Is Falcon Heavy An SLS Killer?
Elon Musk is set to launch his Falcon Heavy rocket, a flamethrower of another sort, Washington Post
“It could also play a part in the Trump administration’s plans to return to the moon. Over the weekend, Nick Ayers, Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, tweeted that the rocket would have “major (positive) ramifications for US space industry if this goes according to plan.” SpaceX has said that the Falcon Heavy would cost $90 million a launch, a fraction of what NASA’s more powerful Space Launch System would cost. Last year, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said the SLS rocket would cost about $1 billion per launch. With such a vast difference in price, some have wondered if the Falcon Heavy obviates the need for SLS. “If the SpaceX model works, it creates direct competition to SLS,” said Howard McCurdy, a professor of public affairs at American University.”
Let’s hope so.
So someone states the obvious, and that COTS will do what it was actually intended to do. But will this have any effect AT ALL on SLS? Personally, I think a big part of the reason NASA has been rudderless for years is that everyone throws up their hands and gives up when they see the degree to which NASA is torqued by the pork wrench (now there’s a mixed metaphor) in the house and senate.
It won’t They’d have to be bought off with producing some different part of missions being carried on Falcon Heavies, and I don’t see any desire or capability to do that in NASA right now (or from the President, who could probably push for that hard if he really cared).
Too bad for SpaceX that Musk has already decided to ditch the Falcon 9 Heavy in place of the BFR – until the next IAC meeting when he will have a different cartoon concept. By Musk’s own admission, beyond wanting to move to the BFR, he will be surprised if it doesn’t blow up – not exactly a vote of confidence in its prospects.
That all depends on how long it takes BFR/BFS to start flying reliably. My guess is they’ll need at least one BFR/BFS for flight testing, need to tweak a few bits of the design, then build another, test it…
The reason he is going ahead with the BFR is NASA’s overly conservative legacy requirements for landing in the ocean with a parachute instead of on land with propulsion as well as overly conservative requirements for Block 5 Falcon 9s.
As I understand it, the idea is to build up a stock of Falcon 9 cores and continue flying them after the production line is switched over to BFR. I believe he also said he’d be happy if the first Falcon Heavy launch didn’t blow up, not surprised if it didn’t. This is, after all, a test flight.
I’ve seen people correct you on this before, so I know it’s not out of ignorance. The only people you see consistently saying F9H always seem to come from some of the old-space companies. Mainly Boeing. So I assume that’s where you come from. It would explain your consistent hate-on for SpaceX.
Which one of Boeing’s cartoon concepts have they ever developed off their own back? They don’t get out of bed unless someone pays them for a design study on it.
…In order to save money for BFR development. If someone wanted to pay for a whole bunch of FH launches, he would do that instead, to make money for BFR development.
I am not with Boeing although I’m not sure why that should matter – discounting my argument because of my assumed loyalties is a pretty weak response.
As it turns out though, you have helped to clarify my point; for areas where there is no commercial market, Boeing and other non start-up companies do seek to get paid for government development programs. That does not mean they don’t do things commercially. Just look at a real commercial market: aviation. There, they are a dominant competitor and they invest heavily – literally betting the company to develop each brand new airliner. They are driving the stock market right now and making lots of investments and profits – in a real commercial market, jetliners. Commercial space – not so much – although they are one of the largest builder of that real commercial product opportunity – communications satellites. when human exploration is really commercial, I suspect you will see them and others move in with their own capital but for now, as with SpaceX and commercial crew, they need government money to make the business case close.
For the record, I don’t hate SpaceX and I try to acknowledge where they have made real contributions like the fly back boosters and restoring American launchers on the world stage. But that doesn’t mean they can make everything work cheaper and better by doing it commercially.
I’m curious. Why do you refer to the launch vehicle as the “Falcon 9 Heavy”? The 9 comes from the nine rocket engines at the bottom, SpaceX doesn’t insert a 9 when talking about the Falcon Heavy, and if they did use a number, they would probably call it a “Falcon 27.” When someone uses non-standard terminology, it is both fair and worthwhile to ask where they get there information.
My mistake – nothing nefarious or disrespectful intended (I always get ticked off when Republicans refer to their political opponents by calling them the “Democrat Party”); using your own terminology can sometimes be a sign of disrespect; that was not my intent.
Yes it will kill SLS but not like most think. It will kill it in the respect that for ~$125 million you can get ~mT to LEO. Geo, TLI, and TMI numbers are still to sketchy but it will open new markets and opportunities.
SLS, and I do not care who from NASA and OST say, will cost around $1.5 billion. Who the hell can afford that?
…and then New Glenn comes on the scene only to drive competition. This is what kills SLS.
FH is just the first, and the biggest nail in the coffin IMHO – YMMV
Now top the rocket with a billion dollar orion capsule and you 2 . 2.5 billion a launch.
You are right but this conversation is about the boosters only, right?
Yes I was just trying to point out .. it doesn’t get better no matter how you look at it .. it only gets worse.
It’s worth noting, though, that this specific booster makes even the capsule more expensive. (Dealing with launching on solids.)
The discussion will get more interesting when (if?) the red Tesla reaches escape velopcity. At the moment the FH does not have an optimally designed second stage, ideally with some version of the Raptor, but if Musk can swing that he might win a contract for Europa Express. I really think the BFR should be descoped to a point at which it will be practical for carrying practical unmanned cargo to GEO and planetary trajectories, otherwise it’s hard to see it having enough customers.
Are you serious?
There is nothing other than the unflown SLS Block 1B that even come close to the Falcon Heavy performance numbers.
The current Falcon Heavy upper stage is designed to have commonality with the Falcon core. So is quite cheap. By comparison just the RL-10 engine ($17M) on the Centaur upper stage is more expensive than the entire Falcon upper stage. The 4 RL-10 engines by themselves on the SLS’s EUS upper stage cost more than a Falcon 9 flight!
A Falcon Heavy with upgraded upper stage will have similar performance to the SLS Block 2 with just the current sub-scale 1 MN Raptor engine. However there is no point in developing the sub-scale Raptor with a wider diameter upper stage if the BFR is on the horizon.
The BFR was descoped from the previous ITS design to be more general purpose.
Also since the BFR & BFS are reusable. The cost per flight is mostly the propellants. The BFR will undercut just about every other launch provider in launch price. You get to chose between the traditional launch vehicles that cost 10s of millions and a few millions with the BFR, if you are the customer sending up a large comsat.
I’m all for the BFR, I just think that Musk cannot afford to bring such a large vehicle to operational status without customers, and so far there are no payloads of that scale. Even the Ariane V launches mostly double payloads because it is above the payload capacity needed for the bulk of the market. The Glenn has a performance edge over the Falcon 9 and is cheaper than the FH, so Musk will soon have more competition than he has from ULA. He needs an LV with the capacity of the FH but the cost of the F9.
Que? Neither rocket is flying. And BO has never launched into orbit, nor even operated their suborbital hopper commercially.
Who cares? If the launch price is lower than the cheapest rival, customers will go with BFR. They won’t care if it’s 90% empty.
The Falcon Heavy should go up in about 6 days.
Agree that all the customer cares about is the launch price and how soon.
And SpaceX have listed the commercial launch price. Whereas we have no price at all for NG. But I was trying to be fair.
It’s weird how hung up people get on BFR (or FH for that matter) being “inefficent” because it might often launch mostly empty. I wonder how many bad decisions have been made in aerospace because “efficiency” is placed above “cost”.
(You see the same thing with ESA and ULA’s “reusability” proposals for their new launchers. They want to separate and return only the engines, because it “saves fuel”. Because fuel is oh so much more expensive than manufacturing new tanks and developing jettisonable engine-modules.)
Now that you mention it, I can’t see any real need for a Falcon Heavy (or even a BFR) to launch at much below its capacity. I’m perfectly willing to fly in steerage. There is a big backlog in launch opportunities for secondary payloads. If the primary customer only needs 10 tonnes on a geostationary transfer orbit, I can think of good uses for half a dozen few tonne spacecraft on that orbit.
You might be willing to fly steerage. But the commercial primary payload customers usually have a veto on secondaries. Which they usually exercise to keep out most civilian non-cubesats, especially ones with their own propulsion. There is some added but slight risks when flying with secondary payloads to the primary payloads.
The practice of secondaries veto power for primary payload customers will continued with Falcon Heavy IMO.
Not quite. You make an exception for CubeSats. But the same things that let CubeSats have easy and flexible approval apply to larger secondary payloads. It they aren’t as famous as CubeSats, but there is the ESPA (EELV Secondary Payload Adaptor) standard, which is for spacecraft up to 180 kg, and 61x71x97 cm.
There is a standard interface, a ring which fits between the second stage of a Delta IV, Atlas V or Falcon 9 and the primary payload adaptor (as long as the primary payload has a mass under 6,800 kg). It can fit up to 6 ESPA-class spacecraft, and it’s even possible to stack two rings.
They follow the same “do no harm” requirements as CubeSats. Propulsion, by the way, is allowed for both ESPA-class and CubeSat spacecraft. The amount and choice of propellent is restricted, following that “do no harm” philosophy. But it’s allowed.
Since the Falcon Heavy and 9 use the same second stage, an ESPA ring would fit. That limit on the primary payload mass would restrict the possible launches. Now that I look, the second or third Falcon Heavy launch is a DoD flight with multiple secondary payloads. Including a set of six, 150 kg COSMIC-2 spacecraft.
Since ESPA-class spacecraft are getting popular, the manufacturer (Moog) has come up with a “ESPA Grande” ring (four spacecraft up to 300 kg), and I’m sure other standards will come around (e.g. one with more structural mass, so it can be used with a larger primary payload.)
The various ESPA rings was available since the earliest Falcon 9s. So why is there so few secondary payloads with the Falcon 9?
There appears to be only 4 deployable secondaries carry aloft with 2 missions excluding Orbcomm and Iridium bus dispenser flights.
My point stands, primary commercial payload customers are not willing to share rides up on the Falcon 9. Probably the same with the Falcon Heavy.
Why would the primary payload customer be less likely to share a ride on the Falcon 9 than on the Atlas or Delta? The use of a standard interface and requirements (either for a CubeSat or ESPA-class spacecraft) makes the whole thing more palatable, since the secondary payload becomes a known quantity to the launch vehicle and primary payload. I think that’s true regardless of the launch vehicle in question.
It also has a lot to do with the acceptance of ride-sharing and paperwork involved.
Primary commercial payload customers is not the same as primary payload customers. There is almost no primary commercial customers for the Atlas V & none for the Delta IV. Those are usually self-insurance US Military/NRO & NASA flights.
Primary commercial customers & their insurers seems to prefer no secondary rideshares for the Falcon 9. From their point of view, why should they take any additional risk with their expensive satcom payload.
Yes big one is hydrolox first stages efficient but extraordinarily expensive
Production factory for the Glenn is almost finished, and if you look at the processing flow and component cost you can get an idea. Only one booster to the FH’s three. The BE-4 may be more expensive and have less growth potential than the Merlin or Raptor but it’s a single-shaft design with only one preburner and it seems unlikely that it will be that much more expensive.
Throw in all the countries that can’t afford to spend billions on a space program, but can afford 10s or 100s of millions, rich tourists, etc. and you fill a decade of crewed and un-crewed launches to Mars, Luna, and other places.
From that if anybody builds a permanent presence anywhere outside of LEO and you have continuing transportation services demand for the life of that structure.
You are right on this one, Bill; the extra capacity of BFR and the low launch price could mean some very plush interiors, no?
The possibilities are endless.
For example: If BFR doesn’t spawn very heavy payloads, then the crew-BFS with a small cargo hold might be sufficient for most payloads. Which means that SpaceX could launch GEOsats, paying for the entire launch, but carry paying tourists in the pressurised volume. Ticket prices are pure profit.
“Sometimes quantity has a quality all of its own.”
“A Falcon Heavy with upgraded upper stage will have similar performance to the SLS Block 2 with just the current sub-scale 1 MN Raptor engine.”
Pushing the Falcon Heavy’s 62 tonnes to low Earth orbit, that would give 1.65 g at the start of the burn, and probably two or three times that at the end (depending on where you are going and therefore the wet-to-dry mass ratio.) That’s way more than you need for in space propulsion and would require otherwise useless structural mass in the payload. The Raptor is just too big for many applications.
One the sub-scale Raptor is only slightly bigger than the current Merlin.
Two the Raptor have a much greater throttle range than the Merlin. So can reduce acceleration with lower throttle setting.
Three the increase in delta-V for the Raptor power upper stage makes recovery and reuse more plausible.
Also, 1.6g during the 2nd stage burn is less than the 3+g that the payload has to endure during the 1st stage burn. I’m not seeing Frank’s reasoning.
1.6 g at the start of the burn. Once the third stage tank is empty, it would be much higher. For a Mars injection, maybe just the two or three times greater (which would be 3.2 to 4.8 g, and more than that 3+ you mention). For something like a hypothetical Europa Clipper-like mission going directly to Jupiter, the acceleration at burnout would be closer to six or seven times that, and that’s over 10 g.
Actually, looking it over, I’m not even sure if we’re talking about the same thing. I’m taking about Falcon with an additional stage on top (two boosters on the sides, one core in the middle, the current second stage on top of that, and then an additional stage above that.) Is that what you were thinking of, or something else?
No, the current 3.7 meter diameter second stage with Merlin Vac is replace by a 5.4 meter diameter stage with a subscale Raptor Vac of the same length. So that the current transport erector launcher can be used with minor upgrades. Mostly adding in a methane feed line.
That would make the second stage wider than the core. And that change the mechanical loads all over the place, which would probably mean substantial changes to the core stage. Also, it looks like the nose cones of the boosters are in the way. That’s more redesign. At that point, it might be easier to just design a new launch vehicle from the ground up. Which is what BFR is about.
It may well be if the BFR is available in a range of sizes, but I’m not sure why the erector cradle couldn’t be modified to accommodate a longer second stage.
SpaceX just developed a new Falcon Heavy center core variant able to take the stresses of liftoff with 27 Merlin engines. It is very likely SpaceX will have enough safety margins build in case they developed the Raptor upper stage.
The side booster nose cone is only about half the height of the current Falcon Heavy interstage.
Do you have a reference for throttling down a Raptor? I didn’t spend too long looking, but I couldn’t find any information.
It’s supposedly one of the advantages of full-flow staged-combustion, you can throttle down to around 20% of FT.
How many people signed up for Mars One? Put a car out to Mars’ orbit and see how many customers jump. BFR development costs will be paid for in advance by small Mars and other deep-space payloads flown on stock FH and by folks paying half up front to fly.
If you want to assemble a mission in space, FH is much cheaper. For a single launch architecture SLS gets more up in one go. At a premium.
Earth orbit rendezvous was seriously considered for Apollo and was dropped only because lunar orbit rendezvous and the already in-the-works Saturn V made it unnecessary. The entire ISS was assembled in space, and methods for doing so have evolved. There remains some technology the US has not mastered, most critically automated docking and on-orbit propellant transfer and storage. But I cannot for the life of me understand why the ability to avoid Earth orbit rendezvous, something that has now been performed hundreds of times when we count all the ISS logistics flights, is considered a requirement for any mission or a rationale for a larger launch vehicle.
Because Dr. von Braun said so when he switched his support to LOR. You must realize his ghost, along with LBJ’s ghost (The Pork Master) are still running NASA. Once you realize that a lot of what NASA does makes sense.
I agree that “legacy” plays a strong role and is not adequately questioned. But von Braun was in a race against time. Today we are in a race against cost. Just having automated docking and propellant transfer (which the Russians have had for decades) would accomplish a lot.
Space Advocate may see it that way, but not NASA or they would be making different decisions. NASA no longer sees itself in any kind of race, which is part of the problem.
That is why there are two forces driving NASA decision making today. The first is not to have any HSF accidents which create those unpleasant Presidential Commissions and Congressional Hearings where they seek to assign blame. This is what really scares NASA about commercial crew now that it seems they will actually be flying astronauts on it and it is why they will drag it out even further.
The second is to keep Congress happy so the money keeps flowing, and that means maximizing jobs in the districts of key members of the committees that oversee NASA.
If NASA is also able to provide occasional eye candy to keep the public amused they figure this will go on forever which is what bureaucracy really wants – predictable stability.
This also explains the resistance to someone like Rep. Bridenstine, he may shake things up, the ultimate nightmare of any bureaucratic in government.
This may be morbid and pointless, but… When it comes to preventing “HSF accidents” at all costs, but many NASA employees have dies in car crashes while commuting to work? Or in various sorts of work-related accidents? I’m sure the number is greater than 17. I don’t see a whole lot of the budget going to reducing that number to zero. So I’m having trouble seeing the immense value of human life justifying the immense cost of avoiding any possibility of flight accidents.
If you’re thinking of the value of avoiding massively bad PR and being the person sitting in front of the congressional committee, you probably have a point. But we could argue about whether that’s a problem with NASA, or a society that is more concerned with accidents involving celebrities than ordinary people they’ve never met.
Not quite. The F1 engine was being developed, but there were multiple proposed designs for the launcher itself. The two main competing camps were Von Braun’s team, who wanted a two or three engine launcher. (Called Saturn, because it was “the one after Jupiter”. Von Braun’s previous rocket.) And an MSFC team who wanted an 8 engine monster (later called Nova.)
The 2/3 engine Saturn proposal included EOR via separate launches, but with a large single-stage lander. The 8 engine Nova proposal was truly all-in-one, launching a large capsule-lander that returned to Earth in one piece from the lunar surface.
The five engine Saturn with LOR and all-in-one launch of a separate capsule and two-stage lunar lander was the compromise between the two groups.
2 big advantages of Falcon Heavy:
-Price – If you get that, that is a huge and perhaps the most important reason. Drastically reducing the cost – which Space X has done – means much greater capability.
-Innovation – NASA’s insistence on always doing things the traditional legacy way has hurt us deeply. Man has not been out of low earth orbit since 1973. NASA’s insisting on landing capsules in the ocean and overly- conservative requirements for Block 5 Falcon 9 was a large factor in going ahead with the BFR. Compare what Space X achieved in a short amount of time at a small fraction of the cost with SLS.
The Falcon Heavy has a somewhat lower payload to low Earth orbit, a much lower payload to planetary trajectories (it would need a third stage for that) and no real potential for upgrades to significantly improve that. There are plans for SLS block 2, with a substantially higher payload. Some people believe that doesn’t matter, since the cost-savings from a Falcon more than make up for any expenses for on-orbit assembly of a larger spacecraft.
Put me in that latter camp. If they can actually deliver launches at that price point, then the hassle of on-orbit assembly would be better than paying at least ten times as much just in launch costs.
And there’s “assembly” and there’s “assembly”.
There’s a big difference between docking/mating two or three pre-built modules together and having to launch flat-pack components and actually build the thing.
AIUI, none of the proposed payloads for SLS Block I have modules exceeding 25 tonnes. And none of the suggested payloads for block II exceed 40 tonnes. They either use the excess capacity to launch directly to lunar orbit (say), or they have multiple modules on the same launch.
This is especially true of the SLS-centred Mars proposals.
So there doesn’t seem to be anything that couldn’t be launched on FH into LEO or MEO and simply mated in orbit. Perhaps you need an extra propulsion module launched to make up for the lost Oberth efficiencies. Or a Canadarm to help catch and mate modules. But nothing that isn’t a solved problem.
And as someone else here has already pointed out, all of that can be automated. We (as a species) are getting real good at launch to intersept. All of the un-crewed components can be put in orbit over the course of a month or so, initialized, commissioned, and mated to the others. Then launch people, dock, and burn.
Except that’s how ISS was built, and it was a hassle. The two counter arguments: (1) We learned things while building ISS, so it will be easier to do similar work today. (2) The whole SLS/Falcon Heavy comparison doing things the way NASA would isn’t necessarily efficient. The same thing probably applies to docking modules, so the hassle involved with ISS isn’t a fair comparison. I hope the former is true, and I’m fairly sure the later is.
But still wouldn’t be a simple docking. You’d probably want power, data and possibly fluid lines between the modules. And some added structure if you’re planning on high (>0.1 g?) acceleration. And, of course, checkout and testing on orbit. That’s all extra work. The real question is whether or not launching pre-assembled on a SLS is easier or more efficient. Given the price, compared to the Falcon Heavy, I have trouble seeing how it could be.
That was my point about there being a difference between “assembled” and “assembled”.
With the ISS, you had to run, for example, coolant lines from each pressurised module and through all the individual truss modules, to the power/coolant module.
With the ability to launch a single 40-60 tonne module into LEO, each unit can be much more self-contained and single-purpose. And so you have three, instead of 23. But when you look at DSH proposals, they are pretty minimalist anyway.
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Worst case, you need a few of EVA’s to attach some of the inter-module lines. (Or run some lines internally through the CBMs, as is currently common on ISS.)
You would need common hard-points, as you noted, for support under propulsion, but that could be easily built into modules, IMO.
Currently, funding DSH seems to require first splashing ISS. Eliminating SLS/Orion would free up enough funds to keep ISS flying during the “assembly” of DSH. So if you can’t or don’t want to do EVA’s from CC-capsules, you either co-fly with ISS, or even just attach the modules to ISS and do the “assembly” there, putting up with a couple of months of rattles and wobbles screwing up the micro-g environment.
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I do have a wishlist of technology I’d like to see developed and standardised that would make such modular “assembly” easier, to avoid EVAs. But there’s no funding for things like that, as long as NASA has an albatross like SLS hung around their neck.
AIUI, a Raptor based upper-stage would boost BEO payload significantly.
There are no plans for such an upper stage; the SLS Block 2 at least exists on viewgraphs. Also, if you mean a third stage, as opposed to a redesigned second stage, the thrust is just too high (unless you want four or five g launch loads.) I’m not saying such a third stage is impossible; I just wouldn’t use a Raptor (when they are available). It would probably look more like a Falcon Heavy launching a payload to LEO, with the payload consisting of a spacecraft and a kick stage (customer provided?) And there are no announced plans for anything of the sort.
You said: “no real potential for upgrades”, not “no current plans for upgrades”.
Clearly, the oft-mentioned Raptor upper-stage replacement, would be precisely such an upgrade. But SpaceX doesn’t intend to, because NASA is using SLS, and SpaceX is developing BFR.
However, if NASA/Congress killed SLS and put out a RfP for heavier-lift rockets, (**) proposing a Raptor-based upper-stage for FH would be an easy path for SpaceX. While ULA/BO would need to bid on the entire development of Vulcan and NG respectively.
As for “plans”, SpaceX received token funding from the USAF to help with Raptor development precisely because the USAF saw the potential for such an upgrade, if required. So it’s not just fanbois floating a fantasy, it’s considered a realistic concept.
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** (Although such upgrading of FH is unnecessary. It’d be a better use of funding to develop the technology for improving/lowering-cost of LEO assembly/mating for modular BEO systems. A new US for FH just improves FH. Orbital assembly enabling tech improves nearly every mission that NASA will ever fly.)
“You said: “no real potential for upgrades”, not “no current plans for upgrades”.”
I stand corrected. Let me try to say what I actually meant. If the first version is developed with the idea of a particular sort of upgrade in mind (I think I once heard the term “scared” from a mechanical engineer), the upgrade can be much, much easier. If the original design didn’t consider a particular sort of upgrade, all sorts of changes may be required.
For a rocket, that’s things like the structure, mass properties, vibration loads, avionics, etc. of the fully assembled stack. Were all those things optimized for the original design or were they designed to allow for tacking another stage on top?
Falcon Heavy was not (as far as we know) designed with the idea of changing the basic stack or adding a third stage. SLS was designed with the intention of going to the Block 2 version. That means going from the Block 1 to the Block 2 boosters won’t require a redesign of the core stage.
The sort of hypothetical changes to the Falcon Heavy we’ve been talking about would require changes to the first and second stages. I suspect they wouldn’t be on the level of Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy modifications (which took quite a bit more than “just strap three first stages together” in terms of modifications to the core), but it would be quite a bit more than zero.
Not sure why you keep talking about a third stage. No-one’s ever suggested a third stage for FH (other than as a payload.)
Allegedly. Just as the core stage tanks were off-the-shelf technology. Except they weren’t. (Has Boeing even solved the welding problem yet?)
I have no faith in the claims of SLS contractors.
“I have no faith in the claims of SLS contractors.”
OK; where do we look, then, for reliable data do you think?
If Elon Musk tells you that they expect to be flying something in 5 years, you have a strong reason to believe it will take 10 years.
We know that because of past performance.
If Musk says something will sell for $40-50m commercially, you should expect it to cost $60m, excluding extras.
If Musk says they expect to launch 13 tonnes to LEO, you should expect that they’ll quickly increase that to 15, 18, 20+ tonnes expendable, 10-13 tonnes reusable. 40 tonnes became 50, became 60.
Does that make sense?
If NASA tells you that they’ll be flying in 5 years, you should expect it in 10-15 years. The bigger the project, the longer the delay.
If NASA tells Congress that that the project will cost $3b, you should expect it to cost $9b or worse.
If a traditional primary NASA contractor, like Boeing or LM, tells NASA, Congress or you that a process/system/product is “mature”, it means they’ve never attempted it before, no-one has. If they say something is “off-the-shelf”, it means it’s a radical change. If they say it’s “safer”, it means it’s a high risk item that will critically delay the overall program.
We know that because of past performance.
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Aside: I’ve found that treating “years” as “Mars years” is actually a pretty good correction for Musk’s time estimates. So 1.88 Earth years per Musk year.
2015/16, I saw a chart of SpaceX’s development timeline, as then known. (First image. Click to embiggen.) So I did a correction for Mars-time, and looking back now, I think it’s been pretty accurate. (Second image.) FH was supposed to fly last year, but it looks like 2018 is the ticket. CC-Dragon is supposed to be flying now, but the first manned launch will probably be in 2019. While Red Dragon was cancelled, it’s clear they weren’t going to make the 2018 Mars launch window. But, if there was NASA interest, the 2020 window seems probable (needs both CC-Dragon and FH.) The BFS is supposed to be in testing this year, but late 2020 is much more realistic. And so on.
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Musk says he’s not from Mars… but the evidence is pretty compelling.
The timeline description you’ve given is close enough to be accurate but very far from the subject matter.
Actually, no one has suggested any modifications to the Falcon Heavy at all. But, if they were considering it, I think a third stage would be the way to go. I requires fewer changes to the rest of the rest of the vehicle (potentially none at all) and it gets rid of what I see as a major limitation.
There is a delta-v where the payload mass drops to zero. That a function of the final stage’s wet-to-dry mass ratio and the specific impulse. So a larger second stage doesn’t help. If you doubled the payload, 200% of zero is still zero.
For the Falcon Heavy (recovered) that’s at about 5.25 km/s (C3 of 50 km^2/s^2.) On a direct trajectory, that takes an empty second stage out to 3 AU. With a non-zero payload, you can’t manage that. Or, if you’re interested in Mars, this is a limit on how much time you could cut off the trip to Mars. Adding a third stage would address that, as well as increasing the payload to a lower delta-v.
Once again, SpaceX has received actual money from the USAF for work on Raptor. USAF doesn’t care about BFR, they are interested in ensuring they have a hand in the game if they need SpaceX to develop a Raptor-based US for FH, for the largest national security payloads. (They weren’t interested in the sea-level version of Raptor, for example.)
People have seriously looking into the idea. It’s not Musk’s current plans (ditto a larger payload shroud, or vertical integration), but people at SpaceX are always in discussions with the appropriate DoD personnel.
Yes, I sure hope so. Maybe Musk should land one of the boosters on Shelby’s front lawn to drive home the point!
It will probably kill off the Delta IV heavy first.
Delta IV heavy is already scheduled to go away and be replaced by Vulcan,
Unless they can cut the cost to 1/10th of the current Delta IV cost, they should leave it on the drawing board.
Since Vulcan will serve a wide variety of lift needs (through its different variants), it needs to compete against Falcon 9 Block 5 and Falcon Heavy on cost. No small task.
Maybe we should ask whether Space X is a NASA killer.
Not only Space X but several of the other commercial firms are really on a roll to designing, developing, building and flying hardware. They are doing it relatively quickly and relatively inexpensively.
By comparison NASA cannot seem to figure out what they need to be doing. Maybe fewer spaceship drivers trying to lead us will help?
Really NASA needs to get with capitalism and competition and give the leadership to someone who can take the helm and lead. Right now the spaceship drivers are not driving anywhere; just very expensive tickets in someone else’s cab.
Further, their botched Orion and SLS debacle shows that NASA’s design and development wing is severely compromised. Keep the people responsible for this debacle as far from the future as possible.
I guess the NASA employees all grin like banshees and are so happy at work because they work in a place where they love to talk and where actions and performance don’t count?
Stop making excuses that its all Congress’s fault. Sure the decision to go with Orion and SLS was a dumb move, but why does it take several times as long and several times as much money? Who put the folks who are in charge, in charge? On what basis-did they have any of the right kinds of experience? Remember safe, simple, soon-who went wrong? Wrong kind of people in charge, obviously not leaders at all. It is time for some serious changes and it is not all up to the Administrator -they need a good house cleaning.
As someone here keeps unnecessarily reminding me, SpaceX couldn’t do what they do without NASA. They would not have Dragon and maybe not even Falcon without NASA and they certainly ain’t landing anything (gently) on Mars without NASA. They are partners. NASA is not working themselves out of a job, they’re working themselves out of the launch services business so they can go off and do other stuff.
I once wrote somewhere that FH would kill SLS, I was wrong. SLS will be killed by time, the same way time killed my toy stuffed lion. We will grow out of it.
FH can only match SLS Mark I…but by the time SLS Mark II (tentatively) flies, it and FH will both be outmatched. Military contracting has met its match. Contracts that pay not to fly will die. Five years from now Congress’ and Boeing’s favorite bird will be dead on the ground, missionless and riddled with budget cuts.
Delta Heavy is already dead, or I’d say that FH will kill it.
Actually, if that flight on the 6th is fully nominal the world will change so much so fast that we won’t recognize it enough to say, “What if”.
Commercial Crew utilizes innovative contracting, which is critical, but technically it is not that different from the Orbital Space Plane concept which was proposed in the early 2000’s to replace Shuttle. It was dropped with the beginning of Constellation.
I have to agree-you are correct, NASA has been funding Space X and NASA desperately needs at least some of the services Space X offers, simply because NASA can no longer provide these services itself. However, ISS, which drives this need, was started a long long time ago, and shutting down Shuttle instigated the need. As far as Falcon heavy and future generations of spaceships, NASA sure has not displayed they have any kind of a plan or strategy in mind. Maybe if they would formulate one we, the American taxpayer, and even Congress could decide what was needed to support that plan. Mars? Asteroids? Gateways? Moon? Cislunar infrastructure? Cheap access to orbit? Commercialization of ISS?
Commercial infrastructure in which NASA hands out money for developing new US systems? An international infrastructure in which NASA is in charge because the US is the cash cow and the rest of the world uses US money to design and build spaceships, because apparently NASA no longer knows how? I think in 1972 NASA had it figured out. Fifteen years ago the NASA management, many of whom are still with us, said that the 1972 NASA plan was all a mistake, and so they reverted to Apollo on steroids: Orion and SLS. That is the plan we are still on. Maybe commercial suppliers will rescue NASA.
Falcon Heavy may not be an SLS Block II killer, but that’s coming. By the time BFR/BFS and/or New Armstrong fly (and are reusing all or much of the vehicles), SLS will hopefully be cancelled, dead, and all the cool looking bits will be sent to museums.
Well, it’s not a “NASA killer”. The NASA I worked for didn’t build rockets, it built deep space science probes. I don’t see SpaceX impinging on that any time soon, if anything they will improve NASA’s ability to fly such missions by drastically lowering the launch costs. The entire unmanned program has used commercial launch vehicles for decades, no one ever seemed to think NASA should try and build it’s own. To me that is what is so bizarre about SLS – why do we need to build such a thing in-house? Even if SpaceX weren’t around, why wouldn’t we just pay ULA to build it? What magical technology does NASA have in 2018 that commercial launch providers don’t? This isn’t 1965 anymore. And wasn’t what we now call “technology transfer” supposed to be part of the whole NASA concept? I don’t see anyone demanding we design our own computing hardware anymore either. Can you see NASA trying to build it’s own foundry and design it’s own wafers?
“The NASA I worked for didn’t build rockets, it built deep space science probes. I don’t see SpaceX impinging on that any time soon, “
You do realize they’ve built satellite and Hall thruster factories in Seattle? That they’ll need to launch a Starlink-like constellation at Mars, with data relays, for their surface ops? Surface robotics to mine ice for ISRU and tunneling?
“Probes” become a matter of configuration and hosted sensors after that.
Grin like banshees? I just love how folks just bash NASA employees, as if we just love the status quo. Start deflecting your blame where it belongs: Congress.
NASA is the happiest place in the government, haven’t you heard? I think someone rightly pointed out that Congress went along with Apollo on steroids which morphed into SLS and Orion. And NASA said they be safe, simple and soon. Now we are going on 15 years of a 25 year development program. Is Congress slowing the effort? NASA pretty much knows their budget. Its been steady and no reason to think it will change. NASA’s goal was to fly a safe vehicle as Shuttle was terminating. Those were, or should have been the top level program requirements. There was no fuzz on it. Even the recently passed John Young called out the mistakes in making Orion to large an too heavy at PDR. This is a NASA screw up.
Buried near the end of the Competitive Commercial Space Launch Act is Section 117 under the innocent title of “Space Launch System Update”
https://www.congress.gov/bi…
What it did was to transfer the exemption the Shuttle had from competing with commercial launch systems (51 USC 70101) to the SLS allowing it to be used for any mission the NASA Administrator provides compelling justification for to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science of the House of Representatives.
In plain English this means the SLS may be used for any mission that the Administrator is able to get Congress to buy into. So even if the FH is cheaper, safer and better, the Administrator is free to ignore it, if Congress approves. Perhaps that is why Senator Nelson fears someone with the New Space connections, they may not see any “compelling reasons” to use the SLS if FH is available…
He can ignore the cost difference, but not for missions that he wants to fly before 2025. SLS Mark II will still be a paper rocket while FH (and maybe New Glenn) will be available.
SLS will fly on politics, and politics is a game of perception. The image of NASA astronauts, on the first crewed SLS mission, flying over a lunar colony put put on the surface by FH and those people pointing up at them and laughing is too powerful to ignore.
Folks here keep talking about the inefficiency of using kerosene rocket engines in space, I get that, but Saturn V burned kerosene in space and SLS will not burn a drop of liquid in hydrogen in space until it actually launches.
Let’s hope so.
If somebody wanted to pay Elon to develop an upper stage that was 5.2 meters wide to match the payload fairing and was powered by a single Raptor engine: that would probably push the Falcon Heavy payload to Low Earth Orbit to more than 70 metric tons in fully expendable mode. THAT would be your SLS killer, right there… Even if it cost half a billion to develop and test that stage over a 3 or 4 year period – that’s still peanuts compared to sunk SLS costs – not to mention cheaper than a single SLS Block 1B flight!!
But that half billion is still only a guesstimate I pulled out of a hat, and unless there were serious delays to the BFR/BFS, rather unlikely to happen. Besides; a Raptor upper stage wouldn’t strictly be needed when it would be cheaper to just stretch or widen the upper stage for more propellant and upgrade the Merlin 1D vacuum engine some more. This would still push the FH’s mass to TLI up past 20 metric tons, I reckon. Twinned launches of such a config could probably do Lunar Sortie Missions with the right, privately developed crewed Landers and Earth Return vehicles…
…Well; let’s just see how the first launch fares, eh?
No question…FH could blow up! But that’s rocket engineering (NOT rocket SCIENCE!). If you had seen as many Atlas-D series in-flight failures as I saw in the summer of 1961, you’d know that Murphy can pop up at any time.
OTOH, the cost factor CAN kill a program. Back in the ’80’s, when I was doing the design drawings on the 2nd stage of the Commercial Titan launch vehicle, I questioned how Martin-Marietta could sell those beasts at $125M a launch, when Ariane was selling theirs at ~$78M (French government subsidized, of course). MMC built four of them, sold 3 commercially, of which one was screwed up, and the fourth to NASA, which also messed up the Mars spacecraft because of a miscommunication (or none) between MMC and JPL on what measurement units were to be used! Remember, “Money talks, and male bovine excretia walks!”
Good luck, SpaceX!
And NOW they are noticing? Seriously?
I see this a lot in my business, in which I represent developer-clients as they move a parcel from unzoned to a buildable project. There are hearings along the way, public notices, but inevitably the real noise doesnt start until almost all hurdles are passed.
I dont blame them. After all, land use zoning is boring, boring, boring. But the press has been full of stories about this machine. And Mr. Musk has about the highest visibilty of many Americans.
But he is not a NASA engineer, merely a contractor and NASA didn’t put out any RFP for FH, so how dare he build it without a contract to do so.
BTW, this is not new. In the 1950’s the USAF refused to consider buying a version of the already flying Boeing 880 as a tanker because Lockheed had a study contract to determine if jet tankers were practical. How dare Boeing propose something without an RFP requesting it. Remember at the time the USAF required all its transports to be propeller aircraft or tubroprops. But some folks with common sense forced the USAF to reconsider and the KC-135 was finally accepted. Best bargain the USAF ever got and it has, and is still, serving well.
I think you’re getting your flight history confused.
Also your aircraft. What the hell is a “Boeing 880”? Are you thinking of the Dash 80 (which spawned the 707 & 717/135), or the Convair 880 (which was the rival of Boeing’s 707.)
Yes, you are correct, it was the Boeing 367-80 (Dash 80) I was thinking of. I guess I have been watching too many films on the Convair 880/990, whose market failure drove the firm to merge into General Dynamics.
The importance of the cost difference cannot be overstated. Very nearly a full order of magnitude lower cost. Money is the enabler and many a mission has died on the drawing boards because of cost.
But for commercial space, if it isn’t profitable it never leaves concept. Governments often can spend whatever they need to to do what they want, but not business plans. $1B per launch for SLS vs what $100M something for FH? For not that much difference in payload capacity for SLS Mark 1.
But the real killer is the timeline. FH (if the test launch doesn’t blow up) is slated to fly at least one more time this year for the Air Force. After that the plan is for it to fly and fly and fly and fly. SLS Mark I is a one shot, un-crewed test launch to the moon and back going up in…I think it’s 2020 now. After that, Mark II is supposed to be 2023 or probably now 2024. After that, the cost keeps it down to one launch per year…and the cost goes up if it flies less than that. Falcon and Dragon will be crew certified this year and SpaceX already has paying customers for a CREWED FH/Dragon flight, to the Moon and back, in probably 2019 or 2020. Quite a few other customers are waiting with pens in hand to sign contracts after the test launch.
So as huge as the cost advantage is for FH, as enormous as the lift capacity and deep-space efficiency is for SLS, the biggest difference is that, if it flies at all, FH will be flying for years while the builders of SLS are being paid to sit on the ground and watch.
One quibble:
Given that SpaceX has only received a token USAF funding for Falcon Heavy, whereas SLS will have had a decade of funding at around $1.8b/yr. So $18b before the first launch. With just five or so launched over the subsequent decade (and another $18b in running costs), that gives you a per-launch price of $7b each. Not $1b.
(IMO you should add some of Orion’s costs as well, since launching it on SLS increases the cost of development. So it’s probably closer to $10b/each. Plus another $8b for each capsule for a manned launch.)
Using that method of accounting is what gave the space shuttle a per flight cost of about $1.45 billion. Hideous in retrospect, but still far better than SLS will ever be able to do.
Here’s the thing:
SLSFH is a two stage rocket. This limits the ability to deliver payloads outside orbit, because those require a third, ‘kicker’ stage to take the pyload out of orbit an on to wherever. Moreover, a third stage for several reasons would be fueld by liquid hydrogen; SX doesn’t have these facilities, currently.And while anything can be developed, currently FH is not a developable architecture, meaning a third stage is problematic (Ed.: Maybe Raptor?). Lots of ideas have been kicked around but as far as I know- just a citizen-observer- nothing is funded or in developemtn for FH.
To do what SLS can do at one ‘go’ you’d need several FH launches with the added complexity of refueling a payload in space, and/or assembling a larger, inter planatary mission.
SLS is a three stage rocket that does the whole thing in one go. It is a hell of a machine.
The fact that FH is some fraction of the cost (roughly 10% of the launch cost compared to SLS, but then you add multiple launches, and the hassle of on orbit construction, to make an apples-apples comparison.
There are many other factors onsider, including integration, fairing, etc.
Is the 1st para talking about FH ? (and not SLS) ?
3rd stage for FH is a transfer booster, no?
Yes. Thanks for the correction. and yes on third stage needed for transfer.
You are mistaken, neither is the SLS 3 stages or the Falcon Heavy 2 stages. They both are 2 and a half stages. Since the side boosters on both are ignited at the same time as the center core. Then jettison before the center core completes it burn.
But, unlike SLS, the Falcon Heavy has to throttle down its core stage, from launch to booster jettison. Otherwise, its tanks would be empty at that point. That means a less optimal trajectory a hit to payload mass. (Unfortunately, the original plan to cross-feed didn’t work out.)
Let’s hope the Falcon Heavy succeeds first.
I don’t think Falcon Heavy will have any effect at all on SLS. It is entirely unsustainable to use it for exploration, but at the same time a cadence of 1 flight a year is all but guaranteed due to the entrenched and powerful interests behind it. I think that Falcon Heavy opens up the budget margin to execute a number of things that clearly wouldn’t be possible with SLS, such as installing a larger space station at the Moon and/or more quickly replacing ISS with something lower budget, executing more ambitious/frequent lunar landing missions with new, commercially-developed landers, carrying out a much larger number of scientific missions to Mars and the outer solar system, and a quicker transition towards private space stations.
Yep. SLS has a niche – one that you are familiar with – the ability to put payloads around Jupiter in one shot. FH, for all the talk, doesn’t.
Well, in one launch and without a Earth flyby. And if you mean a spacecraft big spacecraft (by the standards of unmanned missions, e.g. Europa Clipper.) If you’re willing to live with the longer cruise and the Earth flyby, a Clipper-sized spacecraft could be launched on a Falcon Heavy, fully expended, as easily on the current alternative (an Atlas V 551.) In fact, it could get a larger spacecraft to Jupiter that way. And I’m fairly sure a fully expended Falcon Heavy would cost less than a Atlas V 551.
I’ll expand on that…build Europa Clipper, put up with the slower flight time and launch it on FH. VS wait for an SLS mission (2025), then fly straight there.
Which gets there first?
Don’t get me started. When talking to other planetary scientists, every time flying Europa Clipper on SLS comes up, I remind them of Voyager. But not the one you may be thinking of.
Voyager was the name for a canceled Mars mission. It was part of the Apollo Applications Program, and was going to be a very, very big Mars lander which would launch on a Saturn V. That didn’t happen for many reasons which should sound familiar. After being canceled, it was resurrected in a smaller form as Viking.
I keep telling people that planning to fly a planetary mission on SLS is taking the risk of having the same thing happen. I think people are getting sick of hearing that.
Elon Musk has said that a lightly-loaded Dragon V2, flown out on a Falcon Heavy, can land on Europa. Anyone here (not me) qualified to do the math on that?
I probably could do enough of the math to say if it was definitely possible, possibly possible, or something that just wouldn’t work. I haven’t, but I’ve done similar calculations, and based on that, my intuition says “possibly possible.” It would require a deep space maneuver and an Earth flyby. And, in orbit around Jupiter, additional maneuvers and satellite flybys. But it might be possible. Or not. But it isn’t totally crazy. A big issue would be the radiation dose from the satellite tour. I have doubts about a Dragon 2 surviving that.
First. And Cheaper, and more reliably.
Well… Falcon Heavy can send 3.5t on a direct flight to Pluto. It can also send about 17t directly to Mars.
There may still be a niche for SLS at ~$1bn per flight when it finally becomes available (after >$20bn of taxpayer money spent until its first flight), but it’s not that big.
I don’t believe that, at least not without some proof. NASA has a web page to estimate what mass which launch vehicles can send where. It’s linked from the Discovery and New Frontiers program library page, and intended to help people putting together preliminary estimates for proposals programs.
Based on that, a Falcon Heavy can’t get anything past Jupiter on a direct trajectory. Not even the empty second stage with no payload.
Before you say SpaceX claims they can, take a closer look at what they actually say. The mass to Pluto you may find on their web site doesn’t specify how it would get there. With Earth, Jupiter and/or Saturn flybys, that mass to Pluto may very well be possible. But you said a direct trajectory and I don’t think SpaceX ever made that claim.
> SLS has a niche – one that you are familiar with – the ability to put **ONE PAYLOAD PER DECADE** around Jupiter in one shot.
> FH, for all the talk, COULD FLY HUNDREDS OF TIMES
FIXED that for you
Source?
FH, SLS, New Glenn, whatever. What actively flies, delivers hardware, and meets the mission requirements. At this moment that beast on Pad 39 is way ahead of everyone else. Next question is it sustainable? i.e. have better utilization than the Saturn V (an outstanding vehicle but not sustainable).
I haven’t looked at entire FH infrastructure, what parts of country build the major components. These districts probably have good political support, but do these congressmen/senators have the influence like Shelby?
Just the Los Angeles congressional district where the city of Hawthorne is located. Where SpaceX have their one manufacturing facility for almost all the major components for the Falcon family. SpaceX is a very vertically integrated company.
Edit: I’ve mostly given up on editing comments to correct typos, but in this case, I left out a critical “do not” which completly alters the meaning.
Well, just because they work in Hawthorne, it doesn’t mean they live there. So you can add a few more districts in the Los Angeles area. And also the 17th, 25th and 34th districts in Texas. Districts around Kennedy and Vandenberg probably do not count as pro-SpaceX; they also benefit from more traditional launch service providers.
But you’re right about the vertical integration. Some NASA programs have made a map of the country with all the places which contributed marked. A similar map for SpaceX wouldn’t exactly look crowded.
You are correct about the TX and VAFB districts. But mfwright was asking where SpaceX builds major components for the FH.
You know…as a read in this thread and ponder this, it’s starting to seem a little bit silly. We are all sitting around here comparing the costs and capabilities of two systems that aren’t going to be operational together for 5 or 6 years. If you compare today with 5 or 6 years ago (and expect the rate of change to be higher in front than in back), then all of this is just hot air. THE heavy thrower for the next several years IS FH. SLS Mark 1 is just a test flight, so it will never be an actual “thing”. FH will be a thing for FIVE YEARS before SLS Mark II ever flies. In that time, everywhere FH can fly it will and so will have a foot in the door anyway.
And I think you can magnify this. If it is 5 or 6 years today, in 5 years it might not be a lot closer based on the program’s performance to date. We might be talking easily 10 to 12 years. FH is real and on the pad today.
Wasn’t it the Augustine commission in 2007 where the program management said they’ be flying in 2011, and Sally Ride said 2017 or maybe even 2018 was a reasonable expectation? And they are now talking about a slip to 2019….
The saddest thing here is the missed opportunity cost. Spending billions developing SLS while Falcon Heavy will (hopefully) be ready to fly missions years sooner is a crying shame.
And the Planetary Science and Commercial Crew funding that was plundered for SLS…setting CCDev back several years and Planetary Science back who knows how far.
Don’t forget the crippling of the technology development program under Constellation, which has never been restored under SLS. How much potential has been lost?
Maybe, as long as it doesn’t have a catastrophic failure.
If you lose 1 Falcon 9 Heavy in a catastrophic failure, you’ve lost 11% of your total payload. If you lose 1 SLS, then you have lost 100%.
The current leadership in the Whitehouse cares little about the normal pork way of life@ NASA. SLS would most likely conclude in FY 2019 if COTS alternatives fly. NASA can buy 15 Falcon 9 heavies for the cost of one SLS launch.
It was congress that wanted SLS. Out of penis envy. They just wanted the US to have the biggest, strongest rocket. In reality rockets should be sized based upon trade studies that take account of the missions that are planned and launch frequency expected. SLS was never a good match to our actual plans, goals, and funding. http://www.robert-w-jones.com
If you remove the cost burden of SLS – stay with me – it’s actually a very good system.
The chief problems with SLS aren’t capabilities. It’s a rocket system designed to serve the country through decades of aggressive exploration.
But two things happened: Mr. Musk came along, demonstrating just how cheap, and quickly, one could assemble orbital- and planetary- class rockets, and he did this while SLS was already entrenched. Mr. Musk’s biggest contribution, though, is to re-think certain booster design issues. But that’s a different subject.
The second thing that happened? I don’t know enough about it to actually attach a label to the stunning costs associated with the rocket. I have no concept of how we spent so much money. It’s too easy to just scream ‘pork’ or ‘contributions’. Nonetheless, SLS is a very capable system.
Still, it’s good to keep these two events in mind.
A large fraction of that money goes to people’s salaries. Google tells me the median income for aerospace engineers is $108,000 per year. Adding in benefits, $125,000 to $150,000 might not be an unreasonable guess. There is overhead charged on top of that, but it mostly goes to other salaries (managers cost much more; janitors cost much less.) So, as a ballpark figure, a billion dollars a year would cover the salaries and benefits of 7500 people. For comparison, about 6000 people work at Marshall. Of course, they don’t all work on SLS, but also aren’t the only institution working on SLS.
That envelope you carry around – the one with lots of white space on the back – comes in quite handy, Dr. C.
And I know you didn’t miss my point: Mr. Musk has the same high-level engineers but accomplished a rocket with-what? 80% of the capabilities of SLS, a thing like apples and oranges? – and did it in a fraction of the time.
So that’s the real question, and again one I can’t answer: what are all of those people actually doing? Why is the delta so great? Ignoring the customer cost, I’m just talking about the COGS, the price of finished goods going out the factory door.
What the hell accounts for that gigantic cost difference?
(Answers like ‘it’s pork, what do you expect?’, or ‘the government!’, reveal a predilection from the writer and aren’t useful.)
You mean this envelope? I’m afraid I use up the white space fairly quickly.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
In any case, that’s a good question. I think part of the problem is that the answer is very low level. If you want the big picture, the big picture it’s being nickeled and dimed by a lots of small things.
I can’t speak for launch vehicles, or how SpaceX operates, but here are some issues for spacecraft that could drive staffing through the roof.
A common misunderstanding is that commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts are a big deal because they are cheap. That’s not the case, and they can be very expensive. The advantage is not needing to pay engineers to design a custom part, and (if the COTS part has flown on another mission) not having to pay for all the time (and salary) involved in testing a custom part.
In terms of testing, the actually process can be labor intensive or not, depending on how you do it. Some tests take a long time and need to be repeated for many different conditions. E.g. thermal, where we know flying a Shuttle with cold O-rings is a bad idea, but might want to know how long it takes to warm up after a long, cold night. One test might require a day to run, and you might want all sorts of permutations of how long and cold a night, and how warm it was after sunrise. One approach is to reduce the number of tests by doing computer simulations. Of course, no one would rely on simulations completely. But you can limit the number of real tests to the number required to validate the simulations. How many is enough? Well, that’s a judgement call and gets back to the practices you’re used to and comfortable with.
And, also for testing, if it’s a long test, do you need to have people watching all the time? That’s a common practice, so they can do something if the test goes wrong. But maybe it’s ok to just let the test run overnight and on its own (or with some computer programed to shut things down safely if there’s a problem.) That gets you into how many people need to support the test, and whether they need to work shifts.
Monitoring telemetry during a launch is another issue. You’ve got hundreds, if not thousands, of measurements coming in. The Apollo-era approach to launch and mission control was to have enough people looking at those numbers to keep track of all of them. Today, you can automate that. But how much? How willing are you to trust the computer and its programming? SpaceX has done that with things like range safety. The small, Japanese Epsilon launch vehicle, to quite Wikipedia, “ needs only eight people at the launch site, compared with 150 people for earlier launches.” But if you are more inclined to trusting actually people, it will drive up your staffing requirements.
And, finally, I’ve got to complain about meetings. There is a large tendency within NASA to have face-to-face meetings. In many cases, that’s things that could be covered, or covered in part, by email. Minimizing meetings and running them efficiently just isn’t something NASA seems to be good at. And, when it isn’t done right, it can be a sizable sink for employees’ time.
None of those may seem like a very big deal, but they all add up. And those are just a few illustrations (I left out machinist time saved from 3D printing of metal parts, among other things.) I can easily believe they can add up to a factor of a few in people and salaries.
I did not want to wade through 109 comments, so ignore this if it has already been said. SLS can not be used for crew unless the huge chunks of burning fuel flying out and hitting the open parachutes in a destruct, problem is fixed(SpaceRef- Ares-1). The AMOS F-9 pad explosion does not stop F-9 or Heavy from carrying Crew. That was an un-contained explosion. The video shows the explosion had no affect on the 2nd stage or payload except for flame from the kerosene that sprayed everywhere. There is plenty of time to push an abort button and the flames will blow out once Dragon goes. Dragon would be in the explosion cloud and would not have much pressure on it. It might be a good idea not to have any windows. Dragon on the outside is much like the fairing which was not damaged. The video shows the payload sitting there until the separation system fires after about 30 sec. No damage from shrapnel since the tanks did not blow but fuel came out of the over pressure ports.
So unless the SLS Crew problem is fixed, Atlas, F9 or Heavy will have to be used.,
“so ignore this if it has already been said.”
FH:
It exists. It costs 1/20 per flight what SLS does. It has flying flight heritage in the tens of flights in the last 12 months.
SLS:
Congress likes it. Lots of aerospace workers get their paycheck because of it.
I’ve been thinking and reading about this some more (I know, why won’t Bill just shut up and move on to the next topic?).
Suppose Congress won’t let NASA develop any crewed deep-space mission until SLS is available to fly them. Are there enough private and foreign interests to build up an insurmountable lead using FH and others? Will the SLS timeline and low flight cadence cause it to become an actual albatross hanging around NASA’s neck that causes then to literally miss the boat on Lunar and Martian colonies?
There will be commercial and private outposts on the Moon and Mars. One Bezos and one Musk will see to that. Will they succeed is another matter.
The political pressure and embarrassment of NASA being one-up by SpaceX or Blue will be too great. Who wants to be the one the late night comics blame for NASA’s laggard status to setup outposts on the Moon and Mars.
An actual albatross? Or a metaphorical albatross? It seems unlikely that foreign and private interests will be building lunar and Martian colonies any time soon, but if they do, it seems unlikely they would use the SLS.
This thread keeps making me think of things. Because of the differences in throw weights, designing and building payloads for interplanetary missions have to be suffering some kind of a gap right now as we bridge this uncertainty gap over heavy lifters.
Even a near-fully nominal FH test flight (I don’t expect 100% perfection), followed by ArabSat and that Air force thing, would pretty much end that uncertainty with regard to FH. SLS uncertainty would continue past EM1 because of the timeline length and instability. So future plans that won’t be complete for five years would still be built for FH.
Back to the old saying, “Unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes”. 😉
In the case of Europa Clipper, this is definitely the case. The policy I keep hearing in presentations is that the mission is baselining a SLS launch, but that nothing about the design will preclude launching on an Atlas V 551 (with Earth gravity assist) instead.
That’s actually a real pain for things like the mechanical design. A decent amount of mass can be saved by designing to the launch loads and environment of a particular launch vehicle. Telecommunications has very different requirements if you’re going a direct trajectory versus one with an Earth flyby. In those and other ways, designing to two launch options instead of one isn’t ideal.
What I read is that the difference is the lander…that it puts the mission over the top for anything but SLS Block 2. Even that the Senator backing it insists on an integrated lander for that reason.
No, the lander definitely isn’t integrated with Europa Clipper. At 13-odd tonnes, it’s way too big. It also doesn’t make sense in terms of timing. The lander is more-or-less pointless unless you can identify a location where the subsurface ocean has recently been in contact with the surface. The lander SDT report had getting there late in the Clipper’s mission. That allows Clipper to survey landing sites without having the lander hanging around and waiting in a high-radiation environment.
Well you know way more about it than I do. But that is what I read. That the lander was to be part of the orbiter, that the orbiter would survey for a while and when operators found a good landing site the lander would detach and descend like Cassini/Huygens.
Or perhaps that is just some Congressman’s vision of it.
The difference between what we have heard is a result of different plans for the Europa Clipper mission. All of the things and concepts you describe were considered at one point or another. And quite a bit of the public information on the subject is not consistent. That leads to differences in what people hear and read. I think my knowledge is more accurate because I have a professional interest and try to keep up on the latest plans. But that doesn’t mean what I’ve heard or my interpretation of it is gospel.
The New Glenn rocket, Falcon Heavy and BFR I am pretty sure will kill the SLS. The BFR in particular if it even comes close to living up to expectations will radically disrupt the entire launch industry even more than the Falcon 9 has.
Ignoring the potential of the BFR is as silly as the industry ignored the Falcon 9 disruptive effect. The general denial in the launch industry of the potential collapsing launch prices seems remarkably short sighted.
Interesting comments, but so far haven’t seen anything on WHY there is such a vast difference in price? Is it simply private industry thrift vs bloated Govt inefficiency?
Why is STS 11x more expensive than FH? Is it just Pvt Enterprise thrift vs Govt waste and inefficiency?