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SLS and Orion

Even Congressional Supporters Are Nervous About SLS

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 1, 2018
Filed under ,

Culberson urges NASA contractors to press forward, Houston Chronicle
“[Rep. John] Culberson also queried Orbital ATK on whether the SLS rocket boosters are reusable. Both Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are developing reusable rocket components, with Blue Origin’s latest test flight occurring Sunday in West Texas. It flew the New Shepard, being designed for space tourism, for its eighth test. Both the spacecraft and booster had flown before. “If Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are successful in launching rocket bodies and engines four to 10 times, at least, that changes the whole equation,” Culberson said. The SLS engines are not designed to be reused, said Brian Duffy, Orbital ATK vice president for NASA Programs.”

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

55 responses to “Even Congressional Supporters Are Nervous About SLS”

  1. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    If only those in charge would take an honest look in the mirror and admit their mistakes. Times have changed time to evolve.
    Maybe the new administator and his team will shake the agency out of their malaise. First indication will be who becomes JSC center director, a stay the course old guard manager or a leader to change things up.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      I’ve been told that it would be political suicide for a NASA Administrator to openly oppose SLS. So, I doubt that will happen, at least not out in the open. I seriously doubt it would happen during testimony to Congress, which would seem to be the logical place to make such a statement so that it goes into the public record.

      • Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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        If you come up with a plan on the new work that will flow through msfc like propellant depots, science payload for surface ops, Landers and in space advanced propulsion to trade off with SLS going away you can make a case. But yeah if you just cancel without a concrete plan (not spend 5 years on random tech) the kneelers reaction will be killing msfc loss of jobs and the Alabama mafia will riot.

        • fcrary says:
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          It’s more difficult than that. The new work has to require (or use) the existing facilities. It also needs to utilize the same skills, unless you want to retrain the workforce, make a case doing so rather going somewhere else, and convince the workforce that they _want_ to be retrained for a different job.

      • Michael Halpern says:
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        Of course it could also take a lot of SLS supporters in Congress out, that kind of bad publicity will be a shot to the head of SLS.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          I would hope so, but I also would not underestimate the support from those “key states” where the bulk of the SLS spending is occurring. Those are jobs that those states care about.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        By “I’ve been told”, do you mean it’s common knowledge, or do you have some kind of authoritative source in mind?

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          I’ve been told in Disqus comments by other Disqus posters who believe that it is common knowledge. No “authoritative source”.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      That’s very, very difficult, and for lots of reasons, including a range of penalties.

      But it is worthwhile, as the medical profession is learning, and as aviation has learned; our aviation safety record is a direct result of policies and procedures used during the investigation of any “mishap”.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      “honest look in the mirror and admit their mistakes”

      Hard thing to do. Even (especially?) on a personal level.

  2. fcrary says:
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    I really want to see what SpaceX can get out of the Falcon 9 Block 5. With the Block 4, they have reflown them once and then retired or expended them. Two flights per core isn’t a huge savings from reuse. For they are talking about ten flights without major maintenance and more beyond that. I’d like to see how close that expectation is to reality.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Agreed. In the past they’ve said 10 flights without major maintenance. With maintenance once every 10 flights they hope to get 100 flights out of each booster. If they can achieve that level of reuse, it would be huge. It would free up a lot of production capacity which could shift to making upper stages. This would enable a very impressive flight cadence.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        I have a feeling Musk would be retiring the Falcon line before they have to worry about 100 launches.

        • Michael Halpern says:
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          There is a chance it will remain in reduced service for a while even after it ceases to be a workhorse, makes sense for customers that want the launch to themselves and for deep space missions.

          • Paul451 says:
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            If BFR comes even remotely close to its intended launch price (and SpaceX hasn’t been bad at predicting their launch prices, I’ve yet to see an early figure even double, for example) then a full BFR launch will be cheaper than an F9 launch. So no, SpaceX isn’t going to keep Falcon around for one minute longer than it takes to get BFR flight-proven.

            If someone wants to pay the full $10-30 million for their own BFR launch, why would SpaceX object any more than they did to the equally wasteful JASON 3 launch? There’s no reason to keep a $60m launcher around.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            they need BFR to become accepted by the industry and a full BFR stack costs est $335m to build, if they need to send something where it wont come back, FH is a better choice, they might stop making new first stages, but with at least 10 uses each, keeping a few around for occasional use particularly until BFR gets crew rated, isn’t a bad idea

          • Paul451 says:
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            [Sorry for the delayed reply. For some reason, Disqus doesn’t consistently send email notifications for replies on NasaWatch. It only happens on NW. No idea why.]

            The issue is launch price, not construction cost. If it costs customers $50-60m to ride F9, ~$100m to ride FH, and say $30m (**) to ride BFR, what possible reason would a customer have to use Falcon? You might spend, say, three times more than you need to, to have a BFR all to yourself, but why would you spend even more to launch on a smaller rocket?

            Yes, there will be some overlap during certification, but SpaceX would not want to keep the Falcon lines or operational sites open one second longer than necessary.

            ** (Musk said $10m. And they’ve never even doubled their early projected prices on F1, F9 & FH, so saying $30m, a 300% bump, seems pretty conservative.)

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            I use disqus’s site directly, that helps. as for reasons to use falcon, other than certification, (not counting possible rtgs or reactors, cert for that takes ages) there is availability of the rocket, (early on during certification timeframe most likely) and BEO needs where you need more of the rocket and some or all will be expended, there is also when BFR isn’t certified until late in program development, and freeing up warehouse space. I dont think they will continue to make new first stages any more than they have to, outside of perhaps CCP depending on timeframe, and price may change on falcon, they just have no reason to lower it right now.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            Another thing is payloads going to unusual orbits SpaxeX may opt to use F9 for,

          • Paul451 says:
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            I assume you mean, using F9 for orbits SpaceX didn’t want to use BFR for?

            If so, again if you are willing to pay $60m for your own F9 mission, you could buy more than one dedicated BFR. Not only no ride-share, you could do a refuelling launch.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            assume that spacex charges by kg for orbital altitude rather than by vehicle

          • Paul451 says:
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            assume that spacex charges by kg for orbital altitude rather than by vehicle

            They don’t and I suspect they won’t, but if they did, then that makes BFR even cheaper. It’s per-kg rate will be a tiny fraction of F9’s.

            BFR is a frieght ship to Falcon 9’s cargo plane

            They analogy doesn’t work. Planes have a speed advantage. BFR/F9 fly to the same “port” at the same speed. They are just a big low-cost ship and a small expensive ship. You don’t hire a small expensive ship to carry a regular payload to a well-serviced bulk-cargo port. You might hire a specialty ship with unique properties, but F9 is a general cargo ship.

            As I said, for the price of an F9 launch, you could rent out the entire BFR for your payload, plus a refuelling launch. For the price of FH, you could hire an entire BFR, plus several refuelling launches. (Hell, with BFR you could send technicians on the flight along with the payload, just in case.)

            I can’t see a single function or destination where BFR wouldn’t be the cheapest and best option. Unless it doesn’t work. If it comes even close to what’s promised, it will own the launch market.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            What’s a more cost effective way to get rid of old f9 cores, scrap them or fly them?

          • Paul451 says:
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            If the BFR operations costs is less than the F9 upper-stage manufacturing cost, then scrapping them.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            Depends on how far they get with S2 recovery, another thing to consider is Mars plans may require some high risk prospecting and validation missions, they don’t want to have to abandon a BFS if resources and such are insufficient, there’s also going to be people who are nervous about BFR, and so on, other missions like say a follow up to New Horizons will want a fully expendable Falcon Heavy, they are expecting to build 30-50 block 5 cores Elon is estimating 300 flights before BFR mostly replaces it, let’s call that 300 the low estimate and say it’s around 400, seeing as with refurbishment they think they could get 100 flights out of block 5s it really wouldn’t take much to hang on to a few cores for a few years of operational overlap sure they will try to keep that overlap as small as possible but another thing to remember is that the biggest limiting factor on how far they can lower Block 5 prices is investment into BFR and Starlink, if that wasn’t a problem it could probably cost only a little more than a BFR launch anyways

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            Think about it like this, BFR is a frieght ship to Falcon 9’s cargo plane

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          Musk would certainly like to, but his timelines are always aspirational. So, until BFR/BFS is fully debugged and the flight rate is sufficient, I’d imagine that Falcon will continue to be the workhorse of the SpaceX fleet.

        • fcrary says:
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          I think that’s a safe bet. I couldn’t find their current production rate, but they’ve built 12 to 18 cores per year in the past. If they really can get 100 flights out of each one, that would mean between one or two thousand launches from a single year’s production. Something like forty years of launches at their current flight rate (and still over a decade if they cornered the entire world market.)

          Of course, some launches will require expending a core (before its 100th flight…) and there will be losses from accidents. And NASA may insist on cores which haven’t been flight tested for crew launches. I also don’t believe they extrapolate from two cycles to a hundred. I’ll believe that when I see it. But even if they can only manage ten cycles, that’s over ten years of operations at the current rate from one year of production. Even if BFR ends up being a decade behind schedule, they could cover it with a few years of overproduction.

  3. Bill Housley says:
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    Now? Congress is talking about reusability now? At the 11 hour of development and construction? After stripping dollars from reusable COTS and CCDev project development for almost a decade to throw them down the non-reusable SLS/Orion money pit?

    SLS/Orion are likely less safe than they might have been because of changes and schedule impatience and uncertain directions from Congress as it is…NOW Congress asks if some of its components are reusable! As of they just NOW noticed that reusability is a thing! Do they even care if that bird ever flies?

    Please, Culberson…just shut the heck up.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      IMHO, SLS been outpaced by developments in reusability in the commercial sector. SLS will be obsolete before its first test flight.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Yeah! It’s almost like somebody hasn’t been paying attention!

  4. Robert Jones says:
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    Congress was THE reason SLS exists. http://www.robert-w-jones.com

  5. SpaceHoosier says:
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    Perhaps this is a way for congress critters to move the goal posts once again and ask for reusable SLS engines. That’s a TON of new pork for the home front. At some point, maybe after BFR first flights, someone has to recognize the SLS boondoggle for what it is and stop throwing good money after bad and refocus taxpayer resources to actual space science missions and to lending support to commercial space launch services, not trying to compete with it. That time has past.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      Gosh why stop there? Call for a reusable 1st stage… that should keep the pork flowing for another two decades…

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, after turning the reusable engines they started with into disposable engines they could then turn them into reusable engines. The engineering equivalent of digging a hole and then filling it up again…

    • fcrary says:
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      I wouldn’t count on it, at least not from Mr. Culberson. He’s best known for putting money into the Europa Clipper mission (and lander studies.) While his district includes Houston suburbs, Johnson Space Center isn’t getting any money worth mentioning for Europa. There are a whole bunch of things I disagree with him about, but I can’t honestly accuse him of cynically funneling money into his own district.

  6. jski says:
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    Exactly.

    Let’s simply pay SpaceX and Blue Origin to take us to the Moon so Bigelow (or some other commercial provider) can build a habitat for a lunar base.

    All NASA need do is sign the checks.

    • jamesmuncy says:
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      That’s not fair. NASA is not one organization nor made up of one kind of people. There are many engineers and scientists inside NASA that want to partner with industry and really help them achieve things. Others want to tell contractors to advise them what to instruct them (the same people) to do. Commercial lunar will require a lot of the former… not so many of the latter.

  7. james w barnard says:
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    Now he’s asking about recovering the 5 or 5-1/2 segment SRB’s (not sure just which they are)? We needed 3 136ft diameter nylon ribbon main chutes, plus a drogue chute to orient the 4-segment Shuttle SRB’s tail-first before deployment of the mains. Depending on the flight plan, it would require either larger mains or a fourth to keep water-impact to about 60mph, faster than which you sustain greater damage to the aft skirts of the boosters. You might be able to use Kevlar ribbons for increased strength and reduced weight…maybe. Doubtless, the boosters would impact farther downrange, requiring two recovery ships similar to, but probably larger than Liberty Star and Freedom Star, and a farther distance to sail back to “Port Carnivorous”. Given the VERY slow launch pace, I seriously doubt the cost savings would be worth the effort, not to mention the time and funds required to develop and test the New SRB Decelerator Subsystem (SRB/DSS), plus the refurbishment facilities for the chutes, etc. If these were liquid boosters, recovery might be effected the way SpaceX recovers their boosters! A “better” idea would be to recover the first stage. That is, if this whole SLS thing were practicable to begin with.
    Mr. Congressman Culberson, why not scrap the whole beast and hire SpaceX, Blue Origin, et al to fly payloads to LEO, the Moon, Mars and beyond?
    Ad LEO! AD LUNA! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Don’t forget that even if it’s possible, adding a bunch of mass to the 5 segment SRBs for recovery reduces the payload of SLS. It’s not a one to one trade, since the boosters drop off early in the flight, but it would be significant.

      • james w barnard says:
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        IIRC (It has been a number of year…36 years since I worked on the program), each 136 ft. dia. main chute weighed about 2,000 lbs. That was at least 6,000 lbs per booster, not counting the forward deck fittings used to attach the main chute risers to the booster. Can’t recall their mass, but they were made from a hefty piece of Corrosion Resistant Steel.
        But, didn’t Boeing say the SLS will be the most powerful rocket? Shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Really worthwhile for boosters that would probably be re-flown once every other flight or about every other year, wouldn’t it? (Sarcasm mode off.)
        SRB’s turn me off…because you can’t turn them off if an anomaly is detected. Even in those solid rocket systems that thrust terminate toward the end of their propulsion run, you can’t blow the termination ports until they are uncovered by burning down the propellant grain.
        Please, Congress and NASA, please terminate this whole SLS beast!

  8. DougSpace says:
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    Do y’all see a tipping point at which even the decision-makers have to acknowledge that the SLS doesn’t make sense when the BFR (BFB-BFS) reaches some point of development? If yes, where do you think that point would be? The first BSF hop? BFS poking out into space? BFS re-entering from LEO & successfully landing? BFB-BFS mission with BFS landing after lunar velocity re-entry? ??? I’m not saying that the decision-makers would want to switch horses but that they are being forced to change else they would be hammered by the media as having no reason but pork.

    • fcrary says:
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      Even when (and if) BRF is in regular operation, someone could still say we need redundant capabilities. People will definitely say that if there is ever a BFR accident. And we’re talking about flight rates that almost guarantee an accident at some point. Now, if we had BFR and New Glenn in operation, and no funded payloads that actually need more then fifty or so tonnes to Low Earth Orbit, then SLS would really start being indefensible.

      • DougSpace says:
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        Yes, I could see that argument being made. Funny thing is that it doesn’t work the other way. Our leaders seem fine with SLS and no redundancy but the moment a much more cost-effective and capable alternative comes along, oh, then we need an expensive, less capable, redundancy. My guess is that the hue and cry would be so great that the SLS wouldn’t survive that point.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          I’m hoping that by the time BFR/BFS is flying that New Glenn will be flying and development will have started on New Armstrong. New Armstrong would provide the sort of redundancy you’re talking about, IMHO.

          • Paul451 says:
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            It’s useless to talk about New Armstrong until BO releases more than the name. For all we know, it won’t be a launcher, it’ll be a dedicated LEO-Luna ferry, built from modules launched by NG and refuelled, crewed, and resupplied by NG.

    • Fred Willett says:
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      Seriously I think the tipping point was FH flying. But congress moves at a snails pace even when it’s hurrying. The grumbling has begun. By years end FH will have flown twice more. The grumbling will grow to a growl, then a roar when BFS shows some actual hardware, then SLS dies.

      • DougSpace says:
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        Neither Congress, the Administration, NASA, nor even SpaceX is even talking about how FH could be used as a replacement for the SLS. FH’s capability including its underperforming upper stage just doesn’t make it a replacement vehicle for either the Moon or Mars. So I see no evidence that the FH launch was a tipping point for the SLS. But the BFR would clearly be more capable than the SLS and so my question about when the BFR reaches that tipping point.

        • Paul451 says:
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          FH’s capability including its underperforming upper stage just doesn’t make it a replacement vehicle

          F9 would make a replacement vehicle for SLS. Or Atlas V. Or any existing medium-scale launcher. This isn’t SpaceX fanboi-ism. We’ve known this from NASA’s own internal studies back during Constellation, back when Falcon was just a twinkle in Elon’s eye.

          Traditional commercial medium-lift plus refuelling is superior to SLS. Low-cost commercial heavy-lift plus refuelling eclipses anything that SLS could hope to achieve by an order-of-magnitude.

    • Synthguy says:
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      I think once BFR-BFS is flying regularly, hauling cargo and people into LEO on a daily basis, being reused over and over, and at minimal cost – and SLS is still yet to fly. That’s when Congress must say to NASA, ‘enough is enough’. If they don’t, then when BFR/BFS and New Glenn are taking people and payload to the Moon, and SLS is yet to fly – or maybe has a test flight once every few years, at huge cost and with huge waste – then Congress has an obligation to cancel SLS-Orion.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        As far as I know, the gargantuan dimensions of the BFR cargo hold, and the upper limit on mass, remain as huge obstacles.

        FH takes 20 tons to LEO. BFR is 165 tons to LEO. These numbers are moving targets to be sure. One BFR = 8 FH.

        But still: where’s the cargo? And what is the cargo?

        Elon’s got something in mind, and it is something very different from the current rocket landscape. He’s going to abandon the incredibly successful F9; he’s not clear on the future of FH; and he’s hell bent on BFR.

        So what does the lift industry do, after F9 captures, and then leaves, the market?

        • fcrary says:
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          That’s a good question. I can see a factor of two or three growth in spacecraft mass, by making the spacecraft themselves as capable but less highly optimized. That would cut costs dramatically and would be justified if the launch costs went down dramatically. But that’s not a factor of eight. Maybe a factor of two or three in demand from reducing reliability (given lower launch costs to fly replacements.)

          But Arianespace hasn’t had a positive experience with a big launch vehicle (Ariane 5) which needs to co-manafest multiple payloads to be viable. I’m not sure how well it will go if SpaceX needs three or four spacecraft per BFR launch. (The counter argument is they can fly half-empty if the cost per flight is low enough, but I’m not convinced of operational costs until something is actually in operation.)

          Or, possible, someone else could buy the blueprints from SpaceX, build some new facilities, and start flying Falcon 9s themselves. I could see that attracting investors. A proven product being abandoned by the nutcase head of the company who developed it. Especially after Mr. Musk’s recent Tesla-related foot-in-mouth incident, convincing potential investors he’s making a mistake with Falcon 9 wouldn’t be too hard. I think you could build a business plan around that.

          • Paul451 says:
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            Unless BFR is more expensive than Falcon 9, there’s absolutely no reason to fly something with an expendable upper-stage. (Excluding BEO boost-stages, obviously.)

            If the payload market doesn’t expand to utilise BFS-cargo’s capacity, then they’ll just fly the manned version. Throw the one or two GEO-sats into GTO and then brake into LEO for a week or three for paying passengers to do whatever they want. If the payload(s) pay the operational costs, the passengers are pure gravy.

            Musk needs to build a manned version for his Mars ambitions anyway. So it’s no added burden for the company.