Commercial Spaceflight Federation Sells Out and Endorses SLS (Update)
Leading Commercial Space Group Embraces NASA’s Biggest Rocket, Wall Street Journal
“Before his speech outlining the revised stance on the Space Launch System, Mr. Stern said his primary goal is “taking this off the table” as a divisive issue while White House aides formulate new NASA priorities. Looking ahead, he said, “there is plenty of market share to go around” to support a wide range of commercial and government launch systems.”
Here’s why a commercial space group endorsed NASA’s SLS rocket, Ars Technica
“Theoretically, then, the United States could have three heavy lift rockets at its disposal in 2020. If the reusable Falcon Heavy costs $200 million per flight, and the reusable New Glenn costs $200 million, while an expendable SLS rocket costs $1.5 billion, the agency – and by extension Congress and the White House – will have an easy choice to make. One could argue at that time that NASA should never have spent in excess of $10 billion developing the SLS. But the bottom line is that, six years ago, Congress did not believe in the capacity of SpaceX to build a heavy lift rocket, and Blue Origin’s intentions were not known at that time. So Congress bet on NASA and its traditional contractor Boeing, and the agency kept its large base of employees intact.”
NASA’s future deep space rocket gets critical endorsement from commercial space group, The Verge
“Alan Stern, the chairman of the board of directors for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), publicly announced the organization’s support for the rocket at a conference in DC. … However, Stern says that the extra capability of SLS will enable missions and partnerships with the private sector that cannot be achieved on commercial heavy-lift vehicles that are currently in development. Because of this, he wanted to get this perception “off the table” that the Commercial Spaceflight Federation is strongly against the vehicle when the organization is actually in favor of it. Stern sees the potential of the SLS being used to put something like a commercial lunar outpost on the surface of the Moon (that is if NASA sets its sights on returning to the Moon again).”
Keith’s note: Nonsense. This is not what I am hearing from CSF member companies. A number of them are not confortable with this decision and feel that they were pushed into it. SLS is a government-funded, congressionally-mandated rocket with no chance of ever recouping the billions spent to develop it. It can never compete in a true commercial sense unless the government decides to fix prices to make it fit. Saying that the private sector is not interested in developing heavy lift launch systems is utterly inaccurate and flies in the face of plans announced by CSF members SpaceX and Blue Origin. Stern may think he has “taken the issue off of the table” but it will jump back onto on the table in Congress as soon as the hearings start.
|
|
I’m very so disappointed with Commercial Spaceflight Federation Sells Out and Endorses SLS. I thought Commercial Spaceflight Federation mission to promote commercial rocket flights like SpaceX and Orbital not NASA own rockets flights. I wonder if they took a big bribe from the SLS lobby begs the questions?
Exactly. FH will fly first, far more often, and probably far longer and thus further. Blue Origin is late to the game and will probably still fly a heavy launcher before EM-2.
I wonder if by using SLS in harmony with private companies, the Comm. Spaceflight Federation hopes to open up markets for commercial providers to compete within. For example, if SLS is used to launch a space station to cis-lunar space than crew and supplies have to be delivered on a semi-annual basis somehow. Wow, what a wonderful opening for commercial companies that would have not existed otherwise. Say the same thing about a lunar base. No rocket is powerful enough to deliver a lunar lander to, well, the Moon but companies can compete to design and build the lander in the first place.
Not only is that what they’re thinking, but NASA said as much last fall, when Gerstenmaier commented that once a cislunar hab is established and there are activities in that ‘neighborhood’ he would look to buy logistics flights from private industry. And several private companies with interests in deep space resource utilization are “ride agnostic” – they just want to get out there.
What kind of bizarro world are we living in that an organization that calls itself the “Commercial Spaceflight Federation” would endorse SLS? SLS is pretty much the Socialist Launch System since it is being paid for by the US Government and is wholly unsuitable for any sort of “commercial” activity outside of government use.
Maybe its a bizarro world where real business people think about available assets that can be leveraged by the private sector. Maybe its a bizzaro world where people who are more interested in developing space via PPP than standing on their inaccurate talking points, throwing stones, see potential advantage in the use of said assets. Maybe its a bizzaro world where folks who are thinking seriously about moving infrastructure into the solar system with big rigs and then building on it, servicing it, expanding on it with medium or small rigs are trying to figure out how best to leverage both their funds and the gov’ts to the benefit of their interests as well as the gov’t’s interest, particularly in light of clear messages from the gov’t and other groups that such discussion is welcome and expected.
Yes, companies want to maximize existing assets to provide ROI, answering to their shareholders.
Since 80% of the NASA missions is dirt Class D propellant, the taxpayer solution would be different:
No LV larger than ~20mT required and use of high ISP tugs rather than all chemical with common elements with the goal or reuse.
This is a direct contraction of using ‘said’ assets. For example: shuttle lost out to Titan III unless it flew 28X/yr; solids were a major mistake, has no possibility of reuse, and none of its hardware is common with a smaller LVs suitable for commercial payloads. rotary phones won’t cut it–no reason to keep the assets. Certifying commercial crew on an Atlas is another example. Its being retired.
I think ULA can save Atlas…at least for as long as ISS lives. They just have to keep cutting costs.
Just keep trimming, trimming, trimming. Just keep trimming, trimming, trimming.”
It just won’t happen with launch costs currently projected for SLS and also where is the funding for these seriously large infrastructure that apparently needs moving?
Cheers
What won’t happen? Private companies won’t be interested in leveraging a ride if it’s available? Why not? SLS is coming in at almost exactly what was projected years ago – and the idea is as development costs decrease (depending on decisions about evolution) more funding becomes available for infrastructure – cislunar hab being next. This is not and never has been a cost competition – Congress certainly doesn’t think so. The “investment” in SLS buys the following: (a) a super-heavy LV; (b) a geopolitical instrument with value to international partners and the State Department; (c) continued commitment on the part of the U.S. to enable gov’t-to-gov’t activities in space, including open development of peaceful, dual-use technology in a collaborative setting; (d) returns from science and exploration that are not tied up in proprietary agreements, in other words are available to the entire nation; (e) retention of a higher number U.S. manufacturing and (in particular) _tooling_entities with capability in aerospace, and in many cases with direct applicability to other manufacturing tasks; (f) a capability available to the military should they desire to use it; (g) rapid deployment of science missions at high speed, etc…. and finally, opportunity spaces for commercial missions. While some of these things can overlap with private LV’s, others cannot. Bear in mind the gov’t sustained the Shuttle at $3B/year – SLS is currently projected to be 1/3 to 2/3 of that and those costs are not set in stone. From a Congressional point of view, retention of such an asset for the gov’t is worth the investment in SLS – all the “memes” about “unsustainabiity” nothwithstanding. Opening up the solar system is a big job with a lot of moving parts; it’s going to take all kinds of vehicles and partnerships. In some cases the decisions about which to use when will be driven by business cases, and in others it won’t. Nationally we are far more flexible and advantaged by combinations of gov’t and commercial assets than by one or the other alone.
Lots of words but you continue to ignore cost. I look for evidence of interest in flying payloads on SLS in terms of funding. Payloads take time to propose, fund, design and build. There’s been a few proposals but nothing that looks like moving to the funded stage and more importantly nothing from business. So again, where is there a requirement for SLS and the large infrastructure bits that need lifting?
Sorry but SLS is only a jobs program no matter how you’d like to spin it.
Cheers
Unsustainability is not a meme. If more than a half dozen humans are ever to be in space at once, the cost of human spaceflight must be reduced by at least a factor of ten. Those who are satisfied with current costs are satisfied with failure.
Why not? Cost. It’s really that simple.
Have the USG *required* a path forward for complete reuse for *any* LV forward otherwise, its a non starter. Include transfer stages and depots with propellant transfer with zero boiloff storage. Now that is a game changer.
These ‘competitions’, which means ‘duplication’, and ‘prizes’ create a short term focus which is extremely wasteful, unlessthey fits the overall goals- ‘mooning’ is not a goal. Simply stated, all hardware must satisfy the Space Grand Challenges.
It sounds to me like you dispute the fact that SpaceX has: developed its own launch vehicles, engines, cargo carrier, crewed vehicle, Mars Lander, developed LANDING rockets ALL FOR LESS than NASA has spent so far on SLS and HAS NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL TO SHOW FOR IT YET.
Although initially skeptical, I have to admire SpaceX for what they’ve accomplished, particularly for their daring and innovative efforts to land and recover their launch vehicles. However, let’s not be fooled – they’ve received a lot of free NASA help, particularly in their failure investigations. The “pucker” factor will intensify exponentially when they launch humans.
CSF and Dr Stern did not “sell out” or otherwise violate their core values. Many of us know that by 2019 its all but dead. This started trending in 2016 and now into 2017 NASA is saying SLS will launch in Q1 of 2019.
As long as we are beefing up LEO capability via commercial there is no need to poke the giant. By 2020 we will have three vehicle doing LEO safely and at least one expandable structure ready to go.
At that point the paradigm changes. It already has. AMOS 5 was unfortunate but frankly required. We got too cocky. We will do better. We will come back stronger.
Keith or Marc, are either of you hearing any inside chatter on directions? How people are leaning? What the fights are about?
That comment about the launch cost being under $1 billion seems odd. Isn’t the conventional wisdom closer to $2 billion?
The conventional estimate is that the cost depends on the flight rate. Unfortunately, no one has a clue about what the SLS flight rate will be. If you only include currently planned and funded missions, I think most estimates are between one and two billion, possibly closer to two than one. If, somehow, enough missions appear and they can launch SLS at the highest rate they can, a bit under a billion per launch isn’t an absurd claim. But that doesn’t explain what those additional missions would be, how much they would cost or who would pay for them.
Ya, we can’t afford $1B per year to launch it, haven’t got enough missions worth $1B to fill a one-shot per year calendar, and can’t afford the price jump of launching it less often than once per year.
Oh, and can’t afford to do much else if we try.
Just making nice with the Big Dog in town. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I think this article may explain why Dr. Stearn pushed the Commercial Spaceflight Federation in this direction.
http://www.space.com/30082-…
“For orbiters and surface craft, “you need to carry a lot of fuel, and
there’s no way to lighten the fuel; you need it so you can come to a
stop on that planetary surface or in orbit,” Stern told committee
members during today’s hearing. “SLS is going to really help us enable
[such] space missions, including — I hope one day — a return to the
Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt.”
So SLS today, a new Pluto mission in the future 🙂
Yes, it is way past time to drain the swamp…
As much as I am in favor of the ability to launch science payloads on an HLV which would clearly allow for much greater flexibility in mission design and enable the sort of missions that with current launch vehicles would be unthinkable. At a launch cost of around 1bn per mission at best the SLS would simply hammer even further NASA’s already stretched budget for science missions. To be at all viable the launch cost would have to be little more that current Delta / Atlas launches, there is simply not the money available for anything else unless these launches are somehow to be funded outside the current NASA budget.
I have not heard any planetary scientist say the Europa mission could not fly on an Atlas, or for that matter a Falcon Heavy. The shorter flight time with the SLS is not worth the additional cost. Congress dictated the choice of launch vehicle.
I think its the reason why that particular Senator insisted on that particular weight of lander and that lander and orbiter must fly together. Just outside of FH weight class. Forget the fact that two separate flights, rover and orbiter, costs less money and might launch sooner, if they don’t fly aboard SLS.
That may or may not have been on a certain representative’s mind (if we’re thinking of the same person, he’s in the House of Representatives, not the Senate.) But the idea of flying a lander along with Europa Multiple Flyby has been dead for some time. At most, EMFM only had about 250 kg to spare, and that’s about enough to impact (not land) a radio on the surface and hope it survived to phone home. The lander (not rover) would be a whole, separate mission, and a flagship-class mission at that.
The Europa Multiple Flyby mission is baselined to launch on a SLS, but the language I’ve seen in presentations is that its design “does not preclude” launching on an Atlas V. Launching on an Atlas would require an Earth gravity assist and a longer cruise phase, which would increase costs. Of course, the alternative (launching on a SLS) would also increase costs. But it isn’t clear who would pay. Some presentations have implied NASA’s Planetary Science Division would only be charged incremental costs for an extra SLS launch.
In any case, the Europa Lander science definition team report just came out.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov…
That baselines a SLS launch in 2025, and _still_ needs an Earth gravity assist and a five-year cruise phase to Jupiter. There is no way that would fly on an Atlas.
Honestly, that whole idea reminds me of the canceled Voyager concept. That would have been a Mars lander with a life-detection package and was baselined to fly in a Saturn V (well, originally a Saturn 1B). The Viking landers were a smaller version, developed after Voyager was canceled.
However the Vikings did pretty well at a lower cost. Many of the sensing technologies are being progressively miniaturized.
The Space launch System illustrates everything that is wrong with government run programs. The rocket is made up with obsolete to extremely obsolete parts (ie: the RS-25 main engine designed in the 1970s, RL-10 second stage engine designed in the 1950s, AJ-10 Orion main engine first flew in 1958!). The SLS program had a projected development cost of $18 billion through 2017.
The single use rocket is estimated to cost $1 billion per launch with the Orion capsule costing $250 million.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX are developing on a shoe string budget state of the art reusable launch systems that have to potentiality of truly commercializing space.
What needs to be promoted is commercial competition to develop reusable next generation launch system. When either the Blue Origin or SpaceX rockets are in production the SLS will be none viable at 10s of times the cost to launch.
The SpaceX’s Raptor rocket engine for example, is cheaper, reusable and with technical specifications that conventional wisdom would suggest isn’t even possible. It has the highest thrust to weight ratio, the greatest chamber pressure, and is a highly efficient methane fueled full flow stage combustion design.
The SLS can get people to Mars. The SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets can get a colony on Mars at a affordable price.
To be fair, the age of a design doesn’t automatically make it obsolete. Work on the Boeing 737 aircraft started in 1964, and it still one of the best commercial aircraft in service. Cassini’s main engines (the R4-D) were originally developed in the early 1960s, and have worked so well that the backup engine has never been used in the two decades since the spacecraft was launched. That’s because the original designs were really good and because the design has been gradually upgraded and improved many times over the years. So I don’t think the RS-25 should be condemned because the original design goes back to the 1970s (1960s, actually.) I think it’s a bad choice because it wasn’t exactly a brilliant design in the first place, and because upgrades and improvements have been minor (and those minimal improvements didn’t address the key problem of maintainability and reusability.)
I heard that of course that the 1957 Chevy was a great car. However very few people think modern technology when applied makes for a much better car. The rocket engines I mentioned certainly can be dramatically improved. The RL-10 for example has been looked at a number of times and found to be open to many possible improvements. The RL-60 development history can be researched and found the many offered improvements over the RL-10.
The short history SpaceX has had with the Merlin rocket engine shows dramatic performance enhancements in a short number of years.
Those that think modern technology cannot improve a 50 some year old rocket designs are fatalistic and just wrong.
I read that Centaur had many upgrades under its belt. I’m unfamiliar with the details though.
I wouldn’t worry too much about obsolescence at this point. By the time NASA figures out the mission and has assembled all the pieces needed to carry that mission out, the SLS will be nearly as old as the Saturn V is today. If the program ever hits a stride, we will be talking about missions in the 2050s or later.
The entire human space flight program has at this point gone off half cocked-they are going someplace, it is just that no one knows where. I am all for a big booster, but we ought to be following the Russian example; start an assembly line and keep the parts coming, and make use of them at the same rate as you produce them. What Congress and NASA have created, building a rocket that is a one off and will only be used every 2 or 3 years, for as yet unknown, undefined missions, will prove a safety risk.
Worse: billions of dollars in equipment used once. Then dumped.
“[W]hen space science missions go over budget (crashing Mars probes in the 90s, James Webb Space Telescope, Mars Science Laboratory, Mars 2020 rover etc.) Space Science tends to suffer much, much more [than when manned programs do] – and it is self-inflicted.”
Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what happened with the development of the Shuttle? It was so far over budget that entire spacecraft already in development (e.g. the US half of the International Solar Polar Mission, the remaining, ESA component of which was renamed Ulysses) were cancelled. Even the enormous overruns on JWST, which have slowed any other astrophysics mission new starts to a trickle, hasn’t had that kind of effect on missions already being built.
If I had to guess, I’d have to say that multibillion dollar programs of any kind in NASA that have serious troubles end up impacting scientific missions. It’s not either-or.
“Shuttle….so far over budget” You are creating a total fiction here. Shuttle costs were well managed and closely controlled, especially given the advanced technology requirements. In fact it was amazing just how little Shuttle cost and how quickly it was developed. The only ‘overrun’ was the reserve which NASA told OMB and Congress to allocate in the first place. Keeping that in mind, there was NO overrun on Shuttle at all.
You are confusing and conflating various configurations of Shuttle considered prior to the program being approved with the program as it was approved. The amount that was approved was for the 60 ft, x 15 ft payload bay to fit reconnaissance satellites like Hubble. NASA recommended the smaller 45 ft x 12 ft payload bay Shuttle and was surprised that the larger one with the higher budget was approved. NASA discarded the idea of small straight X-15 like wings early in the Phase A design process. They made for a much higher wing loading factor and could not provide margin for a soft landing in the case of a fully loaded vehicle returning. Likewise they got away from fly-back or liquid boosters in Phase A prior to program approval. The amount that was approved in the budget was for SRBs and not for a fly-back booster or for liquid propellant boosters. A lot of people, most notably the program manager, felt that given the advanced technology requirements of the SSRMs, igniting more than 3 at a time would have been a problem. Advancements could have been made once the Shuttle was flying but this would have required diverting funds from operations to R&D and development, and the Shuttle program never did that. The Shuttle that flew in 2011 was essentially the same as the one that flew in 1981, with a couple minor changes.
Man…is it getting deep?
“However, Stern says that the extra capability of SLS will enable missions and partnerships with the private sector that cannot be achieved on commercial heavy-lift vehicles that are currently in development.”
Not when you launch people and equipment separately, which some experts say is the safest approach for long-duration, deep space missions. Split-mission scheduling between lighter-weight vehicles becomes the mission enabler. SLS looses.
Not when you consider how long it will take for the “Extra capability of SLS” to fully mature. Launch cadence and development rate becomes the mission enabler. SLS looses.
Not when you consider that high-cost can kill otherwise good missions. Low-cost boosters become the mission enabler. SLS looses.
There’s something missing from the SLS picture, Bill, and I wish I knew what it could be. And it’s not for not looking. I read everything I can about SLS and have yet to find anyone justify the cost and campaign rate. There’s an awful lot of chatter about magic missions to wherever, but when a choice of vehicles is mentioned little response.
Some point to the lower throw rate of FH, forgetting that loads can be divided. Duh.
One thing I wonder about is a possible hypergolic ‘third stage’; Super Draco is over-powered for this task, ASAIK, but the methalox engines being partly funded by the AF.
There are only two that I can think of…OK, three…
1) NASA has, repeatedly, stressed the importance of keeping Congress happy. That extends to their Old Space contractors, all of which now have a “Commercial Space” presence…And thus may have had representative influence on this SLS acceptance thing.
2) I have a personal theory that SLS/Orion development grow the envelope in subtle ways that you and I aren’t in a position to see directly, but that New Space partner ventures benefit from behind the scenes.
3) Kind of part of point “1)” above, is that New Space may now have joined the three-way back-scratching conglomerate between Gov. procurement officials and Congressfolk who will someday retire, and want a second income to go with their pensions, and government contractors.
I just thought of something.
You and I agree that another SpaceX rocket crater could sink it. Even though the throw weight of SLS Mark 1 and FH are not that different, SpaceX has put their future in doubt with their two flight mishaps. Hostile politics doesn’t help, the thing with the cracks highlights that.F9 and FH are based on the same core. A failure of one grounds them both and pushes back both of their launch schedules. SLS therefore could be viewed as redundancy for scheduling certainty for NASA extra-heavy-lifts (greater than Delta Heavy) between now and about 2020.
After 2020…well who really knows for sure what will happen after that. We’re dealing with a violently disrupted industry interwoven with threads of Congressional and Presidential politics. 😉
Also, Gwen Shotwell said that SpaceX will have commercial and ESA payloads on Red Dragon, but NASA has so far said, “We’ll just wait and watch it land this trip” (probably prudent since Mars is the Skeleton Coast of exploration spacecraft). SpaceX wears their PR out in front and exist for Mars. What would happen to SpaceX if Red Dragon installs a new crater on the red planet on their first shot?