[00:01] Starship HLS, and there's a detail in here nobody saw coming. Forget the bright, shiny, white spacecraft we're used to seeing. This new HLS looks completely different. Heat shield tiles, flaps. Is this actually the V3 design?
[00:17] Not exactly, because it's also got something else. A docking port built right into the nose. So, what is this new Starship HLS design NASA just revealed? And what makes it so different? Let's find out. On July 15th,
[00:33] NASA published a detailed breakdown of exactly how Artemis 3 is going to work. And there's a part in there that I think is worth talking about. So, here's the plan. Within a relatively short window, three heavy lift rockets will lift off
[00:46] from three separate launch pads. Blue Origin goes first, sending Blue Moon into orbit. Then, SLS launches, carrying four actual astronauts aboard Orion. So, yes, real people are on this flight.
[01:00] SpaceX's Starship goes up last. From there, Orion has to find Blue Moon, dock with it, undock, then go find Starship, dock again, and only then bring the crew home. The reason for this order comes down to what
[01:14] each vehicle actually offers. Blue Moon has a real crew cabin, so the astronauts can go inside, move around, and gather actual data on the habitat environment. Starship, on the other hand, has no crew cabin, which sounds strange, right?
[01:29] And here's where it gets interesting. SpaceX isn't bringing the familiar white Starship HLS up to orbit. As NASA themselves put it, SpaceX plans to use their latest version of Starship, called version 3, the basis of the future HLS.
[01:45] So, what shows up is essentially a standard Starship V3, steel hull, black heat shield tiles, control flaps, but with one key addition, a docking port mounted right at the nose. The most significant part though is what happens
[02:00] after docking. Starship takes over primary control of the entire combined stack. And this isn't just a handoff on paper. Starship is dramatically larger and heavier than Orion with a completely different mass distribution and
[02:14] rotational inertia. Every maneuver, every attitude hold, every small orbital correction sends forces through that docking port. The software has to be precise enough that it doesn't cause the stack to oscillate, overstress the
[02:28] connection, or push Orion into an unsafe attitude. So, the real question this mission has to answer is, can Orion dock with Starship, hand over control, and still keep four astronauts safe throughout? That's the critical test.
[02:42] And if you want to follow how it plays out, make sure you're subscribed. Now, if you're wondering where the actual HLS is right now and what the interior looks like, for that we need to go somewhere a little unexpected. A structure nearly
[02:55] the length of a football field. NASA bought an old McDonnell Douglas warehouse near Houston, poured in 6.2 million gallons of water, and sank full-scale replicas of ISS modules straight to the bottom. That became the
[03:09] Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the NBL. For nearly 30 years, every single ISS astronaut has trained here. But here's what's interesting. Sitting right next to those ISS modules at the bottom of that pool, there's now something new. A
[03:23] full-scale mock-up of the Starship HLS, the vehicle SpaceX built to put humans back on the moon within this decade. A video quietly circulating on social video quietly circulating on social media shows that NASA and SpaceX are
[03:36] already training astronauts on that mock-up right here at this facility. But more importantly, the mock-up itself looks significantly different from anything we've seen before. Two details in particular have the community
[03:48] talking. First, there are now two airlocks sitting inside that 9-m stainless steel ring at the base of the HLS. And second, the elevator, the thing cabin all the way down to the lunar surface, looks noticeably longer than
[04:04] before. So, what does that actually mean? Let's start with the airlocks. If you've been following HLS Starship for a while, the confirmed design already called for two airlocks, each about 13 cubic meters, double the interior volume
[04:19] of the Apollo lunar module. But, there's a big difference between seeing that on a render and seeing it physically built into a mock-up at the bottom of NASA's training pool. That means people are actually getting in in suits, running
[04:32] real procedures. So, why two airlocks? The obvious answer is speed, but the more important reason is redundancy. If one astronaut goes outside and gets stuck at the airlock door, the person inside needs another way out to help.
[04:46] That's single failure tolerance. The system absorbs one failure without it becoming a catastrophe. And this represents a fundamental shift from how NASA used to approach lunar missions. The night Armstrong and Aldrin landed on
[04:59] disaster speech ready. Nixon's speechwriter had prepared in event of moon disaster. Nixon would call the widows personally, a priest would perform a burial at sea ceremony, and NASA would cut all communication with
[05:13] Eagle and leave them to die in silence. There was no backup lander, no second option. The technology in the Cold War timeline simply didn't allow for it. That's not acceptable anymore. Beyond redundancy, two airlocks also allow
[05:27] cross-venting. Instead of dumping the entire atmosphere to vacuum every time someone goes outside, you transfer it to the second airlock and recover most of it. On a mission where every kilogram had to be launched from Earth, refueled
[05:40] in orbit, and flown to the moon, that efficiency actually matters. And operationally, two airlocks give the two astronauts on the surface more flexibility. One goes out to prep while the other monitors from inside, then
[05:53] they swap. Artemis third will only have two people on the lunar surface, no third crew member staying behind as backup. It's a deliberate calculation. The first crude lunar landing in over 50 years is risky enough that you minimize
[06:06] exposure and build redundancy into the hardware instead. So, is two airlocks genuinely smart engineering or is SpaceX overcomplicating things? What do you think? The second thing, and this one is actually more concerning, is the
[06:21] elevator. You can actually see it in the video. The elevator rail system protruding outward from the hole right near those two airlocks, noticeably further out than anything we've seen in previous mockups or design renders. So,
[06:34] previous mockups or design renders. So, why the change? Picture Starship HLS standing on the moon. 50 m tall, landing legs spread wide, engine cluster sitting The elevator basket has to travel along the outside of that hole the entire way
[06:49] from the crew cabin near the top all the way down to the lunar surface, fully exposed, running right alongside those landing legs at the bottom. If the arm clipping the legs on the way down or hitting a bad approach angle relative to
[07:03] the surface, especially at the lunar south pole where terrain can slope up to 20°, and the vehicle almost certainly won't be standing perfectly vertical after touchdown. A longer arm buys more clearance from the hole and the legs,
[07:16] improves the approach angle to the surface, and adds stability when the basket is carrying an astronaut in a full EVA suit weighing tens of kilograms. This is exactly the kind of small adjustment that only shows up
[07:28] after someone actually gets into the suit, goes underwater, and discovers the problem firsthand. But, there's a much bigger issue sitting underneath all of this. If the elevator fails while both astronauts are standing on the lunar
[07:41] surface, there is currently no other way back into the vehicle. No backup ladder, no external handholds, no secondary route. The HLS program has officially classified the elevator as a top risk and is actively working with SpaceX to
[07:57] develop contingency options. Redundant winches, detachable cable mechanisms that could theoretically be used to haul crew up manually. Not a perfect answer, but at least the thinking is going in the right direction. SpaceX says they're
[08:11] focused on a robust, redundant design, though the specific details haven't been made public yet. What makes this even more uncomfortable is what NASA's own Office of Inspector General put in its March 2026 report. The elevator will
[08:25] never have been tested in actual lunar conditions before crew depends on it. The current uncrewed demonstration flight plan doesn't require the elevator to be included, which means the first time this system operates in a real
[08:37] lunar environment, real regolith, real thermal extremes, real 1/6 gravity, surface counting on it to get back home. That's the question the community keeps
[08:49] coming back to. The longer arm in the NBL mock-up is a good sign. It means the hardware is evolving based on real feedback from real people in real suits. But the gap between tested in a pool in Houston and first use on the moon with
[09:03] no backup is still very much there. And while we're on the subject of the pool, question. Why use a swimming pool to test something that's supposed to work in lunar gravity? The answer comes straight from NASA's own data. When an
[09:18] astronaut is suited up underwater, the buoyancy can be adjusted to simulate exactly 1/6 G, the same gravity as the moon. To achieve what they call a lunar way out, technicians have to strap roughly 90 lb of additional weight onto
[09:32] the suit. And because lead weights are too bulky, they switched to tungsten, twice the density, same mass, far less bulk on the suit. The NBL isn't just a training pool. It's the place where every judgement call gets verified
[09:45] before anyone sets foot on the moon for real. Is this space wide enough? Can an astronaut actually operate this in a pressurized suit? How long does this step actually take? All of it gets answered underwater first. There's
[09:58] another question that keeps coming up in the community. What exactly are they doing with all that open space inside the vehicle? Starship HLS has a diameter of 9 m, roughly the width of a house. The crew living area sits up near the
[10:11] nose, but the entire lower section of the hull, that massive steel cylinder, is propellant tank, not living space. The vehicle looks hollow from the outside, and that's intentional. Starship HLS is a heavily modified
[10:25] variant of the standard Starship, landing engines mounted high on the hull to avoid blasting lunar regolith during descent, airlocks and elevator for EVA operations, no heat shield or aerodynamic fins because it never
[10:38] returns to Earth, and a docking port for Orion. That design also explains why the stability question comes up so often. A 14-story structure standing on lunar terrain that can slope up to 20° at the South Pole. That sounds like a problem.
[10:53] The OIG report flagged it directly. Slopes of that angle present real navigation and landing challenges, and given Starship's height of 171 ft, there's a genuine risk that landing momentum could continue after touchdown
[11:06] counter argument holds up, too. The heaviest components on the vehicle, sit entirely at the base. Right above them is the liquid oxygen tank, which holds roughly 80% of the total ascent
[11:20] propellant mass. The vehicle looks top-heavy from the outside, but the actual center of mass sits much lower than it appears. Both concerns are legitimate. The tipping risk is real, and NASA has accounted for it through
[11:32] self-leveling landing legs. Whether that's enough is a question that won't be fully answered until the vehicle actually lands somewhere other than a concrete pad in Texas. >> T-minus 10
[11:44] 9 8 7 6 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ignition and lift off at T-minus 2 seconds. Go SpaceX Go.