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SLS and Orion

Somewhat Confused Defenders Of SLS (Updated)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 3, 2016
Filed under
Somewhat Confused Defenders Of SLS (Updated)

The Space Launch System “Jobs Program”, Paul Spudis
Spudis: “In contrast to some misleading promotional slight of hand, the SLS will not “take astronauts to Mars” but it could launch ready-to-assemble pieces for a human Mars mission into space (it would take between 8 and 12 launches of an augmented SLS to get a fully fueled manned Mars vehicle into space and prepared for departure to Mars).”
Commenter: “… I’m sort of surprised to see you acting as though launching most of our propellant for a Mars mission from Earth is a good idea.”
Spudis: “Where in this post have I advocated that?”
Keith’s 2 May note: Let’s see: Spudis writes “it would take between 8 and 12 launches of an augmented SLS to get a fully fueled manned Mars vehicle into space and prepared for departure to Mars.” If it is “fully fueled” and one presumes launched from Earth on SLS rockets, then he just said that the propellant for the mission to Mars comes from Earth, right? FWIW I attempted to post this comment but Dr. Spudis declined to allow it to be posted. This is sort of silly given that the first paragraph of Spudis’ article centers around a linked posting on NASA Watch and an article on Buzzfeed that quotes me. C’mon Paul.
Keith’s 3 May update: well now my comment has been un-deleted and approved (Spudis says they were never deleted so I will defer to his explanation). Spudis tersely points to another response where he says that he really meant refueling from lunar ice. Not a bad idea – but that is not what he originally said – or even implied.
This article has lots of classic SLS defenses and attacks. Spudis derides Falcon Heavy saying that he’s never seen a Falcon Heavy and “but as no Falcon Heavy has yet to fly, we have no idea of what its cost would be.” Well, SpaceX has been posting prices for Falcon Heavy for some time. They revised their prices just the other day. As for having never flown – correct but wait: the Falcon 9, three of which will comprise a Falcon Heavy, have flown multiple times. Yet Paul hugs his SLS even more tightly even though there is no SLS vehicle lying around – anywhere in a hangar.
Moreover, unlike the Falcon Heavy (which uses identical Falcon 9s) SLS has never flown as “SLS”. Right now the SLS is a bunch of parts that have never been assembled as a single vehicle. The SRBs to be used by SLS are designed Shuttle design but have never flown. SLS uses old Shuttle engines that have never been flown in a SLS configuration. And the SSMEs and SRBs are attached to a new core structure that has never flown.
Falcon 9 has been flying for years. SLS will not fly for another 2-3 years and then will have another 3-4 year gap before it flies again. Yet Spudis et al think that SLS, which will fly twice in the next 6-8 years, will somehow be less risky to use than the Falcon 9/Heavy which will have had dozens and dozens of flights in the same period of time at a collective cost that will still be dwarfed by what SLS costs to build and operate – for 2 flights.
Like I said, SLS supporters are somewhat confused.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

137 responses to “Somewhat Confused Defenders Of SLS (Updated)”

  1. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    Given the state of governmental space utilisation, I would suspect that insisting on not launching all the propellent for a Mars mission from Earth’s surface would set the project back to infinitely distant. Sometimes, you have to accept doing things in the old, clumsy way just to get them done.

    Return flight propellent? Well, that’s a maybe but everything I’ve seen suggests that NASA has no desire to risk a flagship project on something as relatively blue-sky (compared to their usual thinking) as ISRU.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Agreed. There is no infrastructure in place for a two-way, locally-fueled launch profile. Yet.
      Maybe someday NASA will buy fuel for return trips from Mars colonists, right?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Hmm. Maybe Dr. Zubrin (and others) has an idea for what sort of experiment could ride along on the SpaceX mars demonstrator?

        Maybe a ton of hydrogen, used to demonstrate ISRU manufacture of methane? and Oxygen?

        • Bill Housley says:
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          That and a bunch more is-there-life-on-Mars stuff.

        • fcrary says:
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          There is a demonstration ISRU system on the Mars 2020 rover. It’s small scale and due for launch two year later than the Red Dragon planed launch. But it’s there.

  2. Paul F. Dietz says:
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    If the transfer and storage of liquids is too scary an activity to perform in space, then I wonder where the advocates of manned Mars exploration think human space travel is going. Apparently, no industry that manipulates liquids (which is essentially all of them) will be in space in the future they imagine.

    (Similarly for any industry that involves assembling anything in space.)

    If transfer and storage of liquids (in particular, cryogenic propellants) is okay, it’s not clear what purpose SLS serves. It would be far cheaper to launch propellant on smaller commercial launcers.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      SpaceX’s model seems to show that, for them at least, larger launchers are more cost effective because they can reuse a larger percentage of the components. Compare the F9 to FH pricing, an FH is not costed anywhere near F9x3.

      • kcowing says:
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        Exactly.

      • jamesmuncy says:
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        larger launchers using modular components including hydrocarbon engines all made using the same factory. not dissimilar solid boosters and a hydrolox core spread across multiple contractors and factories. FH is cheap because F9 is ubiquitous. SLS is expensive because every part of it is NASA unique.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Hmm. This just seems like…a stretch.

          Surely the costs of moving parts about in order to assemble SLS are negligible in light of over all costs?

          The point about dissimilar fuels makes a bit of sense, and certainly there are integration issues, and issues with additional vibration, but still: any analysis of the difference in cost between FH and SLS will need a lot more than disparate factories and fuel sources by way of explanation.

          • muomega0 says:
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            Each factory or production line, namely engines, in a different state adds significant fixed costs (SSME+ET+SRB are about 1B/yr). TBF, the same facilities held other USG product lines which held spead the fixed costs (RS-68, SSME, RL-10s or solids for different LVS and DOD, etc). Musk agreed long ago.

            The other major difference to include, IMHO, was the amount of effort to ensure high LV reliability given the large cost of the payload.

            A common configuration for crewed and uncrewed launches however to find that unknown unknown (strut, ..), or launching dirt cheap Class D propellant on a LV designed for multiple reuses appears to be better path forward to lower cost with higher demonstrated reliability…not launching every other year.

            Perhaps even launching a 0.5B rover to Mars on LV with previously launched boosters rather than a 3B flagship will enable significantly more science missions in the future too.

          • jamesmuncy says:
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            Michael, I apologize for being abbreviated. I’m working thru a bad summer cold.

            My point was that you make FHs on the same production line that you make F9s, and you make F9s for lots of customers. So the line is highly optimized for large scale, low-cost production.

            Aerojet overhauls/makes RS-25s in Canoga Park, makes RL10s in West Palm, Boeing makes cores in Michaud, ATK makes solids in Promontory, and (with exception of RL10s) none of these are made in quantity so there is no economic payoff for optimizing and reducing production costs. All of this infrastructure needs to be supported and paid for by ONE user who flies once every few years. It’s the worst possible situation for costs.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Point taken, at least insofar as the flight rate.

            But isn’t it the case that automobiles are made in widely disparate factories? That Boeing and especially Airbus make huge parts in very distant factories? That Airbus is especially analogous to SLS in that there is a determined effort to spread the work around– yet they are still whipping Boeing in many categories?

            These days neither transportation of parts nor the benefits of personal collaboration are diminished by distance.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      I think that methane fuel production on Mars might be part of future fuel infrastructure, not just for Mars to Earth flights but for other interplanetary mission profiles as well. This because the CO2 in the Mars atmosphere, water in the Mars crust, reusable rockets, and Mar’s weaker gravity might make fuel production and launch easier from Mars than from Earth.

      • spacechampion says:
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        I’ve been been saying the way to make money on the Moon selling fuel/water/oxygen is to wait for the Moon miner to go bankrupt once the Mars miner undercuts their prices, and buy the operation for a dollar.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Where does the hydrogen come from, methane being CH4?

  3. Richard Brezinski says:
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    Paul Spudis is pro-Moon, anti-Mars. I think if you follow Paul’s blog, you’d find that he was illustrating how inefficient setting up a Mars mission would be if one launched all of the fuel for the mission from Earth. Paul of course is a proponent of harvesting fuel, water and oxygen from the Moon to be used for a Mars mission. Nevertheless, Paul believes we need heavy lift capability and he has not been too enamored by the progress of commercial cargo or crew.

    As far as fuel carriage, storage, and redistribution, this would make a fine set of technology experiments by the US. The Russians accomplished this decades ago and the FGB, the Service Module, and every Progress serve as elements of a fuel storage, tanker and pumper system.

    What would have made sense in furthering future lunar or planetary missions would have been setting up a technology testbed that would have included a cislunar sortie vehicle with refuelable tanks, advanced fuel storage and advanced propulsion systems, and use this for flights from ISS into deep space orbits. That would have advanced technology, capabilities, set a course for the future, and been a real step on a journey-whether to Mars or anywhere else.

    NASA’s Administrator, and the AA for Space Operations (a misnomer if ever there was one) and Exploration continue to talk big, spread hype, but do nothing.

    • kcowing says:
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      If Paul focused on NASA’s lack of a clear destination, the shortsighted avoidance of the use of the Moon as a nearby world worthy of further exploration, and the use of the Moon as an initial focus so as to build a cislunar capability to do more thing, more cheaply, and more flexibly, he’d hear me saying “yes”. But he gets distracted by drinking the SLS Koolaid.

      • Richard Brezinski says:
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        Yes, I agree that for some reason Paul seems to think NASA can do a better job building a big booster than can one of the “commercial” suppliers, like Musk. I am not sure why Paul thinks that. Musk and Space X have demonstrated they are doing a great job, cutting costs and dramatically reducing schedules. If they are successful at reuse of their boosters, then that will really reduce cost by another order of magnitude or even more. In fact maybe that is where Paul is coming from. If Musk is really successful at recovery and reuse of boosters, maybe it would negate going to the moon to get the raw materials for future missions.

        NASA is having problems and cannot seem to get things done on a budget or a schedule; in fact, based on their lack of a plan, they seem to have no vision of what they even want to do.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          The Holy Grail– cheap access to LEO– is almost within our grasp!

          If I were Mr. Musk I’d want a gee-whiz demonstration that showed how to use those returned F9 cores. And I don’t mean another satellite stack, either. Satellite launches these days are ordinary.

          No, I’d want to do something really extraordinary. And I’d like someone else to pay for it, too.

          “I know!”, says Elon, waking up at 2 AM. “Let’s send those used cores to Mars!”

          Everything is changing.

          • jamesmuncy says:
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            As we say in the Space Frontier Foundation, Michael, Welcome to the Revolution.

          • Paul451 says:
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            F9 cores can’t be directly used on FH. Different architecture.

          • duheagle says:
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            Shotwell has stated that SpaceX will be standardizing on two core designs. The FH center cores will be selectively beefed up versions of the current F9 cores and the FH side cores will be the same as F9 cores. I don’t know if that means all F9 cores will have both left- and right-handed attachment hardware to support their use in an FH configuration, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find SpaceX doing just that.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Didn’t realize that. Thanks.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      I guess an established interplanetary relaunch infrastructure on the Moon might make it easier to hit Mars launch windows.
      “…and use this for flights from ISS into deep space orbits.”

      The ISS is in a very poor orbital inclination for that. A station in an equatorial orbit would be better suited for a refueling station. I remember hearing some folks smarter than me commenting on that while we were building the ISS.
      I say do both. Shoot for Moon-First and Mars-Direct and see which one gets humans to Mars faster. I think the more sustainable approach might one day be a Moon waypoint system. I don’t think that with future launch availability and cost it will be necessary or even prudent to choose between the Moon and Mars.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Not being a rocket scientist- but one would suppose that the relevance of orbital inclination as one travels interplanetary distances is an inverse function of distance?

        • Bill Housley says:
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          I’m not either. As I understand it, the difference between ISS orbit and the ecliptic (where the Moon and planets orbit) is serious and moving from one to the other burns a lot of fuel. Combine that with the fuel burned to put the fuel on the ISS in the first place and it becomes sixes or worse. It becomes not a stopover, but a side trip.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            That would be obviously the case when deep in a gravity well; but in interplanetary space I’m thinking that those types of adjustments would be trivial. In any case since no two bodies orbiting the sun are in the precise solar inclination I suppose that there is an implied adjustment.

            On the other hand, an expert on tropical plant material commenting on interplanetary navigation is probably dangerous.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            Free game. Very educational on orbital mechanics. Orbiter2010.

            Not that that makes anyone an expert, but it does teach the problem fairly well. It’s not an issue of gravity, but of velocity as measured in DeltaV. It is the reason why SpaceX is building a launch facility on the Southernmost coast of Texas and why French Guiana is used. It is (was) part pf the reason for SeaLaunch and is part of the reason for Stratolaunch. The more equatorial your launch point, the less Delta V you need to get to GSO. That also applies to ecliptic launches for the Moon and elsewhere.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Well sure but the issue we were discussing was achieving an orbital inclination of Mars after leaving a dissimilar inclination relative to Earth; I’m wondering just how much difference this makes. How much more difficult is putting a craft into, say, polar Mars orbit from KSC relative to putting the same mass into a Mars orbit of 25°?

          • Paul451 says:
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            It makes almost no difference from high-inclination LEO to any insertion inclination at Mars. Hell, even LEO to lunar or EML1/2.

            The only issue for high inclination orbits is the mass loss from launching from Earth into that high-inclination orbit. About a third, IIRC. For eg, launching the booster-stage and fuel you’d need to modify ISS for Mars (or whatever).

            (Not that it makes sense to use ISS for anything. But the problem isn’t the orbit, it’s the space station itself.)

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Thanks.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            I don’t know the numbers, only that the unit of measure is Delta V and that they are often (maybe even “usually”) significant enough to make multi-inclination destinations impractical.

            Could someone who knows the actual numbers help us with this?

  4. SpaceMunkie says:
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    I am not a proponent of either system, each has its merits and place in the ‘space’ industry. However I do object to treating Falcon Heavy as it it was a foregone conclusion and an actual proven operating vehicle – which IT IS NOT!

    • kcowing says:
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      Duh then why are they spending all that money refurbishing a shuttle launch pad? Why are they selling launches online?

      • Bill Housley says:
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        I’ll answer that…because launch orders run something like two or three years behind the actual launches and SpaceX doesn’t seem interested in waiting around after the first flight before hitting the ground running. Only Government agencies can afford to toss infrastructure overhead costs out the window for years on end like that.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        I’d add the 2018 Red Dragon flight to your list too. I think it’s ambitious almost (but not quite) to the point of crazy because Mars launch windows are so unforgiving.

      • Leonard says:
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        Maybe they’re selling launches online to generate revenue. After all, SpaceX has a launch manifest with a huge backlog that keeps slipping to the right, and a couple of customers who are beginning to look elsewhere for rides as a result. And maybe they’re refurbishing the launch pad to have a place to launch from. Duh. Tho just like all that land they’re buying up in Hawthorne these investments suck cash and will require high launch rates (especially at lower price points) plus reusability to turn the corner on financially. But what does any of this have to do with the OP’s point, which is simply that FH is not yet operational?

        • duheagle says:
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          I’d be interested in knowing what land purchasing SpaceX is allegedly doing in Hawthorne. True, it has recently put up a really big multi-story employee parking garage across Crenshaw Blvd. from 1 Rocket Road, but I have no idea if SpaceX own either the structure or the land it’s on. Last I heard, SpaceX did a sale-leaseback deal on the Hawthorne plant and it may well have followed suit on the parking garage.

          Now Brownsville, TX on the other hand, is definitely a place SpaceX has been buying up land.

          • Leonard says:
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            SpaceX plans to move development/production of Dragon into a different building than boosters (where they are currently worked.) They do lease their current facility. They built the garage (estimates were around 17M, land.) And yes Brownsville is an additional set of expenditures. My point was simply that some folks focus solely on production costs v. revenues when discussing SpaceX and may not consider entire business case (perhaps because it is not known). SpaceX has a X?B backlog (which I’ve seen variously as 6, 8 or 10B) – meaning it is not receiving the backend of those payments until flight – plus it has significant expenditures for facilities development, production, etc. At some point that backlog – while showing as “assets” on the balance sheet – can also become an albatross (see history of Boeing Commercial Air, among others.)

            SpaceX is very good at piggybacking some parts of R&D and test programs on government missions, which reduces those costs, but they still have to cover some of their R&D out of cash on hand – amount also unknown. Reusability for SpaceX is likely not just about reducing launch costs (again, a good thing) but a key component of the business plan, since SpaceX may not be able to afford to address the whole manifest until it turns the corner on production and reusability (which it has not yet done and probably must do soon.) All business cases involve a balance between expenditures and revenue which sometimes goes “red” until production starts cranking and per unit costs drop. No one knows where SpaceX is on that curve (nor is it any of our business.)

          • duheagle says:
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            Didn’t know Dragon was moving out of 1 Rocket Road, but can’t say I’m too surprised. I had heard that payload fairing production was moving, or had moved, to a new address. Maybe there’s enough room to accommodate Dragon there too. Perhaps the SpaceX industrial engineers have gamed out ways to use the extra space that would be freed up to materially increase the production rate of F9 cores and 2nd stages.

            Even if it can’t bunk in with payload fairing fabrication, Dragon may not have to move too far. There are a lot of sizable buildings behind 1 Rocket Road along the periphery of Hawthorne Airport. I don’t know the occupancy status of any of them, but I’d be amazed if at least one of them isn’t available for sale or lease. The commercial property market in L.A. has made a bit of a comeback from its doldrums of a few years ago, but it’s hardly in what I’d call a state of radiant good health either.

            Still, compared to what is in train at Brownsville, these moves in Hawthorne are pretty small beer.

      • SpaceMunkie says:
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        to raise money and make it look like they have something tangible for sale

        • duheagle says:
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          So SLS is “tangible,”in your view, but FH is not?

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            perfect – distract from the issue of FH by pointing to SLS – SpaceX fanboy – stick to the subject

    • Bill Housley says:
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      True, but Keith’s point is that that presents a great argument when comparing FH to, say, the Delta Heavy. The SLS is just as much not “a foregone conclusion” as FH is. It is idiotic to compare two paper rockets and say that one of them isn’t in order to poopoo the other unless you are willing to break the discussion down into degrees of paperness, which FH proponents are willing to do and SLS proponents are not.

      • Leonard says:
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        Again, the progress of each system is hardly the point. More straw arguments, more cherry picking. This is just like all the idiots who claim SLS is useless because it isn’t reusable. As though a SHLV – built to lift as much mass as possible – should be overbuilt in order to make it reusable on a long distance mission. Ridiculous.

        • kcowing says:
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          Name calling is the most efficient way to get banned. Knock it off. No second warnings.

        • Michael Reynolds says:
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          Most people like myself attack the SLS not because it isn’t reusable, but because of its projected low launch rate, expensive developments cost relative to its capabilities, and the fact that it is using outdated contracting methods (cost-plus). Not to mention its cost leaves little room for the development of anything else related to its supposed mission.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Why are progress and reusability beside the point?

          Reusability is the sort of engineering criteria that traditionally goes in the ‘like to have’ column. When it can be moved to a column labeled ‘oh my god look how much we can save!’ it’s like replacing a DJ with a real live band at the Senior Prom.

          Oh. And at 66 years old I’d like to live long enough to actually see people living off Earth. Sadly, not me, but somebody. With SLS that just will not happen.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          They are both paper rockets.
          SLS is not useless, yet. It is not even flying, yet. FH is not even flying, yet. F9 is not even reusable, yet. Today the world is full of non-reusable rockets. If SLS were flying today we’d have plenty of uses for it because it would be the only rocket in the world that does what it does.
          What folks are saying is that if current trends continue then by SLS 2nd flight spending large amounts tax money in a handful of states might be the only function that the SLS will be the best option for.

          • jamesmuncy says:
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            You would have plenty of theoretical uses for SLS, but you wouldn’t have any money to actually build payloads to fly on it, because its fixed costs would consume the entire budget.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          Leonard wrote: “Again, the progress of each system is hardly the point.”

          If you are talking about Virgin Galatic, and no progress, I would agree, that company is not spending the Nation’s tax dollars but their own private investment. They can keep pouring money down that well as long as they like.

          We are talking about a federally funded project though so progress is one of the PRIMARY issues. Is the Nation’s treasure being well spent or wasted?

          “As though a SHLV – built to lift as much mass as possible – should be overbuilt in order to make it reusable on a long distance mission. Ridiculous.”

          No actually your statement is “Ridiculous” because ALL missions from Earth to LEO are not long distance.

          The SLS is NEVER flying higher then Suborbit!

          Even the high energy second stage isn’t going anywhere.

          So you are the one making strawman arguements.

        • duheagle says:
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          Progress isn’t the point? Reusability isn’t the point? Just what do you imagine is the point? Will a successful FH first flight in six months or so be a significant data point? If not, why not? The world wonders.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        The FH central core is under construction now, according to Ms. Shotwell.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Overtime I see someone make that point I ask to myself “what about that paper SLS?”

      Keith has made a better and more detailed comparison recently comparing flight readiness of FH and SLS. And guess who’s closer?

      Even without those uncomfortable discussions about flight rate, about technology level, about costs, SLS is yesterday’s news.

      It’s a new day in Space World.

      • SpaceMunkie says:
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        How long has SLS been in development? How long has FH been in development?

        • duheagle says:
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          By my reckoning, both SLS and FH have been under development since 2010, though FH wasn’t actually announced until 2011. Orion, being a Constellation leftover, has been under development for a lot longer than that. FH is the prohibitive favorite to be first to fly.

          Do you have a different timeline you’d like to urge on us? What, exactly, is the point of the question anyway?

    • duheagle says:
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      I do object to treating Falcon Heavy as it it was a foregone conclusion and an actual proven operating vehicle – which IT IS NOT!

      Object all you want. Reality bites.

      Okay, the FH is three years late. The Boeing 787 was too. Did that make the 787 less of a “foregone conclusion” than FH? Not from where I sit.

      The center core of the flight article is already in the fixtures in Hawthorne, less than three miles from my house. It’s being crawled over by a legion of SpaceX factory rats even as I type this. It’s going to fly in six months, plus or minus. Where do you plan to re-plant the goalposts once that happens? Yeah, I’m willing to regard that as a “foregone conclusion.”

      SLS is a bunch of test articles at this point. Metal has yet to be bent for anything that could actually fly. I’m of the opinion that the first unmanned test flight of SLS will most probably occur, though I’m increasingly skeptical it will occur in 2018. After that, my Magic 8-Ball declines to predict.

      Look, I have scorn and contempt for the entire SLS-Orion project. But I also understand the politico-bureaucratic inertia of government programs. For that reason alone, I have to regard at least one launch of SLS Block I as being, quite defensibly, a “foregone conclusion.” I just don’t get where your increasingly silly FH denialism comes from unless this is a matter of religion to you rather than a matter for rational discourse.

  5. Bill Housley says:
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    Keith, I’ll go one step further and suggest that the Merlin engines might have (or will have by SLS’ second flight) a deeper launch history than the Shuttle engines used on SLS. This because Falcon flies 9 of them per flight per core.

    Umm…10, actually, if you count the second stage.

    • Leonard says:
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      Umm.. the launch history of RS-25’s v. Merlins is not the point either of Spudis’s post or Keith’s rant. And Keith apparently misses the point that even Elon Musk believes a Super Heavy Launch Vehicle (“BFR”, in their parlance) is a useful thing to have for deep space missions. The issue here is not really SLS’s cost, either. It’s about the misplaced notion that cost and market and – heaven help us – a sole company’s interests should be the sole driver underpinning transportation for US exploration, science, international collaboration, and leadership in space.

      • kcowing says:
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        Let me guess: someone in a Tesla ran a red light in front of you and you just can’t let go of it.

      • Michael Reynolds says:
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        “The issue here is not really SLS’s cost, either.”
        Yes, it is. Also the ridiculous launch rate.
        “It’s about the misplaced notion that cost and market and – heaven help us – a sole company’s interests should be the sole driver underpinning transportation for US exploration, science, international collaboration, and leadership in space.”
        The SLS program is already a program designed for the sole interest of one company….err two. No matter how many other suppliers and parties are involved in its development, without ULA there would be no SLS.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        We’ve been dancing to ULA’s tune for a decade. No mas.

        What we have here is a little ditty I like to call “A Successful Governmental Policy”. Yes, CC progressed in fits and starts, and missed more than one opportunity, but in the end we have several private companies offering competitive access to LEO (and now beyond, too).

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          Ironically one of those “private” companies is Boeing, which is also half of ULA. Boeing is quite capable of succeeding in the cost-critical commercial airliner market. But in some government programs the most profitable thing to do is to make the system as expensive as possible. We shouldn’t be surprised at the result.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Boeing has a hell of a square dance ahead of it:

            As a (much) younger consultant with much less experience I was brought in by a developer client to explain my proposed fee, a fee badly under-cut by a competitor.

            When I offered right away to reduce the fee the guy looked at me like he was gonna explode: “why didn’t I have your best price to begin with?”

            Well, he didn’t have it because I had no idea what it was, sadly lacking the needed experience in commerce. But I lost the job because the guy felt I was dishonest.

            I see his point, though his conclusion was in error. And now we have Boeing et.al. in the back of the classroom madly holding up the left hand with the right, squirming in the chair like asking permission to go to the bathroom and shouting “teacher! teacher! I know the answer!”

            And guess what? The answer is a helluva lot less than they’ve been charging for decades. That billion dollar readiness fee? “Oh, gee, maybe we can talk about that!”

            Nothing wrong with trying to get the most you can. But sometimes you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and that’s what’s happened with ULA. Worse: they’ve been caught lying about cost, period; certainly they have sufficiently bright engineers and managers, just as smart as SpaceX. But you know what? They never did a damn thing other than suck up money and lie to Congress and the DOD in hearing after hearing about the impossibility of lowering costs.

            It stinks.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            It’s not just the overcharging, but also the follow-up condescending remarks when someone else dares to charge less…and then talk about landing and reflying boosters instead of crashing them into the ocean after every flight.

            With anything else, crashing your vehicle at the end of every trip would be a bad thing. To be fair though, I doubt a Atlas or Delta were even designed to swap-ends at Mach 4 and relight without folding in half and turning into an epic fireworks display. 😉

      • Bill Housley says:
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        I know. I’m just curious where the numbers would line up. Might be interesting.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        No, cost and market should not be the “sole driver” but it should be a top PRIORITY for the Nation’s space technology R&D funding. Our federal agency, NASA is directly MANDATED to do exactly that by the amended 1958 Space Act. The Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, the Commercial Space Act of 1998 and the Amended Commercial Space Launch Act of 2004.

        The Federal government has always been a driver in transportation. From putting army bases with black smiths to roads and fuel developments and subsidies.

        That somehow every single form of mechanized human transportation have been driven by the federal government to reduce costs and increase the markets but space transportation should not be?

        That is just plain silly.

        The federal government should be HAMMERING costs down! especially after over half a century.

        • Leonard says:
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          The systems being built for deep space are very different from those being built for LEO or GTO. Furthermore the launch rate presumes operational costs of the vehicle and assumes a similar cost for each production unit based on launch rate. All of these are assumptions, and several of them are based – not on the contractor’s rates – but on the overall cost of maintaining NASA’s labor force and associated infrastructure. It is conceivable that SLS might be operated at considerably less than projected rates, for example under an FFP contract. It is conceivable that SLS might be produced more often and therefore drive down costs. It seems a great many people accept the worst case scenarios regarding SLS and parrot them again and again, suffering a notable lack of imagination and consideration of alternatives – particularly as compared with all the “build your own space programs” that appear here and elsewhere regarding SpaceX.

          Don’t get me wrong – SpaceX’s achievements are mighty impressive. I’m an old engineer and still geek enough to grok them. I’m excited about reusability after all these years. But – just to take one argument frequently espoused here – why in the world would SLS be “better” if it is reusable? Reusability, like any attribute of any system, should be mapped to mission requirements. It makes great sense for LEO. It makes no sense for Mars or even for hauling a bunch of infrastructure + people into cislunar space. As most of you know there is a substantial mass/performance tradeoff with reusability; the rocket carries extra propellant (for one) and has to be “overbuilt” relative to an expendable (for two) in order to be reused. So you’re carrying a bunch more mass with a reusable rocket. Why would you do that if the goal is to get as much mass as possible to the surface of Mars?

          If you need an example of this, consider the differences in FH performance to GTO depending upon degree of reusability: ~49,000 lbs expendable, 31,000 lbs if the center core is expendable, 15,000 lbs if all three cores are not expendable (e.g., reusable). It’s conceivable that a user might want an expendable version of the FH depending upon mission requirement. Does that make the FH expendable an “old fashioned” rocket? Of course not. The same goes for Mars.

          Of course alternate architectures exist. But attacking SLS because it isn’t reusable per se makes no sense.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            The GAO said the burn rate for labor on SLS-Orion was 165 million a month or 1.98 billion a year. This does not include the launch operations costs which will start being added as we near the first launch date. Boeing is charging 1.4 billion each for the 1st stage core and avionics. Plus you need to add the SRB costs, second stage and the Orion capsule at 1.1 billion each. It will be close to 5 billion a year for 1 launch.

            According to the GAO, CBO, IGO and an independent report by Booz Allen (who’s predictions are coming true) all have said this is an unsustainable system.

          • Leonard says:
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            You may be conflating development and production costs, which is the case for the first couple of vehicles.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        No, Leanard. Cost is not everything. But cost and money drive success and failure. There is no prize for having almost enough money to launch my package.
        A “built by NASA sticker” or even a “built by ULA” should have a certain amount of value. But that value has to be tangible “get-r-done” capital of some kind. How many decimal points can the sticker cost before it becomes less necessary, or stupid, or pointless. If the cost of that sticker is so high that the other guy gets more done then more folks will follow the other guy and the stickered rocket will experience mission shrink until it dies.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        The cost of SLS/Orion is indeed the issue. Niether NASA nor the nation have one thin dime to waste.

      • Paul451 says:
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        even Elon Musk believes a Super Heavy Launch Vehicle (“BFR”, in their parlance) is a useful thing to have for deep space missions.

        No, Musk believes that a low cost HLV is a useful thing to have.

        SLS apologists always miss that point.

        Why would you do that if the goal is to get as much mass as possible to the surface of Mars?

        Again, wrong. Musk’s “goal” is to make Mars an affordable destination.

        (Mistaking the “goal” is precisely why NASA has been stuck in such a rut for so long. This is why NASA has been so long obsessed with LH/LOx.)

        • Leonard says:
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          Just to clarify – wasn’t speaking of “goal” as SpaceX’s, but one driven by mission design. NASA’s “goal” was never “to make Mars an affordable destination.” Maybe it should’ve been, but that would require a time machine to alter evolution of the interaction between the body politic and NASA (which is a part of it.)

          I don’t think of myself as a “SLS apologist” – I see merits in all of these systems. I also see merits in government owned systems (which will always cost more, but may have different ‘benefits’ than privately owned systems, which have their own.) SLS is not the system I’d have designed but it’s a good vehicle for what it is designed to do.

          • Paul451 says:
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            Just to clarify – wasn’t speaking of “goal” as SpaceX’s, but one driven by mission design.

            You regurgitated the standard SLS-meme “Even Musk wants SHLV…” But you ignore that Musk does not want a SHLV, he wants an affordable system to meet his goal. An expensive SHLV wouldn’t do that.

            NASA’s “goal” was never “to make Mars an affordable destination.”

            NASA has a budget and an objective. If it picks a design that consumes its entire available mission budget just for the launch vehicle, then it will always fail to achieve its objective.

            No different to SpaceX.

            SLS is not the system I’d have designed but it’s a good vehicle for what it is designed to do.

            SLS prevents NASA from meeting any goal.

            I don’t know why this concept is so hard for people to get. If you spend your entire budget on a single component, you have no money for anything else.

            That applies to any program, any goal. If you have a budget of $500m for a science mission and you spend $500m on buying a launch, you can’t do the science mission.

            If you want to build a house and have $300k, and you spend $320k buying a truck to transport materials, you can’t build the house.

          • Leonard says:
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            I understand budgets having managed them in the 100’s of M’s. The point about Musk was simply that he believes an SHLV is a part of his architecture, that’s all. You are also repeating a meme, that the SLS prevents NASA from meeting any goal. One look at the science portfolio demonstrates that this is not true. With regard to human spaceflight, while your point has considerable merit regarding costs against total budget it appears to adhere to the following assumptions: (a) SLS production and ops costs stay at the worst case over the next 20 years; (b) NASA budget stays flat (declining in real dollars), and (c) NASA does not plan to utilize SLS as a part of an architecture (rather than as the whole architecture) – which would hopefully drive decisions about launch rates guided by mission objectives. One could just as easily argue that NASA’s huge overhead (e.g. “10 healthy centers”) is crippling its ability to conduct missions (an issue that Robert Lightfoot is working). Again, this isn’t the rocket I would have designed – and (speaking of costs) I suspect NASA will rue the day it sole-sourced the EUS – but comparing SLS to SpaceX’s vehicles ignores the fact that the goals assigned by Congress to the HSF programs at NASA and the goals assigned by Elon Musk to SpaceX overlap only partially. They have different drivers, costs, objectives, and benefits, most of which are ignored in these discussions (international partnerships for one.) It’s not all about the launch systems. My attitude is more a “wait and see” with regard to all development (NASA, SpaceX, BlueOrigin, ULA, etc.). I have hopes that out of all this will emerge an architectural approach that makes use of the various “pieces” in a way that benefits both the nation as a whole and disruptive (in the good sense) industry. If SLS does not survive in such a tableau, it doesn’t.

  6. muomega0 says:
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    The extreme cost of HLV expendable: Flight rate and fixed costs.

    The ability to increase flight rate spreads the fixed costs over more flights. Take SLS at 1.8B/yr. Assume 200m recurring cost and 100mT per flight. Flight one 2B/100mT, two: 2.2B/200mT. Now *assume* SLS can launch 5 times a year for the trip to mars every two years, that’s 5.6B for 1000mT or $5,600/kg-best case. If you do not launch, its 2B for zero flights. This assumes $$ for missions, currently *zero*.

    Note that 70% of the ‘payload’ mass is dirt cheap, class D propellant, at a cost of less than 1M per launch: 700mT! Allow risk taking with reuse. Falcon 9 expendable is $60M/13mT or $4600/kg, but with 1st stage reuse it drops to 40M/13mT or $3100/kg -> 3.1B.

    Of course, 1000mT divided by 13mT would be 78 flights over two years. First, what a fabulous goal for the launch industry. Second, is not launch rate a key metric to reduce costs and DOD needs flight rate to reduce costs? So with two LVs, that would be about 20 launches a year for a (6 month stay!) on Mars. However, the LV capacity could be increased (FH or Vulcan/ACES at 50mT or only 20 flights total– 5 per year for each provider) *or* the IPs could provide launches of dirt cheap class D propellant with negligible cost. Does not DOD need Heavies, but has a low flight rate?

    So that leaves at most 30% of the 1000mT as hardware/supplies or 300mT, and the biggest piece identified so far is perhaps an aerocapture shield at 20 to 40mT. IOW, no piece needs a super HLV.

    Consider now, lunar ISRU, where it is not practical to launch 300+mt of propellant from the lunar surface in one shot, so it will also have to be transported and stored at two gas stations, one at L2 and one at Mars–prepositioned supplies, so it still requires gas stations. So add ISRU to the critical path to Mars? 1000mT is the long term goal too.

    All the resources that arrived to the moon came from asteroids–why not harvest these resources ‘in situ’ where most of them reside between Mars and Jupiter, and place the return prop at Mars?

    To reduce trip time from 6 months to 3 mo requires aerobraking to mitigate crew health effects which requires prepositioned supplies including propellant — impossible with the HLV only architecture. It requires once again gas stations and electric propulsion. So until crew health and aerocapture has matured, pre-positioned supplies required. ISRU long term is required to further reduce costs, but simply removing SLS/Orion is a giant leap forward.

    While SLS/Orion could augment the architecture, it does so at tremendous cost vs the alternatives– exactly opposite the VSE:

    “For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles. These technologies will be demonstrated on the ground, at the Space Station and other locations in Earth ( and lunar L2) orbits, starting this decade and into the next”

    Gas stations and amplification factor with NASA’s LV independent architecture with EP that creates new markets. Catch the wave.
    http://nextbigfuture.com/20

    • numbers_guy101 says:
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      I like that you went through some numbers for SLS. We need more like that. I’d be careful though not to run too far with some SLS cost figures, especially when increasing the launch rate along with cost rising at some variable amount. What was it Admiral Akbar would scream?

      There’s a good case to be made that SLS costs will not rise as only variable costs as flight rate increases. The fixed costs will also rise, to have the capability for the higher launch rate. That is to say everyone in the program from FL to TX to CA and AL will clamor for more money for the additional flight rate far and above the “variable cost” that anyone might assume is all that’s required. Once at the higher flight rate as well, a case can also be made that a little flaw built in the program, the lack of any standing “upgrades” capability as with Shuttle, would probably get magnified as well into even more hundreds of millions a year.

      Of course, an SLS advocate might love the talk about some piddling couple of hundred million dollar variable cost, and some high flight rate, with only a couple of billion a year n fixed costs, and some large payload capability (to LEO). Excepting that as flight rate for such a program increases the variable cost will be the least of our yearly budgetary and cost concerns.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Not to worry. SLS will never fly.

        • Paul451 says:
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          The first two launches are inevitable, and IMO the first four or five launches are virtually inevitable now.

          We’re unlikely to see a significant change before 2030. Two more decades and $60 billion wasted.

          • duheagle says:
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            At least we’re likely to know within a year or so which one of you guys is right, or at least closer to being right. We’ll have a new administration in office by then. If the attitude of said new administration is not SLS-friendly, I don’t see him or her being likely to dither overmuch before lowering the boom.

          • Paul451 says:
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            I don’t see him or her being likely to dither overmuch before lowering the boom.

            Unless Congress drastically changes composition, I’m not seeing a sudden change. (“Back to the moon” maybe, using the same SLS/Orion base and no new funding.)

            And after the hysterical reaction to Obama’s 2010 plan, I’m not seeing any new President spend political capital fighting Congress over NASA.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Belatedly,

      Assume 200m recurring cost and 100mT per flight. Flight one 2B/100mT, two: 2.2B/200mT. Now *assume* SLS can launch 5 times a year for the trip to mars every two years, that’s 5.6B for 1000mT

      That’s a really bad assumption. The contract for first stage cores is about $1.4b each. The contract for new engines (once the initial 16 SSMEs are used up) is around $190m per engine, or $770m per launch. That puts you at $2.1b per core, then add on the SRBs and the upper-stage.

      There’s been nothing to suggest that those prices are volume dependent. On the contrary, increasing the production rates would require significant new spending.

  7. Chris says:
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    All this ignores the giant yet obvious Elephant in the room. What is stopping SpaceX from poaching SLS staff in a few years, barring a massive failure of the Red Dragon series, to start working on the SpaceX Mars Colonial Transporter or some variant of it.

    Because as of right now the SLS is $4-5 billion dollars annually and wont see a manned crew until the 2030’s.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      SLS is about 2 billion and change. Orion is another billion and change.

      This project is such a pure boondoggle there is no need to stretch the numbers.

    • Jafafa Hots says:
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      “What is stopping SpaceX from poaching SLS staff in a few years,”

      Is there any particular reason they would WANT them? I would think the cultures would be very incompatible.

      • Chris says:
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        Being on the cutting edge of Space exploration, the research grants and tech to be offered on potentially landing on Mars first and a few times after that. And working on Colonization efforts etc.

        Oh and $$$

        • Paul451 says:
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          Being on the cutting edge of Space exploration

          What’s that got to do with SLS?

        • jamesmuncy says:
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          I believe that’s why the SLS workers would want to jump ship to SpaceX. The question was about SpaceX wanting to hire the SLS workers.

      • Waste55 says:
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        Because they offer a skill set that is desired?

        The notion that if you worked SLS or Orion you are now somehow poisoned and can’t work anything else is just silly. There are engineers that have worked on both SLS\Orion and commercial crew.

        • Paul451 says:
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          Because they offer a skill set that is desired?

          Such as?

          Recycling SSMEs does not give you experience that SpaceX would value for engine research. Upgrading SRBs over 15 years is not a useful skill. Building slightly modified ETs is not a useful skill.

          (This is double so for the Shuttle-ops people who have moved into SLS development.)

          The notion that if you worked SLS or Orion you are now somehow poisoned and can’t work anything else is just silly.

          It’s your strawman that’s silly. The criticism is not that the workforce has SLS-cooties. The criticism is that SLS is not a technology development program, therefore the people involved are not working on anything that would give them experience useful to a company building new rockets.

          It doesn’t matter how smart the workforce is, how good they could be. If you spend a decade (or three) having them work on dead-end technology, they do not develop useful skills.

          There are NASA programs — mostly tech development and some of the smaller science missions — that should have built a workforce with experience that SpaceX would desire, but SLS ain’t it.

          • Waste55 says:
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            FSW development, test, integration, GNC, IV&V. etc.

            I personally know people who have worked both, so they exist. They were then employed by other startups building new launch vehicles. Not everyone working these programs spent decades working Shuttle either. But I know some who did (maybe not decades but still Shuttle), and they also have worked for COTS providers.

            The real industry is not as biased as the posters on this website.

    • numbers_guy101 says:
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      “Chris-What is stopping SpaceX from poaching SLS staff in a few years” … Possibly one word – demographics?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I don’t think I understand your point? I don’t know anything more about the SpaceX demographics than watching their excellent launch coverage, but I do see a fair number of older people in the crowd- which is dominated by younger people to be sure.

  8. Frank says:
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    So, let me be sure I understand this: We get ice from the lunar poles to convert to LH2 and LOX to fuel Mars-bound ships. Hmmm … do you land your Mars ship on the moon to refuel or does a tanker come up to meet you while you fall into lunar orbit only to have to break out of lunar orbit to continue to Mars with a somewhat full fuel load.

    Or, does the tanker rendezvous with your escape velocity Mars-bound ship to fuel it and then return (or not) to the Moon to land? Hmmm…

    Now, about that LH2 and LOX. How do you get the ice out of the crater? It’s sub 300° down there and nothing we have can mechanically operate in those temps to break up and extract the ice. And, of course if you do get it out of the crater, it sublimates in the ‘warmth’ of the crater rim.

    And about the means to get it from the floor to the rim … a miles long conveyor belt? No, wait, we’ll build a water splitting operation on the floor (at sub 300°), melt the ice (let’s see … nuclear reactors for the heat and electricity? in the bottom of the crater?) so that it can be split into H2 and O2 and then use some unknown method in a vacuum to liquify the gases and store tens of thousands of gallons of LH2 (423°F below zero) and LOX (268°F below zero) in …. what? … a big round ball called a dewars flask some 80 feet in diameter? Hmm… how do you build that on the Moon. Ah, yes … nanorobots.

    And, if you do get your cryogenic fuels into a dewars flask, where do you park your landing Mars craft or your rendezvousing tanker to fuel either? Hmmm … engineering and the art of what’s possible always seems to get in the way.

    Oh, and I almost forgot, how many SLS (or FH) flights will it take to bring all of the components to the .. ahem .. nanorobots building this trillion dollar sci-fi dream?

    No one is going to Mars until we can get there quickly. That means an in-space propulsion unit that will accelerate a mission-viable mass at one-g for the entire flight. That will require an exotic drive not unlike VASIMR that can take all of its fuel with it for the entire flight. But, if NASA can build such a system (and there’s no guarantee it’s even possible), well, do the math … a ship will be at Mars in 36 hours… with one-g of gravity the whole way.

    This alleviates the zero-g issues and all but eliminates the radiation issue. The psychological issues of being cooped up in a tin can are mitigated and every component of today’s life support systems currently in use on ISS will be well within the mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) of every system.

    And did I mention there’s a possibility of rescue with such a system should there be a non-catastrophic but mission-ending failure at some point in the flight or at Mars?

    It won’t be easy, cheap or soon for the development of an operational one-g system but it’s the only way humans are ever going to get to Mars.

    • Robert Rice says:
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      I like you 🙂

      But is it 36 hours for VASiMIR. Or 36 days?

      • Frank says:
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        It’s 36 hours. That’s not a misprint. That, of course, is the ideal. In reality it may take several days. The mission may need to arc up and over the plane of the ecliptic to avoid as much dust and debris as possible.

        At mid-point in the flight, it’s estimated that the vehicle will be traveling 9 million mph. Then you get to turn around and decelerate at 1 g so you can slip into Mars orbit. There are a lot of issues with traveling that fast so I have no sci-fi illusions that this will definitely work. It does need an in-depth feasibility study.

        But if all of the many technical issues can be resolved, then you could leave for Mars at almost any time in its orbit. A second ship with rescue capability could sit on standby to execute a high-speed rendezvous to save the crew should an end-of-mission event occur.

        And, the golden age of planetary exploration would be upon us. We have no capability to orbit a moon of any planet because of approach velocities and the huge amount of fuel required to enter orbit around, say, Europa. With a unit like this, powered by a nuclear reactor, you could ‘drive’ straight to a Europan orbit, spend a year there studying the environment with extremely powerful instruments and radar because of the high power output of the reactor. A mission could change orbits at will and, indeed, go to another moon and execute another Jovian moon mission. And then it can fly home for refurb and reuse.

        And, with a one-g unit, Jupiter is 2 weeks away. Pluto is 30 days away. Ponder that for a moment and consider all of the possibilities. Thirty days to Pluto and 30 days back and 30 days in orbit …. it could almost be a manned mission although that might be unnecessary given the potential for multiple unmanned missions of greater robotic complexity.

        Ad Astra has publicly stated that in 5 years, with enough money for development, they could run the first test of a VASIMR that will get to Mars in 39 days. Even that is a far cry from 6-8 months. I asked the engineers if a 1-g unit was possible and they said with enough money, ‘yes’.

        So, I believe that NASA should do a feasibility study of a one-g unit and if it is within our technical abilities (read: only impossible) they should focus on developing such a unit. Again, it won’t be easy, cheap or soon. It will be absolutely necessary, though, if we truly want to be an interplanetary species.

        • Tritium3H says:
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          How, exactly, would any plausible VASIMR engine produce enough thrust to be able to accelerate or decelerate a manned Mars transit vehicle at 1.0 g? And 36 hours?? This has crossed over into science-fiction / fantasy territory.

          • Frank says:
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            Actually, it isn’t sci-fi. It’s real physics based on Einstein’s Equivalence Principle of 1911 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…. In brief, it states that, absent outside clues, a person inside a rocket accelerating at 1-g (32 ft per second squared) will experience an artificial gravity indistinguishable from the inertial gravity we experience here on Earth. And, of course, since the acceleration is constant, your speed increases to the estimated 9 million mph at the mid point. As you might expect, the mid-point speed of a rocket going to Jupiter in 2 weeks would be much higher.

            As I noted earlier, VASIMR already has publicly stated it can do a 39 day flight to Mars with what’s on their drawing board now. Indeed, NASA recently retained the services of Ad Astra to pursue their design further. I believe ATK is doing a similar study of solar electric, in-space propulsion. These early test beds will be orders of magnitude underpowered compared to a one-g unit’s output but they’ll be enough for proof of concept. You build something like this slowly and deliberately.

            While such a system will require a huge advance in magnetics (probably on a par with the fusioneer’s magnetic confinements in a tokomak), and materials development beyond anything we have today, IF these technical hurdles can be jumped then it’s really just a matter of getting a huge amount of xenon ions (or some other element if it’s better suited) to exit a magnetic nozzle at near light speed to effect thrust on a hitherto unheard of scale. The more ions you can shoot out the tailpipe, the more mass you can accelerate. I am talking about a very difficult — perhaps impossible (which may take a little longer to figure out) — engineering problem. That said, it’s the only solution that will get us to Mars or the rest of the solar system quickly. For all of the complexity of such a system, it is still very simple in concept and execution. Solar sails, spinning spaceships and nuclear bombs going off behind your vehicle is the sci-fi nonsense.

            Yepper, it’ll take a large mass of xenon to do a manned Mars mission. How much is enough? How do you store it/process it/deliver it to a magnetic thrust chamber? R&D for new designs and configurations of superconductor magnets will explode in the world’s university labs under NASA’s imprimatur.

            Likewise, novel shielding for both the nuclear reactor radiation as well as the shielding for the dust impacts will consume the ideations of clever minds.

            New concepts of navigation and energy management will have to be understood now that a vehicle can drive straight to a pre-selected point in space precisely above Mars at orbital insertion speed. The challenges are staggering … and right up NASA’s alley. Let Musk et al putter around with their LEO toys. THIS is what NASA exists/lives for! Turn them loose on this and it will be done.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
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            Acceleration of the kind you are suggesting, with an exhaust velocity of the kind you are suggesting, would require a power source with specific power FAR beyond anything available. Advocates of VASIMR (and similar high Isp electric rockets) always seem to ignore where the power is going to come from (and where the waste heat is going to be going.)

          • Frank says:
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            A gigawatt fission reactor and new radiator designs … all of it small and minimal mass … Yup, it’s impossible. Now let’s get to work.

            Remember: the Moon landings were impossible too.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            Both informed speculation and harsh realism are perfectly acceptable in a forum such as this, but let’s try to clearly distinguish between the two.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
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            You suggested a vehicle with a midpoint velocity of 9 million mph. That’s 4,300 km/s. To accelerate a spacecraft at 1 gee with an exhaust velocity of 4,300 km/s requires the vehicle have a specific power ~100 MW/kg. Existing space reactors don’t even reach 1 kW/kg.

            I’ll be happy to categorize your idea as “impossible” on any non-science-fictional timescale.

          • Frank says:
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            You’re absolutely right. There are no reactors that can generate that kind of power. And, again, so what. You define a goal … 100 Mw output in a small, lightweight form factor … then you go do it. I’ve seen too much that was deemed ‘impossible’ become a reality. You’re absolutely wrong to say it’s impossible. You don’t know that any more than I can say with absolute certainty that what I propose can be realized in an operational drive. We won’t know until we at least do a comprehensive feasibility study, which is what I’m advocating.

            There is only one way to get to Mars and the planets, while minimizing the risks I’ve noted in other posts and that’s at high speed. That said, for the problems you solve, you simply substitute another set to deal with, so maybe there is a deal breaker that renders a high-speed flight profile unattainable. We won’t know without a study.

            Many of the components necessary to achieve this extraordinary transit rate don’t exist. The concept is straightforward, however, and understood in general terms. In other words, we may not currently be able to achieve exhaust velocities that are near light speed but the action-reaction physics that would be employed is well understood at the chemical level. Does that translate to sub-lightspeed ions? We won’t know until we try.

            Can there be a small nuclear reactor generating Mw of power? Looking at nuclear submarine reactor schematics (no dimensions published), they are stated to generate about 165 Mwe. I’m sure this is a lowball figure for public consumption. If the schematics are to be believed, they are roughly the size of a man. Inasmuch as they are PWR, I’m not sure if that would translate to a space environment without a serious weight penalty for the steam loop but here’s a proven reactor type to start from.

            Assuming a feasibility study that says there aren’t any showstoppers, with a focused R&D on the subsystems of the propulsion unit I think we could see an operational unit in 15 years or less. If we try.

            This would be a major NASA project with a vast, world-wide footprint for the R&D. The consequences of success will boggle the science community with its opportunities for study as well as directly impact the living standards of humanity with its spinoffs … just like the impossible Moon landings. But only if we try.

            Again, let us advocate for a feasibilty study.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            I’m a Science Fiction author and you guys all have my head spinning.
            None of the things you’ve said in this sub-thread from “Lunar crater rim” forward sound at all relevent to a first flight plan or any other “exploration” of the Moon or Mars. They seem more like 1960s Popular Science projections of today’s inventions. By the time we’ve been flying back and forth to Mars enough times for any of this stuff you’ve said to ever happen, other things un-looked-for will happen to change it all.

          • duheagle says:
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            Which one of Newton’s Laws mandates that the top speed is limited by the exhaust velocity?

          • Tritium3H says:
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            The Conservation of Momentum, which is a more fundamental result of Newton’s Laws of Motion.

          • duheagle says:
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            You’re quite wrong.

            If more momentum is continuously applied to a rocket with the rocket itself as the frame of reference, then the ultimate velocity achievable is determined by the beginning and ending vehicle masses and the specific impulse of the engine(s), not by the exhaust velocity. Chemical rockets have exhaust velocities typically in the 5,000 – 10,000 mph range. LEO orbital velocity is ca. 17,500 mph and every deep space mission has to at least modestly exceed the ca. 25,000 mph Earth escape velocity. Every orbiting satellite and deep space probe is an existence disproof of your contention.

          • Tritium3H says:
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            Duheagle, you are absolutely correct, my bad. I read your post too quickly, and I replied too quickly. I misread your post, thinking you were stating that the max speed was not dependent upon exhaust velocity…when you in fact said not LIMITED by exhaust velocity. Indeed, vehicle velocity is dependent upon the magnitude of the effective exhaust velocity and mass fraction. Again, I apologize for my misunderstanding. Cheers, John.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
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            None, but if the exhaust velocity isn’t on the order of the mission delta-V you’re either expending more energy than needed (if it’s too high) or the vehicle becomes exponentially larger (as its too low and you pile up stages). So it’s reasonable for a back of the envelop order of magnitude estimate And note I (1) ignored the delta-V AFTER turnaround, and (2) assumed the vehicle was 100% reactor. So actually I underestimated the needed power density of the reactor system.

          • numbers_guy101 says:
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            I’m with some of the commenters below, that we shouldn’t discount huge technology advances on power that could be used for a VASIMR like engine.

            I used to think VASIMR was pie in the sky, a bit scammy actually, but as time has gone by I no longer see a problem with breaking up the problem of fast inter-solar system travel into it’s parts. Even if we know there are multiple huge leaps required, working on one on the assumption something will also occur on the others may be how it all does come together one day.

          • Tritium3H says:
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            Frank, I am well aware of the Equivalence Principle. My point is that there is no PLAUSIBLE configuration of the VASIMR engine (neither the engine itself nor the required power supply), which would provide enough delta-V to provide a constant acceleration of 9.8 m/sec^2, for a vehicle of the mass that would be necessary for a crewed Mars transit vehicle. Not EVEN CLOSE. My Point is that your 36 day-to-Mars VASIMR example is currently science-fiction…unless you are talking about some future, notional vehicle/architecture that is 50+ years into the future…in which case, it is a moot point for this article and topic.

          • Frank says:
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            I suggested VASIMR as an example of something that is near term as a test bed. It may very well be inadequate for what I’m suggesting. But they made a claim and apparently are willing to back it up with hardware. As I said, it will be a pale ghost compared to a final design … but it’s a place to start.

            This obviously needs a feasibility study to hash out the details and get a handle on the amount of innovation and R&D it will take. The engine and power supply for this vehicle is, indeed, implausible at the present time. An operational vehicle will be many iterations more advanced than what we have or understand today. And, quite frankly, if a feasibility study doesn’t find any showstoppers, so what if it’s not close now. You turn NASA loose with an adequate budget and a keen focus on the hardware and they go for it. Yes, much much easier said than done. So what. You do it anyhow.

            From Kennedy’s ‘… we choose to go to the moon …’ speech on September 12, 1962 til Armstrong made his heartstopping step for all mankind, it was 6 years, 10 months and 8 days. This can be done too. Perhaps not in 2500 days but certainly less than 50+ years with everyone focused on the goal … just like the Moon race.

            There is no other way within the physics humans understand to get to Mars or the planets quickly… and a quick transit is essential for a successful mission. There are no physics that will support a warp drive and it’s silly beyond words to detonate nukes behind your vehicle. What’s left is a 1-g acceleration unit that uses physics we understand albeit beyond our ability to achieve at this time.

            Von Braun’s initial ideas of a moon rocket were woefully inadequate and unattainable with the technology available in the 40s. As the 50s came about the technologies advanced and coalesced into a Saturn 5. I’m sure for all of von Braun’s earlier notional ideas he was probably quite surprised at the problems encountered and the solutions employed that finally resulted in the impossible: a man walking on the Moon.

            No one is going to Mars on a 6-8 month ballistic trajectory. We’ll be lucky to get back the bodies. The only solution that solves almost all of problems of long term zero-g, isolation, system components with MTBF that is less than the mission length, radiation exposure, consumable storage issues, long-term habitat issues and many other problems is a high speed, 1-g transit. And I fully realize that this is really about swapping one set of problems for another. We still have to go for it, in my opinion.

            If a study deems it possible, then NASA needs to do this project with all due alacrity. May I respectfully suggest we advocate for a comprehensive feasibility study that will determine its potential.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            There’s a certain astronaut down in Costa Rica that’s been singing the VASIMR song for many years. He’s having the same problem that many here have discussed: namely scalability and dealing with extraordinary amounts of waste heat.

            As far as I know, however, he’s still working on it.

        • Robert Rice says:
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          I like you even more

          In fact…I think I love you

          You’ve left me wanting to hear more…much more. 🙂

    • Paul451 says:
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      well, do the math

      Okay.

      At 5000s Isp (VASIMR’s most efficient mode), to accelerate up to 9 million mph, you would need 10^33 tonnes of fuel for every single tonne of ship mass.

      Roughly a million times the mass of the sun.

      But that’s only half the trip. To both accelerate up, and then decelerate back down for the second half of the flight, you actually need to start with 10^68 tonnes of fuel for every single tonne of ship’s mass. Or a billion times the mass of the entire universe.

      You can’t just feed a number into the formula for acceleration and distance and say “let’s just do it!”, “let NASA loose!” and pretend you’ve said something significant.

      • Frank says:
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        Please, spare me the sophistry. It wouldn’t take but a tiny fraction of your purported calculations in chemical fuel to reach 9 million miles per hour with all of its inefficiencies. It most certainly would take more fuel than you could carry so chemicals are a non-starter for a 1-g propulsion unit.

        I’m calling for a study. That’s all. There are knowledgeable people saying that a high-speed, space-based propulsion unit is very possible. Whether that translates into a 1-g unit is where I’m calling for a study.

        I’m sure if your ludicrous calculations were anywhere near accurate, NASA would not be funding more research with Ad Astra to build a space-based VASIMR prototype, as well as Orbital-ATK for a solar thermal design. So, please, troll somewhere else.

  9. numbers_guy101 says:
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    At times I think I am in some twisted, alternate reality, judging from my own and other’s expectations in the 1990’s. Back then, we talked about launch affordability. We ate, lived and breathed that talk. As well, the other side of the coin got heavy discussion, how often “we” launch. The VERY repetitive discussion back then was something like this-

    WE have to get the cost of launch down, the $ per pound, the cost per flight, etc.

    But then, won’t OUR contractor make less money per year?

    Well, maybe, BUT we’ll take the savings and make more payloads!

    Well, yes, BUT the contractors for launch aren’t the same as the one’s for payloads.

    Well, maybe being more affordable, the contractor will get more business from private companies? So their total revenue could even increase!

    Yeah true, but that approach only worked with Airlines after lots of failures, and lots of lives lost, and hundreds of attempts to make money that failed. Rockets and spaceships can’t loiter and all that.

    Umm…then we’d go get donuts and coffee to stay awake during
    the conference proceedings.

    Yet here I find myself in 2016, a small part of the path down this road to more affordable launch, and I would never have predicted the sheer animosity, cynicism, and even irrational crazy-talk (2+2=spaghetti) from within NASA civil servants as well as contractors in our traditional partners. Some of the talk from the 90’s was prescient, other bits not as much. More or less, I expected cheering and congratulations as ANYONE improved on costs (prices to NASA or anyone) and more of “I want what she’s having”.

    Instead we got SLS and Orion advocates adopting a new line –
    forgetting all that talk back then. Now affordable is only about marginal costs! Now all of sudden we have debates about “what affordability means…depending on mumble, mumble…space is hard”.

    Whatever the private sector does better, until they do it, some say is “just talk”. (Actually, often, NASA and new partners). After they do it the same people say “no big deal” mumble mumble space is hard.

    Somehow the SLS is real, and affordable, 2 years away from launch, based on it’s very expensive Shuttle heritage. Somehow the Falcon Heavy is just paper, and expensive, being less than a year away from launch and based on a Falcon 9 that’s proven to be a significant advance in affordability.

    I suppose nuking Titusville post-Shuttle didn’t do too much for people’s embrace of progress, and civil servant’s and contractors embracing “affordability” back in the 90’s thought improving on costs meant more power for them, not less. Still, this is an alternate universe I’ve come to enjoy, for the progress it is making on launch, and spacecraft, and affordability, and learning and more.

    Let’s not fear change, and progress, and the future.

    • richard_schumacher says:
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      If NASA wanted to help go to Mars, and could get the SLS contingent in Congress off their backs, they would be working on a package that made CO and O2 fuel from Martian atmosphere.

      • savuporo says:
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        They actually are working on a package that makes O2 from Martian atmosphere. For the second time, the first one was supposed to fly on Mars Surveyor in 2001

    • Bill Housley says:
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      I know, right?

      Money is the facilitator. The more money is available the more work is facilitated.

      Part of what you said isn’t fully correct though, since Boeing and Lockheed, ULA’s parent companies, both build satellites.

      The struggle, if I may, is between a competing pair of attitudes which pertain to the source of the launch initiative.

      On the one hand, we have the traditional model…(loosely summarized from JPL’s online “Basics of Spaceflight”)…

      Step One: “I have a question.”

      Step Two: “I think I know how to answer it.”

      Step Three: “I have a destination and spacecraft design.”

      Step Four: “Lets go get funding for this project.”

      Step Five: “Ok, those providing us the funding have found a launcher and told the launch company how much they will get paid! Cool! That sure was nice of them…

      In other words, the mission drives the destination which drives the funding effort, which drives launcher selection, and the launch company doesn’t even care until they have a customer down payment to pay for everything.

      On the other hand, we have what I call the “Field of Dreams” approach…

      Step One: “I (the launch company) have a destination.”

      Step Two: “I (the launch company) have a rocket to get there and the infrastructure is under construction.”

      Step Three: “Ok, we’re ready! I’d like to get paid for this though, so lets show the world what it is we’re working on…get them imagining.”

      Step Four: “Ok! Hey everyone, listen up! We’re opening up a launch industry for flights to (destination)! Here’s what it’ll cost! Who wants to go first?”

      If the second approach drives the calendar it moves much faster. It also positions the driving company as a lightning rod for enemies and controversy (the purveyors of approach number one can’t admit that they lack initiative), which keeps high market cap players from trying it until the driving company is firmly in momentum to become the market leader (and perhaps even the monopoly) for that destination. That is definitely where SpaceX is headed with regard to Mars, and perhaps even human rated LEO, GEO, and the Moon.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        In many ways this defines the entire Mars Mission issue. And it surely explains why we haven’t been back to the Moon, either.

        It’s because nobody has figured out a good reason to go to either place, other than exploration/ coolness factor.

        • muomega0 says:
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          The NASA/DOD missions are the reason ‘commercial’ launch costs of one provider have dropped. Increased flight rate (of BEO missions) likely drops future LV costs–it depends on the service provider. However, add in Bs for the non launching SLS/DeltaH/…in the comparison.

          Besides coolness factor, its the challenges of R&D and scientific discovery to (hopefully) create new markets. Debatably, adding a half dozen or so flights to Vulcan drops its cost below $100M to a ‘commercial’ interests.

          Specifically, its the Space Grand Challenges, and crew health and economic access to space at the top of the list.
          https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/50

          Alternatively, just send a 1B or so subsidy to the LV provider to keep commercial/USG launch costs down, + 3B to go nowhere. Deja vu?

  10. Michael Spencer says:
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    “Falcon 9 has been flying for years”

    What a remarkable statement.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      First flight was June 4, 2010.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        It’s the truth of the statement that is so remarkable, that a private ride to LEO has been flying now for almost six years. It’s stunning really.

  11. Tritium3H says:
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    So, Spudis now clarifies that his original comments were predicated upon in-flight, zero-G refueling, via fuel synthesized in situ from lunar ice. If that is the case, you might as well push back any NASA-based manned Mars mission by another 50 years. For the moment, forget about the COMPLETE non-existence of any plan/development/design for a Mars transit vehicle. How about the COMPLETE non-existence of any plan/development/design for a lunar-based rocket fuel refinery/production facility and launch complex.

    Is this science-fiction story based upon a manned lunar outpost, or un-manned? Seems to me, that a human presence would be required, at least to set-up the operations. So, we talking about another mega multi-billion dollar program that effectively is completely separate from any manned Mars mission. Moreover, the lunar refinery/base would have to come FIRST. So, why the hell is Spudis even talking about SLS in relation to a notional Mars program??

    Edit: I just realized Paul Spudis was not so much directly associating SLS with a manned Mars mission, as he was advocating the heavy-lift capability of SLS as being an integral component, and part of the equation for some future Mars mission. Nevertheless, I stand by my comment about pushing back a manned Mars mission by another 50 years, if in-orbit refuel via lunar-based fuel production facility, is to be an integral component for an inaugural manned Mars mission.

  12. Vladislaw says:
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    My turn to rant.

    What is the primary element that needs to be put into space in order to spiral outward?

    Oxidizer and Fuel. What kind of product are they?

    “Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. That is, it is the property of essences or goods which are “capable of being substituted in place of one another.”[1] For example, since one ounce of pure gold is equivalent to any other ounce of pure gold, gold is fungible. Other fungible commodities include sweet crude oil, “

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

    On earth we have literally hundreds of companies that could supply these but the Nation lacks the typical commercial transportation infrastructure systems to move that fuel and oxidizer a couple hundred miles straight up.

    To have our Nation’s premier R&D agency, NASA, doing design, development, and operation of “18 wheelers” hauling fuel?

    You are kidding me .. right? After a HALF A CENTURY?

    NASA should be on the “bleeding edge” not running fuel trucks..