Is It Time For NASA To Re-Brand SLS?
Keith’s note: Repeating Apollo would be a mistake, But evoking the excitement of that era would not be incorrect.
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Keith’s note: Repeating Apollo would be a mistake, But evoking the excitement of that era would not be incorrect.
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I really don’t like this idea. A turd by any other name is still a turd.
Orion was a mistake from the start. A retro, nonreusable ‘capsule’ in the age of flyback reusable boosters. When they went with the ESA ATV derivation option that meant it could no longer even perform a lunar mission like Apollo’s, so I guess if all they want to do is give astronauts a meaningless ride to nowhere, is perfectly suitable. SLS also likely will have no role. Both Orion and SLS are far too expensive, far too limited in capability, not to mention the slow schedule they are on means NASA is going no place fast and spending lots of my taxpayer money while they are at it. How did NASA management fall so far so fast? It was tragic when Administrator Griffin described the mission as ‘Apollo on Steroids’. Sure Apollo was successful at meeting Kennedy’s goal but once the goal was met, no one needed another Apollo. Why further compound the mistake by confusing the public between the success of Apollo Saturn with the failure that is Orion SLS?
When thinking about how the decisions of Dr. Griffin have steered NASA into a dead end I am wondering if you could consider any of the NASA Administrators with science/engineering degrees were really successful in terms of managing NASA.
Remember, it was under Dr. Paine that the last three Apollo missions were cut and the decision was made to pursue the Space Shuttle instead of a Moon Base. It was also under his Administrator the Shuttle went from being a true reusable TSTO to being a rebuildable launch system. Perhaps if he had more knowledge of politics and how decision are made in a political environment both mistakes could have been avoided.
While I don’t disagree with your general implied point (in fact I agree with it strongly), your example of the shuttle design evolution is a poor one to support it. The shuttle ‘devolved’ from TSTO to the 1.5-stage configuration for multiple reasons and a big giant collective one alongside the political/financial ones was the array of serious technical challenges that appeared as the TSTO configurations underwent further study. Sure, they all looked great in the pictures and the animations, but it was the engineering itself, and not ‘engineering or scientific management’, that steered the choices first toward the drop tank and then toward the strap-on side boosters.
The shuttle program is ripe for re-imaginings down various alternate history pathways and we each have our favorite, but the choices made under Admin Paine’s purview involved items that were much more ‘hard science’ than the surrounding politics could have dictated. And technical or political, the money just wasn’t going to be made available in the then-current administration to push broadly enough across the full technology front that might—repeat, might—have achieved a full TSTO reusable capability in the 1970s.
Paine (& Mueller, and Fletcher) got us the first (albeit limited & 1st-cycle) element of a still-reasonable over-all architecture (the Integrated Program Plan) for moving outward into the solar system. Other factors (and they have been legion, across decades) have stifled the implementation of the remainder of that architecture. [Paine himself headed the ill-timed commission that sought to re-launch (essentially) the IPP.] Many felt that the VSE might be the effort that would finally pick up the IPP torch…but, nope, speaking of Dr. Griffin.
In other guise, across various agencies & entities, perhaps we’re about to try again. Or not.
While I agree with your presentation of how we arrived at the shuttle’s stage and a half design with SRBs and a drop tank, I disagree with one tiny bit. You describe the resulting space shuttle as, “first (albeit limited & 1st-cycle) element of a still-reasonable over-all architecture”. I disagree with this because the shuttle we got flew far too infrequently and cost far too much to be a useful component of an overall architecture. A vehicle that flies about half a dozen times per year at about $1.5 billion per flight (total program cost divided by total number of flights) is not at all a very useful part of an overall architecture.
And unfortunately, the space shuttle remained “limited and first cycle” throughout its entire lifetime. There were small upgrades and tweaks to make it safer and improve performance, but we never saw a shuttle mark II materialize. The costs of running the program were so high as to preclude any serious work on a second generation design.
I say this after having watched the replay of the 16th launch by SpaceX this year which also marks its 29th successful recovery of a Falcon first stage/booster. We’re finally witnessing the beginnings of low cost access to space. Of course SpaceX wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that first commercial cargo contract they received from NASA, so kudos to NASA for helping to bring this about.
Jeff,
I do not disagree with anything you say. I was focused more on the too-oft-repeated lost opportunities to get on with the IPP beyond LEO access. Shuttle was a first and consequently pioneering stab at launching (sorry) the start of a sustainable IPP that has yet to unfold beyond step 1. Many, many factors shaped the shuttle’s less-than-ideal implementation and even perhaps more factors (including its own poor economics) inhibited its exploitation and—more important (as you point out)—its evolution. Sigh. Shuttle, flaws included, taught many lessons. Sadly, few students paid attention, and even fewer acted on what they had learned.
IPP (defined by numerous wise guiding principles) may now finally unfold on the shoulders of a new paradigm as other forces drive the advance of operational capabilities. We shall see.
Which is exactly why the focus should have been on using the existing launch vehicle, supported perhaps by smaller ELV to build a Moon base instead of trying to do a space shuttle.
History is replete with should-have-beens. They make great fodder for long-winded discussions while sitting on bar stools.
The tides of the time—political, technical, economic, popular—washed NASA in the direction it went then. The likelihoods of most if not all alternate histories offered up today, as glittery as they may appear with presentism-colored glasses, were slim at that time. There is no way to prove the theoretical ‘total betterness’ of any of them and so they serve mostly to create false nostalgia for fictional history.
Nixon made that choice. Not Paine.
Remember, a key element of the job of the NASA Administrator is to assist the President in making the right choice in terms of space policy.
The only major mistakes of Orion was making it an enormous 5 meters in diameter – the capsule weighs a ridiculous 22,000 pounds at splashdown. Closer to Apollo sized 4 meters would have been far more sensible. And it’s propellant load is only half that of Apollo CSM’s 18 tons – a disappointing lack of delta-vee for proper lunar or deep space missions. At this point, Dragon 2 and Starliner are not suitable for deep space missions so Orion is basically the only game in town… 🙁
That might not be correct. The diameter was based on the pressurized volume they wanted for long(ish) duration missions. They could have gone with a Soyuz/Shenzhou configuration. That puts extra pressurized volume in a separate, orbital module which is not returned to Earth. I think that approach has some drawbacks, but it is a way to get a decent amount of work space on orbit while keeping the reentry capsule relatively small.
The Starliner is the same size and launches on an Atlas. While the service module accounts for some of the difference the spacecraft mass is considerably higher for the Orion. The Starliner or Dragon could rendezvous in LEO with a hab/service module launched separately. This would require two launches but allow lunar misisons with existing launch vehicles.
The Orion is perfectly size so that no non-heavy version EELV class launcher can be compatible due to launcher lift capacity.
It also meant that the Orion stack’s Delta-V will not be that great since it is more or less the STS OMS engine (less powerful AJ-10 derivative) propelling a heavier stack than the Apollo stack that have the more powerful Apollo SPS AJ-10 derivative with Aerozine 50.
The Dragon 2 and Starliner might be able to do missions to the Moon if they acquire a capable propulsion module which the Orion is also lacking. Since in the Constellation plans the Altair lander was supposed to be the propulsion module.
It’s the President’s job to name stuff. NASA won’t do it because they’re too boring. The Senate won’t do it because they wouldn’t be able to a agree on anything…and cool names for stuff might diminish public voew of their importance.
Also, a rebtand would cost money. SLS already costs too much.
Yep. They’d hire a consultant to design the new logos, too.
$$BFR
That could work. Rename SLS as “Branding which Fools Recognition” or BFR. I wonder of SpaceX ever filed for or could claim a trademark on the acronym BFR…
Please don’t get Musk started on new names for a vehicle class or Individual vehicles. We have enough trouble following the nomenclature for each vehicle iteration as it is.
Over in the political realm, our current Speaker of the House has been described as (paraphrasing here) ” a stupid guy’s picture of what a smart guy looks like.”
Doesn’t that describe SLS? A dumb guys view of what a modern rocket looks like?
The Saturn family of rockets was so successful and specifically the Saturn V was so successful, the idea of renaming SLS, a rocket that has zero relationship to the Saturns, is a bad idea because ultimately I think we will see it prove to be totally unsuccessful, far too expensive, and really unneeded if the other commercial suppliers come along on a reasonable schedule. It it proves an unsuccessful waste, which it appears to be, then you bring the entire name down.
If they funded and fielded a 130 metric ton or better version of SLS, this would still barely match the Saturn V of Apollo 17 era! An SLS with hydrocarbon boosters and an upper stage with higher thrust engines than the proposed RL-10 legacy engines could get about 150 metric tons into space: about what Elon Musk hopes for his fully reusable BFR system – which admittedly hasn’t flown yet and might not for years to come.
If Musk’s Falcon Heavy had a modest upper stage upgrade, it would match the payload of the anemic Block 1 SLS with it’s recycled Delta IV upper stage and would kick that Block 1’s butt royally, cost wise. They should’ve been building the most powerful version of SLS they could from day one – or don’t build it at all. With 5x RS-25 engines on the corestage (as originally intended) reusable hydrocarbon boosters and a higher thrust, larger propellant load upper stage: SLS could have been powerful enough to launch more than 50 metric tons at Mars in a single launch. Such a booster could have done Zubrin’s ‘Mars Direct’ missions easily, in twinned launches.
Or with a more bloated, NASA-style ‘Semi-Direct’, larger expeditions done with a mere 4x launches per Mars launch window. Also: combining 150 metric ton lifting power with Propellant Depots and ISRU would have given the U.S. formidable exploration capabilities. As would Solar Electric and Nuclear Electric propulsion buses. But there aint no money for such things: not when it’s deemed more important to chuck away billions of dollars of hardware per each heavy lift launch… 🙁
Just another example of a breakthrough being made by an outsider because they didn’t know it was impossible to do it. Of course the Wright Brothers are another, especially after the Astronomer Simon Newcomb proved with mathematics it was impossible. That was why the press didn’t believe them until 1908, when after they received the patents rights they showed the world it was possible to fly ?
This is also why a free market society advances faster than one that is centrally controlled, because there is no committee of experts you have to convince to get approval to do something. Instead you are free to just try it.
SLS:
SLow Spaceship
Seems Like Sloppiness
Suck Less Someday
Superexpensive Life for Senators
Spend Like Sloths
Should Launch Someday
Specfics Lacking Substance
SLS – Shelby Launch System ?
Okay, ya, let’s rebrand it…
Hog.
Pig.
Hippo.
Kleenex (throwaway with each use).
It’d be fun to make grasping yet appropriate acronyms out of those. 😉
I like Hog. Or maybe Ares V.
The moniker “Senatorial Launch System” is going to be quite hard to washed off the SLS.
A more appropriate name for the SLS is Typhon.
The problem is that the SLS has worst performance and styling. Only 130 tons to LEO versus 150 tons, and it needs those ugly and polluting SRBs. It’s like going from the DC-3 to the Fokker Tri-motor.
BTW the new VW Beetle wasn’t that successful in the American market with production in Mexico for export to the USA ending after only 14 years (1997-2011) with total production being only around a million units. However VW is still producing it in Vietnam for sale in Vietnam. The original Beetle by contrast was in production from 1938-2002 with over 21 million being produced globally.
Slight nit. In apple to apple comparison. It is 130 tonnes** for SLS block 2 versus 250 tonnes for the BFR without recovering BFS (leaving it in orbit).
** – there are doubts that the Block 2 could lifted 130 tonnes to LEO without a fifth RS-25 and be reduce to about 115 tonnes to LEO. With LEO being 300 km off the Earth. A lot of the official specifications for SLS orbital performance is for a reference orbit of 100 km altitude.
Are you sure about the reference orbit being 100 km altitude? An orbit that low would decay in only a few orbits and reenter. I can’t find numbers for anything lower than 150 km, with a lifetime of three days. I’ve heard plenty of exaggerated statements about ISS, but calling 100 km an orbital altitude isn’t even vaguely credible.
Oops, I mis-recall. It was almost 100 miles altitude (about 160 km) according to the NASA SLS web page.
I’ll take your word for it. I can’t find those numbers on the NASA web page. (It’s amazing how many “fact sheets” don’t actually contain many numbers.) But that still sounds very low. I doubt anything at 160 km would stay up for a week. I wish it could, since that’s in the upper ignorosphere, and I’d like to get more measurements there…
I think I understand what’s going on, and why they are talking about such a low altitude. I think it isn’t too different from the Saturn V launches of lunar missions. They went into a very low (170 to 190 km) parking orbit, for just a few hours. That was to do post-launch system checks before the trans-lunar injection burn. Since all the planned SLS launches are lunar, they may be planning something similar and talking about a 160 km altitude orbit may not be as strange as I originally thought.
But that makes a mess of comparisons between SLS, Falcon Heavy, BFR, etc. Falcon Heavy and BFR are intended for LEO as a final destination (or at least a reasonably long stay there, e.g. over a week for tanking and refueling.) As you noted, their numbers are probably for 300 km or so.
It is as you stated. It is a low less than 100 mile parking orbit before the TLI burn.
The NASA web page with title “The Great Escape: SLS Provides Power for Missions to the Moon” is in the following link. It described the less than 100 miles LEO in the second paragraph after the expanded view diagram of the SLS Block 1.
https://www.nasa.gov/explor…
Thanks. I was trying to find information about payload to orbit by following links to “SLS Lift Capability” and similar things. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Seriously, this does make me wonder if SLS actually has a LEO payload capability. The parking orbit is only useful if the payload is on the way to another destination. What about actually putting a really big payload (like a single unit, pre-assembled space station) into a 400 km altitude orbit?
If the SLS second stage is designed as (bottom to top) rocket, big fully-fueled tank, ~30-50 tonne payload, could it fly with a partially fueled tank and a ~100 tonne payload? The mechanical loads and dynamics would be very different.
Of course the SLS have a payload capacity at 400 km altitude LEO. For SLS Block 1, it is just less than the frequently quoted 95 tonnes to LEO* by NASA. Estimating it will be somewhere between 65 and 75 tonnes depending on what NASA included as part of the payload mass.
No wonder NASA is is touting 95 tonnes for the SLS Block 1 at the parking orbit altitude. It really looks bad in comparison to the Falcon Heavy’s 63.8 tonnes LEO with the estimated 65 to 75 LEO for the SLS Block 1. Just that each SLS flight costs about 12+ times ($1.5B+) more than a fully expended Falcon Heavy flight. If you included an Orion capsule with the SLS than that’s at least $2.5B per flight.
LEO* as stated by NASA = 160 km
Let me put that another way, does SLS have a useful payload capability to something like a 400 km orbit? It could clearly get 30 or so tonnes there, but that doesn’t excite me.
Specifically, the upper stage would require sufficient mechanical structure to support the LEO payload during launch. That’s different from, and requires more mass that, supporting the same loads in terms of more fuel in its tank and a smaller payload on top. In addition, a significantly larger payload mass implies a larger payload volume as well. If the SLS payload fairing sized for a lunar-sized, ~30 tonne payload or a LEO-sized, ~70 tonne payload? If they are designing for the planned missions, they are designing for the smaller, lunar-sized payloads. That may mean the mechanical design isn’t up to handling as much mass to LEO (usable, final orbit LEO) as you might expect.
Without a stronger upper stage and more capable boosters: SLS is going to struggle to lift less than 130 metric tons to low Earth orbit per expendable vehicle. That fact – combined with it’s low projected flight rate of two per year at best – is the systems achilles heel. In other words; enormous fixed costs to launch less than 250 metric tons into space, per calendar year at best-case scenario flight rates. The world’s fleet of Commercial AND government launchers could greatly exceed this tonnage for a fraction of the SLS’s fixed infrastructure costs AND costs-per-launch. It is a dinosaur before it ever even flies.
Unless a better than 130 metric tons per launch version could be fielded, that launched as many times as Shuttle did per year – 4 to 6 times per annum – then the $1.5-to-$2 billion per launch costs (depending on who you talk to) is simply never going to be worth it!! 🙁 🙁 (double sad emojis)
Actual flight rate won’t be more than once per year. Look at the recent RFI from NASA to Aerojet Rocketyne for the new build RS-25E engines which specifies a delivery rate of four per year.
SLS is a dismal failure and it hasn’t even launched yet.
In a sick way, that may be part of the point. A once in a year event gets more press coverage than something that happens every couple of weeks. If a goal is to impress and inspire, one really big rocket launch per year could do a better job than 25 smaller launches collectively putting more mass into orbit.
With the advent of SpaceX life at the Cape has changed from waiting for the spectacle of a launch a few times a year to getting woken up by an unexpected noise and going back to sleep. The most spectacular proof of success is the fact that it is routine.
Why does NASA thinks it needs spectacle? DOE supported research at Argonne, Fermilab and CERN has been going on for decades without any attempt to capture public interest with spectacle, and NIH gets occasional notice with no acronyms either.
Possibly due to NASA’s origins. I know what the charter says, but in reality, NASA was set up to show that US technology was not behind the Soviets’. And to do so visibly. We also hear all sorts of people saying they were inspired by Apollo and the space program and that’s why they majored in some sort of science or engineering. It’s now almost an expectation that NASA should do things to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. All that implies doing things which are spectacular and which get people’s attention.
In contract, CERN and NIH were not set up to make a public impression. And the DOE labs were, originally, set up to be very secret. Argonne started life as the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago, because they didn’t want people to think it had anything to do with radioactive materials or nuclear physics. Los Alamos didn’t even have a mailing address for the first few years of its existence. (People working there used a common PO box number in, if memory serves, Santa Fe.)
“NASA was set up to show that US technology was not behind the Soviets'”
I suspect you are old enough, like me, to recall the so-called “Missile Gap” splashed across the NYTimesd and every American newspaper. That really was fake news.
I’m afraid I’m not quite that old. But I do remember how Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies were supposedly poised to conquer western Europe around 1980. That story turned out to be a bit less than factual.
But my point wasn’t about whether or not we were behind the Russians in 1960. There was a perception that we were, disproving that perception was part of NASA’s original reasons for existing, and that still colors NASA’s planning. They want to do things which get public attention because that’s what they did in the past and that’s what people expect of them.
This morning, I watched the replay of last night’s SpaceX Falcon 9 launch. They stuck the landing (I believe that was the 29th successful first stage recovery). It never gets old watching that first stage come back and stick the landing.
Hopefully they won’t have trouble getting it back to KSC. The storms in the Atlantic could be problematic.
Edit: Changed a number after checking another source.
In a way, this last SpaceX launch highlights some of my worries about projected reuse and flight rates (for Falcon 9 and BFR.) They really were in a tight place last evening. The weather at both the launch and landing sites were iffy, although they remained good enough for everything to work.
If weather conditions had gotten worse, they would have either had to delay the launch or take a risk of not recovering the second stage. And, with a major hurricane a few days away from landfall, a delay would probably have meant a multi-week schedule hit.
That’s the sort of thing which makes me worry about claims of dozens of recoveries and reflights per rocket and flying on a weekly basis. That might be achievable under ideal circumstances. Until they figure out how to control the weather, they can’t count on ideal circumstances all the time.
Agreed. IMHO, they’re going to have to build a lot of “extra” first stages to take into account losses due to recovery failures, possible expendable missions, and possible delays in the BFR/BFS program.
It was my understanding that Block 1B would be 105 tonnes?
That is correct, which is why I said less than 130 tons. 130 metric tons is supposed to be the aspirational figure that is wanted for the SLS Block II. But Block 1B is probably the best version of SLS we’ll ever see – if we get to see even that.
More like 95 tonnes to LEO at 300 km altitude.
The NASA reference LEO orbit is for about 160 km altitude, a temporary parking orbit. See the discussion I have with @fcrary upthread.
Change the named to “Cancelled” =)
The Saturn-I/-V got their name by Saturn being the next planet out from Jupiter (which was the name given to most of the Redstone-derived boosters used in many of the most early space flights). However, I doubt that NASA would be willing to have their new flagship called the ‘Uranus’.
Why not call it the ‘Union’ or something else, given the stars-and-stripes colours that I’ve seen in a few publicity images?
Union is “Soyuz” in Russian. Never gonna happen.
I’m not sure. I’ve noticed many (most?) Americans have very little interest in how something translates into other languages.
There is one point in favor of naming something like SLS “Union” (and, jokes aside, once it flies, it’s going to need a name, not an acronym.) Traditionally, train stations in the United States were named after the company who originally built them and the line they serviced (e.g. Penn Station for ones built and run by the Pennsylvania Railroad company) or “Union” station if more than one company/line was involved. Involving many companies (and NASA centers) is a defining characteristic of SLS.
While on the surface this idea appeals to me I sense deep down that one should not tread on such sacred nomenclatural ground.
If it merits/needs re-branding (along with other reconsideration), an entirely new name should be offered.
Given that the govt (and our general modern culture) has a habit of assigning a thing a name that contradicts the reality of that which is being named, how about Minerva?
K I L L_S L S.
What is so funny, and so sad, is that everyone that has been on the space blogs since 2005 and Constellation > Orion > SLS > predicted this result. Now here we sit .. having flushed how many billions down the rat hole . and facing another 12 billion just for the full run out?
All so that the Nation can drown 2.5 – 4 billion dollars worth of “disposable” hardware after every launch ..
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Honestly, it’s the opportunity costs which bother me more. Major governments wasting tens of billions on something pointless isn’t exactly news. I’m sort of numb to that. What upsets me is think about what we could have done for 1% of that sum.
Obama tried to cancel Constellation and transfer the money to Space Technology and Commercial Crew and Cargo, unfortunately that would have meant moving the money to different NASA centers and different contractors, all with different Senators and Congressmen.
Yes, not only was it predictable, it was predicted. The Ares V (sorry SLS) might have had some utility if they’d just gone with an OSP concept on an Atlas V but Griffin’s choice of the Stick for the Orion really messed up the entire architecture. Virtually everything wrong with the HSF program in the last 15 years is tied directly to keeping SRB production alive.
Yes, Dr. Griffin was far more interested in playing chief engineer than in building bi-partisan support in Congress for funding Project Constellation. Its a pity he didn’t allow the folks at NASA whose job it was to develop the architecture to design the architecture.
The ‘cost of splashing’ didn’t have the same dramatic coefficient in the 1960s-early 2000s as it does now. We just accepted it as a cost of doing business. When the rocket scientists said that the fuel fraction for return wasn’t worth it everyone just accepted it.
Not everyone, of course.
I wonder though *why* reusability was seen so widely as desirable, sure, but also “way off in the future, and anyway let’s get to work on problems we really *can* solve here and now?”
Put another way: how did it happen that a guy with very little knowledge of rockets and rocket design come to discover a way forward?
When he started out, Elon had about as much education about rockets as- well, as much as I do. Seriously. In fact, maybe I know more… and what I know isn’t much. So how did this happen? There is a huge story here with many different human and technical aspects to it.
That’s the advantage of a clean-sheet design and a person in charge who doesn’t have preconceived notions.
I know planetary scientists who don’t believe reuse of the Falcon 9 will be economical, because the Space Shuttle proved that doesn’t work. At most, they might be convinced that technology has improved in forty years and _maybe_ reuse _might_ work today.
SLS is still primarily hydrogen-oxygen and one reason is that so many people in the field know that high specific impulse is obviously critical. In 1965, that might have been true. And once something’s established as common knowledge, people are less likely to revisit it and see if it’s still true.
What Elon knew from his other ventures was not that reusability was important, but that in the commercial market, demand is very sensitive to price and reducing cost would significantly increase sales and thus profitability.
This might seem obvious to those of us who have worked in the private sector, but it was an astonishing concept for Lockheed and Boeing/Delta, which were dealing solely with the government as a customer.; the government is insensitive to cost but sensitive to noneconomic requirements like elaborate proposals and justifications, and so the most profitable course was to increase cost, with the appropriate justifications..
Consequently Elon was the first US launch operator to make a serious effort to reduce cost, and by doing so he captured virtually the entire US commercial (non-government) launch market even before the F9 was reusable. For Musk, reusability was simply a means to and end, and the end was reducing cost.
For the Shuttle, reusability was an arbitrary requirement, originally imposed because of the “belief” that reusability would automatically reduce operational cost. However the system was designed with no serious attempt to predict its operating cost, and was more expensive than a comparable expendable, which led NASA to the also incorrect conclusion that reusability “does not work”.
“originally imposed because of the “belief” that reusability would automatically reduce operational cost”
Partly true. But if Shuttle had been able to deliver on the original notion of weekly or better launches, even at $1B each we would have found the money.
The arguments for STS and the arguments for BFR share a Wenn diagram: if they work as advertised/hoped, real space colonization could ensue. Period. Hundreds of thousands of tons of material could be hauled to space. That disappointment was the real broken heart of the STS effort.
Yes, but Elon Musk doesn’t have Congress telling him how much effort he is allowed to put into the BFR. That is what turned the Shuttle into a rebuildable space system instead of a reusable one. And you see ULA using the same thinking with their idea of just recovering the engines instead of the entire booster.
Operational cost for the Shuttle was asserted to be much lower than contemporary launch vehicles, but such estimates as were made were speculative and were in error by a factor of ten or more.
Weekly launches with the Shuttle at $1B each would have been an extraordinary sight but would unfortunately cost $50B/year, more than four times the NASA budget at the time, and, had the mission been satellite launch, would still have been more expensive than utilizing the available ELVs (Delta II/IV, AtlasII/V and Titan III) for launch, based on payload mass.
I wonder about something implicit in your point (with which I agree, except to point out that governmental efforts are sensitive to costs to the extent that budgets are not available).
Thinking very broadly: Is it the case that the efforts of SLS et.al. and the efforts of SX are in some way equivalent but for the inclusion of price?
Put another way: are they both trying to solve the same problem?
(Yes, there are many differences in detail; and perhaps there is no global point of view that equates the two efforts).
True. NASA has zero need for reusability as their launch rate is never going to be very high. That is why both X-33 and X-34 failed, because NASA never really saw any reason to make them a priority. The same is true for research into the development and use of in situ resources.This is why a new entity, a Lunar Development Corporate is really need if space exploration is ever going to move beyond simple science research.
NASA didn’t look for reusability because there was no need? That’s a difficult argument to accept, Professor. EVERYbody in the space biz wants cheaper access.
Could your free-market predilections be in search of an argument here, maybe?
If you only have a few flights total per year there isn’t as much upside to reusability as if you have the potential for many. When the Shuttle lost it’s role as the vehicle to carry all satellites into Orbit it was stuck being the manned space vehicle and NASA would have a tough time giving a Rocket enough payloads all but itself to make reusability worth it. Space X doesn’t have that problem because it doesn’t have to pay for rockets and payload and because it can get payloads from NASA, DOD, Other government agencies and commercial firms.
What the the folks in the space biz want and what NASA wants are often very two different things, just look at space resource development and space economic development. That members of Congress understood that, so instead of giving communication satellites to NASA they created Comsat instead and limited NASA to a supporting role.
The goal of every project, in space as in community development, is to satisfy the customer, and the customer is the person with the money. For Musk the customer was Musk himself, as well as commercial satellite operators, DOD and NASA programs which would only buy his rocket if it was cheap, since it offerred no political advantage. Same for Bezos and Blue.
For SLS the customer was Congress, which needs to satisfy its own paying customers, the lobbyists for the companies and cities where the major Shuttle componentsw were built and managed. So they naturally promoted existing technology, to the extend of passing a law requiring the SLS to use boosters made by ATK.
Watching Shotwell at TEDTalks she was asked a similar question. She refers to the ‘shoulders of giants’, which is naturally de rigueur but also true.
She expands though in a very smart choice of words saying that SX was able to use a clean sheet, letting physics guide the design, not tied to any legacy equipment. She meant that the shoulders let SX see the entire field, to assess the current technology dispassionately.
And of course there is a factual statement about the SLS folks: fine engineers no doubt, but also engineers with a hand tied behind the back.
(And isn’t that odd? At the time that everyone was both criticizing STS and yelling about sunk costs, it just seemed so logical to ‘leverage’ existing technology).
Maybe, maybe not; hindsight isn’t fair. But the lesson is pretty simple. Congress saw what it wanted to see. To a non-expert, and one wary of job loses, that approach made a lot of sense.
Until it didn’t.
(And no, I do not think the question has been answered fully. Not even close).
It might not answer your question more completely, but what about simply asking smart people to question their basic assumptions? I think many revolutionary changes have happened when someone asked, “X was true and made sense half a century ago, but is it still true? If not how does that change the way we should do things?” Established companies and government agencies don’t seem to be good at asking those sorts of questions. Crazy rich people apparently do a better job. (Not of getting results, that’s hit or miss. Just of asking the questions that might get results.)
Err not quite the problem was the old space paragon. ULA wanted to do reusability before, but Congress would not pay for it. The problem with “Old Space” is that if the government will not pay for it, it will not get done. I.e. Why take a risk on something that might not pay off?
Elon and others challenged this idea. He invested Space X’s revenue into improving the product where as “Old Space” would have made a best very limited investments to improve their rockets.
As for hydrogen and 1965, the Saturn V had the best of both worlds. A high thrust lox/kerosene first stage pushing two lighter weight LOX/LH stages. This combination is what gave it such lifting power. NASA did a study shortly before SLS and found that LOX/Kerosene would be the ideal first stage engine in terms of cost and performance. SLS use of LOX/LH and shuttle engines dooms it to needing the large SRB(which add cost) and the SSME are probably not the best engine for this application(1st stage).
Elon wanted to do LOX/LH for the 2nd stage but he couldn’t get the cost to work out(maybe Blue Origin will do better). For Space X doing things very differently(9 small engines vs. fewer large ones, as well as having the first and second stage engine be different versions of the same engine) worked out in spades. The problem with legacy equipment is that it comes with legacy costs and IMHO the major change in use from being a reusable space plane to an disposable heavy lifter should have meant that a clean sheet was needed.
“A high thrust lox/kerosene first stage pushing two lighter weight LOX/LH stages.” Exactly. The use of hydrogen as a propellant at lift-off in Shuttle, Delta IV, and SLS makes no engineering sense. Hydrogen is ideal for an upper stage but different fuels for booster and upper stage adds to cost and both Blue and SX are moving toward methane as a compromise for both. It is cryogenic(BP 112K) but much easier to maintain as a liquid than hydrogen , has a slightly higher Isp than RP-1 (309 vs 300) and although it doesn’t have nearly the Isp of hydrogen (460) it has a much higher density, making both tanks and engines comparable in size to those using kerosene. Methane also has fewer problems with coking in nozzel cooling channels and is easier to ignite than kerosene.
Ah, yes. The “performance uber alles” crowd. They just never understood that making the launch vehicle a bit bigger is “good enough”. This is evident in NASA’s recent analysis of the payload performance of Falcon Heavy (expendable) where it bests Delta IV Heavy for all but the highest energy launches (and for those, Falcon Heavy essentially ties Delta IV Heavy).
Oddly enough, this is a real world example where a kerosene vehicle bests LH2 in overall vehicle performance and price in the real world. The LH2 mafia doesn’t seem to understand that LH2 adds cost in several places in both the design and operations. Well that and minimizing the dry mass to payload ratio isn’t very helpful outside the realm of ICBMs.
Honestly, using hydrogen and pushing for high specific impulse might not have been a mistake in 1960. The rocket equation is a bit deceptive, and makes people think specific impulse is everything. But once you realize the final mass in that equation isn’t the payload mass (it’s payload _plus_ the mass of the final state, which is mostly proportional to the fuel it can carry), it does show something very useful.
The payload mass to a given delta-v (i.e. destination) depends on both the specific impulse and the wet-to-dry mass ratio for the final stage. The later depends mostly on mechanical engineering and metallurgy. In 1960, lots of people were working on that, since strong, low mass structures have a huge number of applications. High specific impulse rocket engines weren’t getting much attention in 1960, at least not outside of space applications. So it may have been right to say that, then, focusing on high performance engines and simply using other people’s advances in light weight structures was the best option.
But it created the high-performance over everything mindset, and that has persisted. Today, you actually can put a useful payload in orbit with hydrocarbon/oxygen rockets, and that’s largely due to a dramatic reduction in the mass of the fuel tanks and all the necessary, mechanical structure. But, apart from SpaceX and Blue Origin, that high-performance mindset seems to continue.
Call it the Nova in honor of the 1960s (bigger than) Saturn-alternative that was never built. As we all know, in Spanish, Nova means “No Go!”
That is actually a myth by someone who didn’t understand the difference in Spanish between “nova” which means new and “no va” which means “no go”.
More likely, it was someone who wanted an excuse to put down Chevrolet and knew very few people would know or care about the difference.
Call it Bellerophon. Full of hubris after slaying Chymera he tried flying on Pegasus to Mt. Olympus, and fell into a thorn bush.
Bellerophon was also the name of the first (and ill-fated) manned starship to reach Altair-4 in “Forbidden Planet”.
I’m busy annoying people about calling the ocean within Europa the “Mediterranean” (lit. in the middle of land, although some might say in the middle of Earth, and not too bad a description for a subsurface ocean) or the Europa Clipper mission to be named, “Pequod” (the ship from Moby Dick, since the mission has some parallels with an obsessive hunt for a whale.) I’ll leave “Bellerophon” to someone else.
Not a myth, a pun. Although technically the words nova and no va are distict, the double meaning is obvious in Spanish and I have read it contributed to the Chevy Nova being an unpopular car in South America. Nova is Latin; the common word for “new” in Spanish is nueve.
And President Kennedy may or may not have said he was a jelly doughnut. “Berliner” can mean that, just as “Hamburger” can mean a ground beef sandwich in addition to meaning someone from Hamburg. And Kennedy did end a speech by saying, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” There is a large body of myth about mistranslations. Some of it is true, some exaggerations, some deliberate puns, and some just made up stories. (And, personally, I think Kennedy’s statement would have been clearly understood in context. The appalling part was what his Boston accent did to a simple German sentence.)
The Chevy NOVA does not sell well in Mexico. They (we) do understand the difference, but once a FORD owner noted the similarity, it was no longer a myth.
Frankly, can _you_ recognize the “original” Atlas in the first stage of an “Atlas V”???
I remember back before Saturn was a car… or a rocket. I remember when it was a _planet_. I’m not old enough to remember Saturn as a god.
If the Atlas can become unrecognizable from its earlier versions, there’s no reason they can’t steal the same trick for the SLS to Saturn VI.
Mind you, I can imagine NASA taking designations from the alphabet soup Harley-Davidson uses. “Sportster” for the old Saturn I and IB… “Fat Boy” for the V… The mind boggles.
The Atlas V should be properly called the Titan V. Since it is basically the Titan airframe converted to using KeroLox with a RD-180 engine. But they have those Titan silo accidents around that time.
If we call SLS Block 1, “Saturn VI”, a few years later does the Block 1A with the four-engined EUS become “Saturn VIII” or “Saturn VI-B”?
This is actually a really good branding idea and would help SLS.
And yes, I think we should just buy this launch capability from the commercial sector, too. But it says a lot about the negativity down here that the idea is uniformly panned, not because the idea itself is bad, but because of the hatred of SLS itself.
I was always under the impress that it was a temporary name.
You misspelled “cancel”.