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Commercialization

Someone Has Stopped Drinking The SLS Koolaid – For A Moment

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 29, 2018
Filed under , ,
Someone Has Stopped Drinking The SLS Koolaid – For A Moment

SLS contractor gets real, says program needs to focus on “affordability”, Ars Technica
“We here inside the program tend not to think about the need to advocate,” Precourt said. “There are a lot of people with other ideas about how we should do this mission, so I think it’s incumbent on us. It’s not too early to be thinking about the transition from development to production. And that means a totally different management philosophy and cost structure for all of us.” Precourt said contractors should consider a future in which NASA’s present multibillion expenditures on rocket development costs need to be cut in half in order for the SLS vehicle to have a robust future. “All of us need to be thinking about [how] our annual budget for this will not be what it is in development,” he said. “That’s a very serious problem that we have to look forward to, and to try to rectify, so that we are sustainable.” If the other speakers had thoughts about Precourt’s comments, they did not share them during the ensuing discussion.”
DC Lobbying Firms Enter The SLS Vs Commercial Space Proxy War , earlier post
Big Aerospace Reaches For The Stars While Using Smear Tactics, earlier post
Join Boeing’s SLS Fan Club So They Can Track Your Activity Online, earlier post
OIG Audit: NASA’s Management of the Space Launch System Stages Contract, earlier post

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14 responses to “Someone Has Stopped Drinking The SLS Koolaid – For A Moment”

  1. Terry Stetler says:
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    That statement was pretty bad, but this op-ed in Space News really takes the prize for ridiculous. It tries to make the case that reuseability will cause a loss of skills due to reduced production, not taking into account higg flight rates.

    https://spacenews.com/op-ed

    is it just me, or has there been a huge increase in the number of SLS sock puppets? Must be getting nervous now that SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site construction has started, and pictures of the BFS construction tooling and built parts started to appear online.

    • fcrary says:
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      Flight rates are certainly a problem for Doug Cooke’s argument. He’s correct to say that only building one launch vehicle every couple years is a reliability issue and makes it hard to maintain a skilled workforce. His magic number seems to be one per year (the SLS build rate), which is actually a little low to my mind. But let’s accept that.

      SpaceX claims a Block 5 Falcon 9 should be able to fly a hundred times. I don’t believe that; it’s a big jump from the demonstrated two (soon to be three) flights per vehicle. But they might manage fifty. They are also working towards one flight per week (and could use that, since they have a backlog of payloads to launch.) One flight per week and fifty flights per core is actually Cooke’s magic build rate of one per year. So it looks his argument against reusability is a little shaky.

  2. ITGrouch says:
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    Precourt and Northrup Grumman is the lone voice of reason in the wilderness and sad to say, they will be ignored.

  3. buzzlighting says:
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    There they go again claim they can make SLS affordable. I have a hard time believing that idea from Precourt. One thing you have to get through SLS Development time. By launching 4 SLS rockets break it in and pay down Development cost before you can think about making SLS cheaper.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      The problem is that after you launch those four rockets you run out of used SSME and will need to start building new engines, and testing them for quality all over again.

      • fcrary says:
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        Could someone remind me what a RS-25 is likely to cost? I know NASA put out a RFI about new production, at four per year, after 2025. And I think I saw an estimate of the cost around that time. But I don’t remember and can’t find anything online.

  4. Egad says:
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    “There are a lot of people with other ideas about how we should do this mission…”

    I wonder what he thinks “this mission” is. Something specific, or just generally launching people into space, details TBD?

  5. Tim Franta says:
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    At least it is a start that someone is seriously considering vehicle production and affordability. I would add one other consideration and that is flight rate. With such a low flight rate envisioned, it is difficult to even test SLS adequately let alone make it “affordable” – I am being very generous with that term. When you can do the math in your head you know your flight rate is too low.

  6. Michael Spencer says:
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    It’s inevitable that somewhere, some-when, folks will notice there’s a man behind the curtain.

    Slow, at first, reality will settle, particularly as existing contracts approach EOL. There will be quiet voices, some from the peanut gallery, gradually louder and louder. This will be followed by a revisionist recounting by the manufacturers and suppliers of the SLS concept.

    Some will read this as “it’s not my fault!” which, at first blush, is slightly true; but to regard Boeing et.al. as simple soldiers in the field following the orders from headquarters is disingenuous at best. I’m thinking here about K Street.

    Meanwhile, we will see very little push back from New Space, an approach handsomely used by Mr. Bezos (and which could possibly benefit Mr. Musk).

    At the same time, the impressively growing ranks of SmallSat vendors will add to what will become a very loud but silent voice (an odd image).

    How will it end? The Battle of the Lifters is already over. Visualize Brontosaurus lying on her side thrashing in her death throes.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      It is much like the steam engine manufacturers when diesels came along. Because steam engines required 4 hours of maintenance for each hour of service, whereas a diesel was just needed refueling, and a quick check of the oil and water before being put it on another train, the steam engine makers bemoaned the potential loss of skills in areas like pipe fitting, welding, blacksmithing, etc. needed to keep a steam engine working. They were right of course, museums do have a challenge finding workers with the skills to keep a steam engine running, but it doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on the economy.

      • fcrary says:
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        If memory serves, there are certain sports cars which became status symbols for this sort of reason. They were so maintenance intensive that you _had_ to be rich to drive one. And a multi-billion dollar project just _has_ to be more important than one which only costs a tenth as much.

  7. Shaw_Bob says:
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    SLS appears to be likely to fly so rarely as never, ever to attain the sort of cadence that would allow it to become a mature system. The X-15 flew nearly 200 times but was still – rightly – treated as an experimental system. Shuttle flew two thirds as many times, and was clearly nothing like a ‘gas and go’ system, demonstrated not least by the deaths of two crews but also the need for a standing army of support staff. There is no sign at all of SLS even reaching the number of Saturn launches, or the rate. And yet, the US had a perfectly good and relatively cheap unmanned heavy-lift vehicle waiting in the wings as long ago as the early 1980s in the form of Shuttle-C! The history of all this, when it is finally written, will have the remarkable quality of managing to be both a tragedy and a comedy at the same time…

  8. fcrary says:
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    In a cynical way, I can see Mr. Precourt point, and it isn’t a bad idea for his company. The other SLS contractors should pay attention.

    Start with two basic assumptions. First, BFR and similar vehicles will not happen, at least not on schedule, and with the stated cost and capabilities. That doesn’t have to be a good assumption. If BFR does happen as advertised, Northrop Grumman and the other major SLS contractors are out of the launch vehicle business. I don’t see any way they could reinvent themselves to change that, so it would make sense for Mr. Precourt to only consider a world without BFR.

    Second, I think he’s assuming that higher costs for SLS, compared to Falcon Heavy, can be justified if it’s _slightly_ more capable. As long as they can say there are some things SLS alone can do, or talk about single payloads versus on orbit assembly, there are potential missions they can point to.

    But I think Mr. Precourt has realized something about the post-development SLS world. It’s going to be like something NASA and these contractors haven’t seen since the end of the Apollo program. After development, SLS isn’t really a program. It’s a series of separate, individual missions. When the Shuttle was flying, there was some discussion of how often it should fly, or what it should be used for, or (eventually) when it should end. But until it did end, there was no flight by flight debate over whether STS n+1 was worth the cost. With ISS operations, there’s been discussion about whether to end it in 2020 (that’s been settled), 2024 or later. But the costs and benefits don’t have to be justified expedition by expedition. There aren’t congressional hearings specifically on wether or not Expedition 41 is a good idea.

    Gateway is an attempt to make continuing SLS missions a part of a larger program. But I don’t think that’s going to work. With one flight per year (or, more importantly, one flight per congressional budget authorization,) I suspect there will be launch by launch discussions of whether _this_ SLS mission (EM-3 or -4 or whatever) is doing something which justifies the cost. From the contractors’ point of view, that’s not good. From their point of view, I suspect the best thing would be reducing per-flight costs just enough to avoid too much flight-by-flight scrutiny. Not too much, since they want to keep making money, but enough that Congress will continue to fund one flight per year. If I’m right about that, Mr. Precourt apparently thinks somewhere slightly under $1 billion per flight is that magic number.

  9. Paul451 says:
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    I don’t think this is a sign of people starting to see the light. I think it’s an attempt to put out fog to prevent others from seeing it.

    Talking about an “affordable” SLS is just seeding the language to be used in the future. In reality, it just allows contractors to bill more today for imaginary savings-down-the-road. It allows them to push nonsensically low per-vehicle costs, anything under a $billion/launch, and keep a straight face in Congress when they ask for $4b/yr with a flight cadence of once every other year. It allows them to counter the obvious questions, “Shouldn’t we use a vastly, vastly, vastly cheaper commercial launcher?”