More False Memories About the Origin (and Cost) of SLS
Bush’s former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says Obama’s Space Launch System ‘next essential step’: guest opinion, Huntsville Times
“The SLS vehicle design materialized from an extensive, unbiased set of NASA technical studies which compared all possible scenarios, with a focus on efficiency and budget constraints.”
Keith’s note: “Unbiased”, eh Mike? Nothing about “Apollo on Steroids” using Ares 1-X etc which also arose from what you call “an extensive, unbiased set of NASA technical studies which compared all possible scenarios” — or the proscriptive language from the Senate (where did that come from, hmm?) as to what old Space Shuttle parts NASA was ordered to use along with left overs from your stalled and overpriced Ares program. (Sigh) I guess if you say this often enough in op eds people will eventually start to believe it out of sheer tedium and lack of long term memory – until there are problems with the launch vehicle in question. THEN they start to wonder how we got here to begin with. Rather, how we are still not out there as you and others had promised we’d be by now.
Then there’s this other whopper from Mike: “And, contrary to some suggestions, SLS launches will cost no more than existing commercial U.S. systems – which are currently advertised at about $4.5 million per ton of payload.” How can you possibly make such a statement when the number of launches is unknown – and a lot of SLS development was paid for by Ares V and not included in Mike’s secret math. But who cares, right? No one inside or outside of NASA has ever grasped what it really costs for the agency to develop and launch things.
This op ed piece also appeared in The Hill last week. Oddly the same exact words in the Mike Griffin/Dan Dumbacher op ed in the Huntsville times (“Contrary to some suggestions, the SLS will be very competitive with the advertised price of commercial U.S. systems – on the order of $4.5 million per ton of payload.”) are to be found in an op ed “U.S. will keep lead in space with NASA’s launch system“ that appeared several days ago in the Orlando Sentinel – but this op ed has Doug Cooke and Steve Cook as the authors. If you read the Huntsville Times and Orlando Sentinel op eds side by side you will see that they were clearly written by the same people. Once again the Ares V mafia is mounting a PR effort to convince everyone that they were right all along.
“Professor Griff” is at it again – not worried about US dominance in space, but instead MSFC’s dominance in NASA.
Griff – you had a chance with the DIRECT proposal. You and Chris worked on this and knew it could work. However, because it did not derive from MSFC (even though it really did have a lot of MSFC people moonlighting on the project) you poo-poo’d it.
You could have shown leadership and had an SD-SHLV but you said no. Now you want to re-write the history books. A lot of people inside the 495 are looking at this and saying WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT Mike!??!
This is honestly one of the best things that could happen – another NASA “Republican” endorsing the Obama rocket to nowhere.
Thanks!
I’ve always found the SLS paint job interesting. Ares V was always depicted with Shuttle ET orange, but SLS has the Saturn V white with black tracking targets. I assumed it was to simultaneously evoke Apollo nostalgia and try to fool people into thinking SLS isn’t Ares V.
Apropos debunking SLS…
Keith, are you familiar with Rand Simberg’s recently funded Kickstarter called Clearing the Roadblock to Mars?
Griffin says – “And, contrary to some suggestions, SLS launches will cost no more than existing commercial U.S. systems – which are currently advertised at about $4.5 million per ton of payload.”
Which passes no sanity check.
Current SLS and Ground Ops budget of about $1,750M in 2015. That’s for a 70t (metric) to LEO (200km/28.5 circ.) capability. Then, note that NASA budgets tend to be flatish for such large programs, so this value is what one can expect, with very little variation, in operational years. Second, any cost/ton has to be a certain steady flight rate assumption, or also a flight rate shown over many years divided by all those years budgets-flying or not. At 1 launch a year, this is 25M a ton, and at 4 launches a year it’s $6.25M a ton. The flight rate of 4 a year is unlikely, without adding to the budget, so say 2 a year and you get $12.5 million a ton. And the payload that may have lead Griffin to $4.5 million a ton may be for a rocket that is more expensive again, with a larger upper stage, and advanced boosters yet to come.
So how do you get $4.5M a ton? Take the current budget, ASSUME erroneously it can support three 130 ton launches a year at a steady, constant rate. Viola-you get $4.5 million a ton, for a budget unlikely to be so low, to support a flight rate unlikely to be so high, for a configuration unlikely to reach that payload per flight!
It’s the magic of optimism. And also why SLS is desperate to increase budget by hundreds of millions a year (which will still be advertised at these low $/ton, by always assuming an even higher flight rate-in the
future!)
This is the “free beer tomorrow” school of Griffineering.
Thank you for the analysis. I have heard NASA site the SLS launch cost at $600M before. Do you know if this comes from dividing the current operational budget by three as you described? It gives the right numbers. I had always assumed it was some marginal cost calculation not including facilities maintenance. My objection to this estimate was always based around the history of the shuttle program. I could never figure out how an expendable SLS based around the Shuttle architecture could be ~ 1/2 the cost of a single shuttle launch (at lower flight rate no less). Are they not accounting for the cost of the engines? I know they have a moderate stockpile on hand, that might help the accounting.
Belatedly:
It’s worse than that. Only two launches are funded. In total. And there’s only enough recycled shuttle engines for those two launches. There’ll need to be a significant funding increase to pay for new engines for additional launches.
So with a budget of $1.7b/yr, and about 12 years between the conversion of Constellation into SLS and the two scheduled launches (and ignoring the cost of Constellation, SLS launch operations, mission costs and Orion development), you are looking at $20b just to supply the two launchers. At a theoretical 70t per launch, that’s $140m per tonne.
“Ah,” the apologists will cry, “but you can’t dump the entire development cost onto just the first two launches!” To amortise that $20b development cost to just $4.5m/tonne / $315/launch over the entire program, you’d need to produce over 60 SLS launch vehicles.
(And that, obviously, doesn’t include the costs of those 60 launches. To amortise development costs to just $1m/tonne (leaving $3.5m/t for construction and operations of the launchers, or $245m per launch), you’d need over 270 launch vehicles produced.)
The biggest budget item for NASA launches isn’t the equipment, it’s the thousands of people on the ground with their salaries who drive the prices sky high. The Shuttle program cost exactly the same when it was grounded for 18 months as it cost when it was launching about 10 shuttles a year. There were no savings because the budget was driven by salaries. That’s why commercial space ventures can beat government space ventures.
It’s not called the Senate Launch System for nothing.
Cheers
“A larger rocket means fewer launches and less risk to our astronauts, since launch is one of the most challenging aspects of any mission.”
And if we were using smaller rockets we would launch the crew multiple times?
“NASA planners believe SLS can accomplish this with 6 or 7 launches, while existing rockets would require approximately 30 missions. It’s the difference between loading a large moving van or driving multiple trips in a passenger car.”
In the analogy both vehicles are available from a commercial supplier. In a more accurate analogy, the car would be commercially available while the moving truck would be specially designed for your moving job by a consortium of defense contractors, and pushed through a small production line which is strategically divided between the politically relevant states. Which option is cheaper now?
What if you could use the passenger car over and over and every time you used the truck you dumped it in the ocean.
As long as SpaceX’s reusability approach proves more effective than the shuttle’s, this would be a relevant part of the comparison. But it’s worth noting that even as an expendable, the Falcon 9 (much less the heavy) beats any realistic SLS price estimate.
Remember that this was the same guy who had his thumb on the scale to insure that Ares I and Ares V would be picked as the way forward for NASA. His obsession with heavy lift is so large he engaged in actively suppressing all other possibilities, even if those other possibilities would have been more sustainable and affordable in the long run.
So, it should come as no surprise that he’s supporting SLS (a.k.a. the Senate Launch System or the “Rocket to Nowhere”). If it does eventually fly, Mike Griffin will no doubt claim that he’s the “father” of SLS and attempt to get his name in the (revisionist) history books as such.
I guess this is the place to come for SLS bashing – but it’s time for some pushback and here it goes…
Before you go GA GA over reusable spacecraft, remember that the majority of American astronauts lost have been lost on ‘reusable’ spacecraft aka space shuttle. Virgin Galactic also just lost a pilot developing their reusable spacecraft. Also, if you have a $500M payload, are you OK with being the 99th flight on that reusable rocket – after all those metals and materials have been stressed and pushed 99 times – I guess it all depends on the rocket, right?
We all want a safe and reliable reusable rocket and we all love Space X and the fact that they are working on that – but it’s still cutting edge and who knows when/if that will be ready (and reliable). Despite all the hate (even from within the space geek community!?!?) SLS is probably still the best bet for a near-term mission that is worth the risks involved in human spaceflight… Like a crewed fly-by mission to Mars ala Inspiration Mars… The bottom line criticism of SLS comes to “it’s not efficient and we (the government) are going to be throwing away a lot of money”… If you are worried about gov’t waste, stop wasting your time with NASA (less than .5 % of federal budget) – go do something about defense spending or entitlements that actually take up the vast majority of the budget – your time would be much better spent.
There is a fair bit of SLS criticism over here, but I would like to think that the commentors are open to reasoned argument. It is true that NASA’s crew losses in space were all associated with a reusable vehicle, but the more relevant aspect of that vehicle was the fault intolerance of its design. The Space Shuttle did not have a launch abort mode save the crew from anything but the most accommodating of launch failures. Furthermore, neither of the disasters trace back to the failure of a reusable component (an expendable O-ring on Challenger, tank insulation on Columbia). Actually the Shuttle’s reusable components held up pretty well. Reusable or not, both the SLS and the CC vehicles should be considered safer than the Space Shuttle because of their launch abort systems. If anything, the more relevant point in comparison to the Space Shuttle would be the SLS’s continued reliance on solid boosters, with all of the associated dangers of those components.
I don’t think the Virgin Galactic suborbital vehicle has anything important to tell us in this matter. That fatality was suffered in the course of development, not because of re-use, and was related to a novel feature not present in any other spacecraft.
As to the reliability of Falcon IX first stages after 99 launches, I don’t think this is relevant either. If they are ever launching stages that many times without complete rebuild of the engines and tank structure (doubtful in my opinion), there is no reason they would have to launch crewed missions or expensive payloads on those veteran boosters. The production lines are not shutting down, and the prices are such that even if NASA wanted to insist on virgin boosters, they would still be a steal compared to the SLS. Hell even the CST-100 is cheap by comparison.
I can’t speak for everyone, but my own obsession with economy has nothing to do with the national debt or fiscal conservatism. If it were up to me, NASA’s budget would be at least 5X the current value, and I would be happy take it out of defense. But experience shows that NASA’s budget isn’t going to grow significantly, no matter where they promise to go. This means that what NASA can achieve is intimately related to how efficient they are. The Shuttle strangled manned spaceflight for a generation or more and I am determined that the same mistake not be made again.
/rant
The loss of both orbiters had absolutely nothing to do with the orbiter itself being “stressed and pushed 99 times”. In fact, since there was more than one orbiter, no one orbiter was reused anywhere near 99 times.
Challenger was lost due to an SRB joint leak. While the reused segments in the SRB was a contributing factor to the accident, the root cause was the fact that hot gases leaking past the o-rings was not treated with the seriousness it deserved, especially by management when they were advised *not* to launch by the engineers on that fateful day. In fact, reusing the SRBs allowed inspections which revealed the joint leakage problem in the first place. If the SRB would have been disposable, the issue might never have been found, the SRB field joints would never have been redesigned, and the same failure might have happened anyway.
Columbia was lost due to SOFI shedding from the expendable ET during launch. It was a chunk of foam shed from the ET which punched a huge fracking hole in Columbia’s wing. This was no fault of the reusable orbiter. A sane reusable tank design would not use external insulation which is not robust enough to remain intact during launch.
Both these problems were identified within the first few launches. The fundamental cause of the Shuttle losses was the failure to test prototypes in the full flight regime before the final design was chosen. Critical elements of the design were based on analysis rather than experience, and could not easily be changed when both risk and cost were discovered to be much higher than predicted.
In contrast Falcon has undergone extremely rapid design evolution with changes on almost every launch since SpaceX has eliminated the cumbersome NASA design oversight process. Since most SpaceX launches will continue to be unmanned, design changes can be tested on multiple launches before being used for human launch.
Columbia was doomed not by foam shed from the tank but by separation of an insulating/streamlining fairing block from the bipod strut. The fairing was eliminated and a surface heater added to prevent ice formation.
The Virgin pilot was killed in an accident due to pilot error when he prematurely released the feather lock. While Burt Rutan’s belief in direct pilot control of a spacecraft during ascent might possibly be questioned, the reusability of the vehicle was not at issue.
I am an unbelievably rich charter airline owner who operates flights from Paine Field to various destinations. I have decided that I can afford to fly all of my airliners on just one round trip each, I don’t reuse them. The first flight of each of the airliners that I purchase from Boeing is the outbound passenger flight, this first flight serves multiple duties as test flight, delivery flight, and revenue flight. After the return flight to Paine the aircraft is sold or scrapped. Using this method makes my passengers much safer than they would be on competitor airlines that reuse their aircraft, and the statistics bear this out because all fatal passenger accidents have occurred on aircraft that have been reused.
I am an unbelievably rich satellite tv operator and I will use the cheapest means possible to get my satellite into GEO… Could you recommed a reusable rocket for me that is available today?
The solution to the high cost and risk of human spaceflight is to reduce the cost and risk, not to look for ever more spectacular missions to justify them.
Lower the cost and risk?… Well, we could not fly at all and that would eliminate the cost and risk… Maybe we could keep astronauts flying in low earth orbit as human gunea pigs for another 20 years… that would surely cost less and be less risky than any ‘spectacular mission.’… OR we can let astronauts be explorers and let them accomplish missions worthy of the risks of human spaceflight.
A century ago flying entialed enormous risk. We could have built an immense biplane to carry four brave explorers across the Atlantic, a feat that would be worth the danger. But instead we made flying inexpensive, safe and routine, so ordinary people could fly around the world. An organization that helped accomplish this was the NACA, which evolved into NASA.
At current costs we will _never_ see more than a dozen Americans in space, because the whole nation cannot afford it. For those of us that imagine a future in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people will be living and working in space, the critical need is not to find ever more spectacular feats, but rather to make human spaceflight, even to Mars, practical, safe, and routine. It isn’t avoiding a challange, in fact it means accepting a much more difficult challange and following a very different strategy.
So the answer for growing human space flight is to work on making it mundane and boring? …. Because there is not enough apathy in the general public right now regarding space flight… Human spaceflight is not a means of transportation, it is a means of exploration – of pushing the frontier… this is what gets people excited about space travel.
Griffin: “A larger rocket means fewer launches and less risk to our astronauts,
since launch is one of the most challenging aspects of any mission.”
Griffin is acting like one can determine the true reliability of a launch vehicle from an engineering spreadsheet. He should know better. Solid reliability numbers come from actual flights.
A larger rocket means you can afford fewer test launches – if any – to gather data before you put humans on-board. The Apollo program only had 2 unmanned test flights of the Saturn V. SLS will probably have only one test flight (if we’re lucky with Congress) before NASA violates their own safety rules and gives it a thumbs up as “human rated.”