolling anyone with a bad word to say about the NewSpace flagship company and founder. The remaining popular blogs are mostly spacex infomercials whose forum moderators instantly ban any non-believers.

It is a Cult.

They have hijacked all public discourse about space over the last ten years, trashing NASA as “pork” and demonizing anything not spacex. They are a pernicious corrosive anti-space entity posing as space enthusiasts but essentially promoting a company as their extreme libertarian ideal. Toxic is the best word to describe them.

The gift that has been pouring tax dollars into corporate pockets since 1984- Reagan’s Star Wars.

The most profitable scam in DOD history. Missile defense that will never work as advertised.

It is fascinating to me because several of the projects inspired by the original Casaba Howitzer research in the 1960’s such as Excalibur resulted in mountains of data applicable to Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

Pulse is the only propulsion system in sight that can enable Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). The recent talk of millions directed at Nuclear Thermal Rockets (NTR’s) is sad proof that only those companies with insiders in Aerospace will get funded and those dollars will ultimately go to waste. NTRs are a complete dead end.

Meanwhile…vast sums continue to be squandered on missile defense that does not work and the weaponization of Earth orbit with smallsat constellations. The public does not have a clue.

Propaganda. The USSR was going to crash no matter what- because of greed and corruption and very little to do with Star Wars. Their present Oligarchy reflects exactly that. Reaganomics has largely destroyed the middle class in the U.S. and made us more like the USSR. In my view, obviously informed by different sources, your comment borders on Orwellian.

As was noted in another thread, 4 billion a year for the space station to nowhere so it can “test” hardware.

An incredible waste. Time to move on to the NRHO, HALO, frozen Low Lunar Orbits (LLO), and other places. LEO is a dead end.

Funny how this company is pursuing “outposts.”
I guess that is the newspace-correct term for Wet Workshops.

BLEO platforms would hover 22,236 miles above the equator and see all of the western hemisphere. For long duration human missions without permanent damage to crew from dosing they would require a massive cosmic ray water shield. This is the “Parker Minimum” of around one kiloton (to provide a small crew enough room for psychological health). They would also require an equal mass at the end of a several thousand foot tether system to provide 1G of artificial gravity to eliminate debilitation. This would allow long deployments for even young female service members (most vulnerable) without incurring significant dosing or any debilitation.

If the SpaceX Starship can make it up to GEO with a useful payload this might be it’s niche. However long it takes to enter service, and it could be longer than it took the FH, it would take several years to get the SLS Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLV’s) carrying “Fat Wet Workshops” into Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) to load the water for the cosmic ray shield and then transit back to GEO (requiring 20 to 25 times less energy than lifting water from Earth).

I would suggest the ultimate goal of a Space Corps (rebranding is necessary due to Trump) be to relocate the nuclear arsenal to months away in deep space.

This would accomplish several things:
1. The half-a-century impossible dream of no nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert on Earth realized.

2. Restoring deterrence as ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers are all now vulnerable to a first-strike.
Submarines were the last leg of the triad standing but sea glider drone tech is now ending that.

3. Protect Earth from impact threats with these superpower fleets of “space boomers” also capable of deflecting asteroids and comets with nuclear weapons.

4. Enabling voyages of exploration to the outer solar system with guest scientists on board, as has been done with Submarines on cruises under the Arctic ice-cap.

5. Establish a Cislunar industrial infrastructure with ice-derived cosmic-ray water shielding being lifted to crew compartments for spaceships in frozen Low Lunar Orbit (LLO).

6. Establish a construction pipeline for GEO space stations, Lunar Cyclers, and spaceships.

7. Establish a “Nuclear Moon” program to assemble, test, and launch Nuclear Pulse Propulsion equipped spaceships. Nuclear pulse eventually lifting immense masses off the surface of the Moon in support of a Green New Space Deal that will solve the Climate Change crisis with Space Solar Power satellites.

The gift that has been pouring tax dollars into corporate pockets since 1984- Reagan’s Star Wars.

The most profitable scam in DOD history. Missile defense that will never work as advertised.

It is fascinating to me because several of the projects inspired by the original Casaba Howitzer research in the 1960’s such as Excalibur resulted in mountains of data applicable to Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

Pulse is the only propulsion system in sight that can enable Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). The recent talk of millions directed at Nuclear Thermal Rockets (NTR’s) is sad proof that only those companies with insiders in Aerospace will get funded and those dollars will ultimately go to waste. NTRs are a complete dead end.

Meanwhile…vast sums continue to be squandered on missile defense that does not work and the weaponization of Earth orbit with smallsat constellations. The public does not have a clue.

This is the way it works with Human Space Flight Vlad, please pay attention:

There is NO PROFIT to be made in HSF. Not going to be for a long time. The SHLV’s required to effect a lunar return and establish a permanent human presence off-world are only going to come from a state-sponsored public works project.

As with the first space age (with the goal of landing humans on the Moon) the government space agency will determine how a permanent presence is to be accomplished and then contract with aerospace concerns for the appropriate hardware.

Read it…understand it….and then consider the quasi-marketing B.S. Cult of personality and toxic cocktail of Neoliberal and Libertarian ideologies being endlessly cycled through this forum.

My breath to waste, thanks for your concern though 😦

“Commercial space” proponents are the ones trolling me, in case you haven’t noticed. These automatic disgusting relentless insults and denigration are way beyond anything I deserve.

The problem, as I have stated, is the feedback loop of foul-mouthed bullies feeding off each other year after year until they believe anything they want. Much like our government over the last four years.

I don’t have a problem. I am simply expressing my views on a public forum.

The fanboys here are absolutely and indisputably cult-like and allow no criticism of their belief system. I am critical of the whole NewSpace ideology, sincerely believe it is hurting and not helping, and this is a forum about space…and I will express my views. I should not be harassed.
It is wrong.

Like I told Ron before I blocked him:
You can preach on this street corner all you want, but you don’t own the street.

“This is a hypersonics first deal, then GBSD, then space.”

The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile program is the replacement for the Minuteman ICBM, by the way. This is about cold war toys, not about space. It is not surprising the Musk Fans have such animus for LockMart.

The hatred for any company other than the favorite here is over-the-top in the comments section of the other article concerning this story.

The Cult surrounding the NewSpace flagship company and founder allows no criticism of their ideology on this forum….it is completely toxic to any free speech or differing views.

It is a classic feature of all Cults that an enemy upon which to focus the negative energy of the very flawed and unsuccessful membership is required. “OldSpace” and NASA as part of that demonized entity are unceasingly trashed and denigrated. And anyone who is not playing their part is ruthlessly trolled by SUPER-TROLLS like se jones and his various accounts.

This is why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. The unrealized profoundly pernicious effect of a decade of unrelenting propaganda and corrosive trolling on forums. It has likely sabotaged any collective efforts to direct America back into space in a meaningful way.

The worst bunch on the internet and working directly against any progress in space. No doubt about that.
The Cult of Musk, like The Cult of Trump, needs to end.

The RL-10 and IVF (Integrated Vehicle Fluids) technology is the only thing I have seen available that would work for a Hydrogen Oxygen Lunar Lander in the near future. I presume it is fairly developed since it uses a piston engine and has been in the works for several years.

“At the heart of the patented IVF design is a small 6 cylinder internal combustion engine, that aspirates GH2, with O2 injection, that is joined with starter/generator, small batteries, a coolant loop, and a compressor with many similarities to a hybrid car engine.”

IVF replaces the conventional RCS system and several others.

“In the early 2000s, NASA contracted with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to develop the Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) demonstrator. CECE was intended to lead to RL10 engines capable of deep throttling.[14] In 2007, its operability (with some “chugging”) was demonstrated at 11:1 throttle ratios.[15] In 2009, NASA reported successfully throttling from 104 percent thrust to eight percent thrust, a record for an expander cycle engine of this type. Chugging was eliminated by injector and propellant feed system modifications that control the pressure, temperature and flow of propellants.[16] In 2010, the throttling range was expanded further to a 17.6:1 ratio, throttling from 104% to 5.9% power.[17]”

The IVF system and deep throttling RL-10’s seem to provide what is needed for a Lander, where other designs will face boil-off problems and also still need hypergolics.