How Much Will SLS Actually Cost?
NASA Solicitation: Space Launch System RS-25 Core Engine
“In developing the SLS, the Act directed the Administrator to utilize, to the extent practicable, existing contracts, investments, workforce, industrial base, and capabilities from the Space Shuttle Program (SSP), Orion, and Ares I projects. This includes SSP-derived components and Ares I components that draw extensively on SSP heritage propulsion systems, including liquid fuel engines, external tank or tank-related capability, and solid rocket motors. To achieve this mandate, NASA initiated the development of the SLS with SSP and Ares I derived assets. Specific to the Core Stage Engine, the system will utilize modified RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) hardware and Ares I components to provide the required lift capabilities. This procurement action is to acquire six additional RS-25 Core Stage Engines. These six flight engines in combination with the available RS-25 residual inventory will support the SLS flight manifest through the first five flights.”
NASA Solicitation: Space Launch System Exploration Upper Stage Engine
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) invites Industry to submit a response to this Request for Information (RFI) to assist NASA in the planning for a new Exploration Upper Stage Engine (EUSE) acquisition development.”
Keith’s note: Funny how NASA makes these overt statements about using Ares stuff – stuff that cost billions – and yet when you ask how much SLS costs they never seem to include the cost of all the Ares stuff.
This thing may cost a lot, but NASA will make it up on volume. 😉
If NASA is determined to really make this thing, at least go back to the moon with it.
How often is SLS to launch annually please? Once you answer that perhaps a rethink on your term “volume” may be in order.
Cheers
As always cost depends on how long you drag out the development and lower the flight rate. You could make a Tercel cost as much as a Lamborghini if you stretch out the acquisition and development process with constant sniping, multiple starts and stops, and hand make one or two a year. BTW, should we count all of NASA’s R&D costs for every widget used by SpaceX in the Falcon development costs?
If you could show that X saw a reasonable amount of use for either its original purpose or something else, then its cost could be said to have been covered. But, when money is spent on hardware that has, essentially, be used for nothing (Ares 1-X doesn’t count as use, for example), then its full development cost is credited to whatever project eventually makes reasonable use of it. Of course, then you need to define ‘reasonable’.
Humor impaired?
There is an old joke about a company losing money on every item sold, so the owner says, “We’ll make it up on volume”.
According to NASA’s FY15 Agency Mission Planning Model, one SLS + Orion flight is to occur in each of 2022, 2023, 2025, 2027, 2029, 2031, 2033 and 2035. Possible destinations and additional mission elements are TBD.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d… (The PDF is dated 20 June 2014)
For comparison, the FY09 AMPM had two Ares + Orion per year, adding Altair after the first few flights.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/224263main...
2235!
Estimates of its flight rate vary, but since there are precious few “real” payloads to launch on SLS (besides Orion), I’d say anywhere from one flight every other year to a maximum of two flights per year.
In other words, SLS is looking like it’s going to be an even bigger hangar queen than the space shuttle.
Then this will one of the safest vehicles NASA ever contracted to have built.
I believe that the old DIRECT team calculated that an HLV would need to fly six times a year for it to stop being cheaper to launch the payloads with EELV-class launchers.
“when you ask how much SLS costs they never seem to include the cost of all the Ares stuff”
I guess they are justified-the recent IG report did a similar thing with ISS, choosing not to include the first 9 years of Station. Whats an extra $11 billion?
For Orion MPCV alone, NASA estimates $16.5 billion through first crewed flight in 2021 carrying 2 astronauts to a TBD point in cislunar space.
NASA Commercial Crew, for comparison, has the option to spend up to $6.8 billion on nearly a dozen flights of astronauts on Dragon and CST-100. And that spend includes commercial launch vehicles under the capsule.
What is the combined cost of SLS and Orion to get to first crewed flight? Should NASA designed-and-operated space transportation really cost that much more to fly BEO compared to astronauts flying Boeing business class to LEO?
…and yet when you ask how much SLS costs they never seem to include the cost of all the Ares stuff.
Technically, I don’t think modern accounting rules need to include the cost of things you get from “dumpster diving.”
Were the item from someone else’s dumpster, then your books should show a freebie. In this case, spending money on something, then declaring it not needed, then declaring it needed again, would leave any reasonable person adding it all up into the cost of the latest project. It’s that or NASA needs a new account line, “failed spaceflight programs”, which from an old Scott Pace chart would tally into the 10’s of Billions. This means any project has this “tax” to be expected when estimating costs, the “failed” portions, based on history, approach, etc. Sure, as time passes the recent data might look better, but otherwise it’s merely lying about the numbers when projects have these adverts go out.
True, but the question to ask is just how much the new engines (after flight five) are going to cost. Since these costs are quite far into the future, I’d argue that it is very difficult to estimate these costs.
Maybe you have to ask the right question. Not how much the development and engineering flights are going to cost but how much the operational ones are going to cost when ALL components of the SLS have to be manufactured. If NASA wont or can’t answer that questions the red flags should be going up.
KC…the question is not how much will it cost. It’s what you will get for the amounts budgeted when they are added up, or every year after, when operational. The amounts budgeted are well known. Don’t get tricked into thinking the move from development to manufacturing and operations and launch will change this. The lines always stay pretty straight. Only the names change.
As GAO or anyone would do, and as Greason has observed, these type traditional projects have steady budget lines, and steady burn rates, the layers in the sandcharts, that vary little from year to year. (Corollary: You need to end one layer to start another, since the budget’s not going up under any probable scenarios anytime soon.)
Oh…on a related note, the next time someone is reading some Mars paper that has SLS in it, and any mention of costs, you’ll always see the same error. The Mars mission is booked as needing an SLS? Some SLS variable cost is booked (like the often quoted $500M a launch). The years the system will not fly? The fixed costs that year it did not fly? The fixed costs the year it did fly? All conveniently forgotten. If the only reason the system exists is really for these TBD missions, all SLS and Orion yearly budgets, and EDS’s when they come, up to any point in time of a launch, would be booked to “recurring per launch costs” up to that date. (Putting aside non-recurring development for now, which would be used for “total per launch costs” up to that date). No one ever does this in all the Mars stuff that occasionally dabbles in these numbers, getting the cost numbers “not even wrong”.
With the quoted flight rate Mars missions are impossible.
……new Exploration Upper Stage Engine (EUSE) acquisition development.”…….
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What the hell happened to the three billion dollar J2-X that we bought and paid for?
Isn’t that sitting in Steve Jurvetson’s collection?
No, that is an RL-10.
See http://blog.al.com/breaking…
Complete and utter insanity. This is especially the case after all the money that has been wasted on the first crappy upper stage that was going to use one RL-10. They spent a HUGE amount of money on that, now to cancel it iso that they can build another crappy upper stage with four RL-10,s, when in 1962 they had a perfectly good stage for the Saturn 1 with five RL-10’s THAT FLEW. Then after two flights they will replace the new crappy 4 RL-10 upper stage with a J2X stage that will take another billion to get out of mothballs and reengineer because they forgot for the second time how to build that engine.
Words fail…
“You know, this is so bad I can’t even joke about it.”
I LOVE that episode in the Earth to the Moon series..
One of my favorites too! Glad you got the reference. Sad that the statement is applicable to the current situation.
J-2X is generally unsuitable for in-space propulsion. The wrong balance of thrust to impulse; it was designed as an Earth to Orbit second stage engine to back up a short-duration solid booster, after all.
It is a slightly upgraded version of the J2S which is a slightly upgraded J2. The J2 engine was the TLI stage for all of the Apollo missions. That is just not a credible claim. It was specifically chosen BECAUSE of its in space restart capability.
Yea, the claimed to go all clean sheet but that was just because of the problems (inherent to the design) of the Ares 1.
It is still baselined for the Earth Departure stage in the late 2020’s.
“How much will SLS cost?” Well, given the politics around the vehicle, I would say the answer is “However much it takes.” Cancellation is unthinkable so more and more money will be poured into the leaky bucket accompanied by dire but empty threats of an audit with teeth if waste isn’t cut back.
Additionally… Procuring six more RS-25s to the inventory gives enough engines and one or two reserves for perhaps 5 flights or, possibly, all missions up to EM-3 (including the fairing début mission, SLS-03) plus one back-up core for those four missions. Not an unreasonable or unjustifiable purchase.
Not having much to do with overall program costs, but the RS-25 solicitation looks to me as if it’s calling for and justifying more RS-25Ds, not the somewhat mythical RS-25E. Or am I reading too much into it?
Not really; I think that this represents a tacit acknowledgement on NASA’s part that there are not enough SSMEs in stock to fly SLS at even the visualised minimum flight rate before RS-25e is available.
Looking at the above-referenced SLS flight time line, RS-25E would not be needed before 2029. So, I’d guess, its development can now be put off until the next decade.
I kind of get the sense that NASA is trying to strategize things in a somewhat rational manner given the hideous budget and political constraints, but it would certainly be nice to see what they actually have in mind.
I think the costs are going to be astronomically worse when they factor in the 6 new SSME’s. Rocketdyne has lost significant experienced personnel through continuous downsizing, and abandoned the nozzle furnace in the move to a smaller facility. Only a few of the larger machines were retained with the big EB welder, none of which is setup, and room will be problematic. They arent starting from scratch, but it will seem like it.
“To save costs, we’re gonna build a disposable rocket using incredibly expensive shuttle engines designed for multiple use; and we’re gonna multiply the risk by strapping on extended shuttle boosters that require a completely different supply chain.”
But the flight costs are irrelevant. Contrary to statements here SLS will be cancelled after perhaps one or two test flights. Without volume there’s more money in generating paper and prototypes than in manufacturing under constant pressure to reduce costs. Forget SLS, it is a boondoggle and a sideshow.
I have to agree with your assessment. SLS is a cash cow and jobs dispenser for Congressional districts. That’s its main purpose. It might be more cost-effective if they just dispensed with building the actual hardware and simply shoveled money back to the voters every year. And they wouldn’t have to worry if THAT would work – that’s definitely “proven technology.”
the incredibly expensive shuttle engines are worth nothing if you don’t have a vehicle, reusability is pretty much not an issue either. free engines reduce your cost. Using current production, cheaper and more powerful RS-68 engines makes more sense, but they were designed under an Air Force program and thus do not exist in NASA’s mind.
I agree on the RS-68, maybe it was dropped because of politics. But the rationale was that the RS-68 nozzle is cooled largely by radiation so in a cluster it would run hotter than in a widely spaced linear arrangement such as on the Delta Heavy. Also RS-68 Isp is lower so performance would not be as good unless fuel load is increased. That said, the SSMEs originally cost $65M (in 2014 dollars) each. That would total at over a quarter billion per launch for the four RS-25s alone, not even including the cost of restarting production. Plus it’s completely irrational to build around such old technology when two different clean-sheet LOX/methane booster engines designed for ease of manufacturing (Raptor and BE-4) are under development. There’s just no way anyone familiar with the manufacturing process for these engines would ever have proposed using them in an expendable vehicle.
While I would have preferred that SLS was not single sourced I think that it is important to note that SLS/Orion will cost a little bit less than the space shuttle program through 2047 (assuming it gets $6 Billion a year every year after 2017 which it probably won’t get). We get 30 years of BEO capability for the same price as 30 years of LEO capability. I think that is a deal.
Assuming one flight every other year this is $10B per flight, or $2.5B per seat, with an average of only two people launched per year, both significantly inferior to Shuttle. This is also assuming that $5B per year would also pay for all payloads, landers, and equipment required for the missions.