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SLS and Orion

You Can't Exert National Prestige With A Rocket That Does Not Fly

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 29, 2020
Filed under ,
You Can't Exert National Prestige With A Rocket That Does Not Fly

NASA’s mission to the moon is about far more than cost, Op Ed, Mary Lynne Dittmar/Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, The Hill
“As a result, the role played by national assets in deep space cannot be fulfilled solely by privately owned systems. Bringing someone else’s rocket and crew vehicle to the geopolitical table does not convey the same intent. A national presence, backed by the full faith and measure of Congress, focuses international attention and creates incentives for partnerships around the globe.”
Keith’s note: This is nonsense. In the case of the U.S. the “national asset” i.e. SLS/Orion is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. Meanwhile SpaceX and other private companies could conduct the Orion/SLS plan for lunar exploration far more cheaply and flexibly than the SLS/Orion architecture ever could. Falcon 9/Heavy/Dragon work. SLS/Orion have not yet shown that they can.
It has apparently escaped Dittmar’s notice that the original SLS/Orion plan – one that only used SLS and Orion has been continuously morphed into a program that uses more and more commercial capabilities to do the things that SLS/Orion cannot do – either for cost or capability reasons. Were NASA to have relied upon the SLS/Orion “national asset” alone it would have been impossible to meet this Administration’s 2024 goal to land humans on the Moon. In fact, even with the shift toward enhanced commercial participation, chronic problems with SLS/Orion system now make it almost certainly incapable of doing its part in the current NASA plan to land humans on the Moon by 2024.
You cannot convey the intended political intent if the rocket you want to use to exert that intent has not flown and will not fly at the cost – or schedule – originally envisioned. Take a look at what European government-backed and Chinese-backed “commercial” companies are doing. They are copying SpaceX – they are not copying SLS/Orion. They learned from American successes – and failures. Can we?
Keith’s update: NASA issued this press release today about initial authorization for the SRBs needed for 6 additional SLS flights – and that the eventual contract will “extend through Dec. 31, 2030”. Yet nowhere in this release do they say when the first SLS launch will actually occur.

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

44 responses to “You Can't Exert National Prestige With A Rocket That Does Not Fly”

  1. John Kavanagh says:
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    SLS is a national liability, not a national asset.

    • tutiger87 says:
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      The sad part is that it didn’t have to be.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        Actually it did. As long as SLS was mandated to use shuttle infrastructure, it would never be affordable.

        The SRBs, special train cars (for SRB segments), main tank/core stage manufacturing facilities, special barge (to transport the core stage), VAB, crawlers, MLPs, and etc. are all expensive to maintain and operate. With the insane costs of operating all of those manufacturing facilities, transportation methods, integration facilities, and launch facilities, launch costs would never come down no matter how you structured the development and manufacturing contracts with Boeing and NGIS..

        Look at how minimalist SpaceX is with their infrastructure at the other former shuttle pad. They have one horizontal integration facility that receives stages trucked in on interstate highways. That HIF is tiny compared to the VAB. They roll the vehicle to the relatively clean pad on a smallish transporter/erector (excepting the former shuttle tower which is needed for crew). That’s it. Their “standing army” costs are far lower than SLS will ever be because Falcon was designed from day one to be as cheap as possible to build and launch.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Let’s not get lost here.

      SLS represents a way of thinking once thought inviolate – namely, that the rocket equation demanded expendable vehicles and solid boosters – a way of thinking now known to be flawed.

      This is an argument that has been long gestating for me. I could not understand the thinking behind the persistent and wide support SLS receives from honest thinkers that I admire. Yes, I know, that many of the cynics will shout ‘Jobs Program!’ and to an extent they are right (as if it’s a bad thing). It is a mistake, however, to ignore the intellectual clarity present in military assessment and policy formulation; and it is beyond silly to dismiss that establishment’s patriotism.

      And so my thinking about SLS has shifted. Not because it is a particularly good answer, but because the question cannot be ignored.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Whenever I start to try and disuade myself from criticizing SLS (I actually like Orion), I take a pencil (one of those mechanical ones that accountants like my dad used to use) and physically write out all of digits of the price, with all the zeros.
        Cost is what it is until it gets ridiculous. What the current administration is doing (either by accident or on purpose) with this Moon by 2024 thing is feeding the SLS program and its proponents rope with a great big 9 meter fairing wide noose on the end of it.

        SLS will fly once, maybe twice, maybe even three times, before its support looses momentum and then it will be the last launch system built that way by this country ever.

        Ironically, cost isn’t even killing it as much as schedule slippage. The two combined cause mission shrinkage and that shrinkage is strangling it’s future.

        • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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          Agreed: Schedule slippage is what will kill SLS, cost is, after all, really no object for a state agency unless those in charge really want it to be.

          Although people rightly make a meme out of Elon Musk’s wildly overoptimistic pronouncements on SpaceX’s schedules, there is no doubt that SpaceX has delivered an operational cargo and crew launch system. and one with some very impressive innovations and cost reductions too The SLS program has yet to have done anything similar despite a much larger budget and I suspect that it will not be able to meet the published Artemis schedule even if the budget were ramped up by the Augustine ‘three billion dollars budget increase a year, every year’ apocalypse prediction.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        “SLS represents a way of thinking once thought inviolate – namely, that the rocket equation demanded expendable vehicles and solid boosters – “

        I thought it was about the military wanting to keep the big solid rocket motor to strap nukes on if the need ever arose. It was a way the military could keep them and pass the costs on to NASA>

  2. Bill Hensley says:
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    Wow. A new low for Ms. Dittmar. If anyone has ever been bought and paid for by their corporate sponsors it is her.

  3. rb1957 says:
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    agreed … this is nonsense.

    why is SpaceX any less “American” than Boeing ?

    Is the inference that STS is a government sanctioned program, and so the government is assured of a rocket when they need one ? (I’m not suggesting they are, but it is an interpretation.) As opposed to those pesky private enterprise people who could hold the government for ransom, increasing their price to see what the market will bear ?

    • Tom Billings says:
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      Worse, SpaceX are those pesky people obsessed with going to Mars, instead of doling out the tax dollars to remind people that their member in Congress is driving their prosperity. The members and their corporate vassals long ago lost the idea that America is anything more than its government, and the power it can give its politicians.

  4. Bob Mahoney says:
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    For another, it takes a super heavy launch vehicle with much more lift to get large payloads from the Earth to the moon and beyond relative to LEO.

    Patently false. Ms Dittmar certainly knows this, as do any who have any awareness of space mission planning. Why would she put forward such an egregious mis-statement?

    As for the geopolitical angle, the coverage of and response to the Demo-2 launch clearly demonstrated that US-industry-provided efforts are perceived & described as efforts of our nation. Some have even argued that they are more appropriate representations of our national character than the faux-Apollo model represented by SLS/Orion.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      I agree it is a lot stronger as it shows the strength of our free enterprise system.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Perhaps she is referring to the later Blocks, which would include an exploration (or other) stage, in which case she would be right.

      Spaceship aside, SLS has unique interplanetary capabilities.

      • Bob Mahoney says:
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        No, Michael, the statement at face value is false regardless of SLS configuration. Earth-Orbit Rendezvous (a well-proven capability dating back to Gemini X’s use of its Agena target vehicle to change it’s orbit–to rendezvous with Gemini VIII’s target vehicle!–and continuing with continued ISS operations) belies it.

        As for your earlier statement about SLS manifesting an ‘earlier way of thinking’, I do not follow your precise phrasing. Apollo certainly didn’t get to the Moon on solid boosters. What DID ‘depend’ on SRBs was the infrastructure/industry that supported the compromise design of Shuttle. In the mid-2000s with Shuttle discontinuation looming, Congress (spearheaded by the usual folks) mandated that Ares V use as much shuttle infrastructure as possible, without insisting on reusability. SLS is blatantly Ares V re-imagined and imposed on NASA…again, by Congress.

        SLS is a shuttle-derived HLLV that is birthing 20 years past the time it made sense to create it. The only believable justification for its existence at this time in its specific configuration is what so many derisively claim. Given that sustainability is the most vital quality of any forward-directed space effort today, the disposable SLS’s outrageous price tag is an albatross, more a dragging detriment than a leveraging enabler.

        Better means have come on the scene, and I’m not talking Starship. FH is a partly reusable and relatively inexpensive option that is already flying.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Bob,

          I think that at least in part we have slightly different approaches to arguably the same set of facts – and the facts them selves are messy at the start. SLS has so many problems that it’s hard to find the most obvious off-ramp.
          I’m not certain though about your first paragraph? SLS isn’t conceptualized as a way to reach earth orbit. I take your point about SRBs.

          “SLS is a shuttle-derived HLLV that is birthing 20 years past the time it made sense to create it. The only believable justification for its existence at this time in its specific configuration is what so many derisively claim. “

          What was known or thought when the program was initiated? The use of these 5-segment motors would help support what was seen as an essential industry, though many pointed outage lift capacity could be provided with out them (an argument at least in part obviated by mass problems on the pointy end of the rocket).

          “Better means” have indeed arrived, and I take your point about FH, although flight plans would require alteration due to lower mass capabilities. It’s the way of thinking that’s had the biggest effect.

          SLS is a problematic program to be sure; and I do not want to support it or offer excuses. I simply think that the lessons of SLS are far deeper than the cost or schedule; and that SLS’ mission is widely misunderstood and as essential as it was 20 years ago. The ability to throw very large mass loads across the solar system remains as essential. What has changed is our way of thinking about just how that is achieved – in several smaller FH loads, or in one Big Bang; and I am unconvinced that the FH, with additional moving parts, is the viable way forward that I hope it is.

  5. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Yes, this Op-ed by Mary Lynne Dittmar seems to an effort to counter any idea of using the FH/Dragon2 for Artemis. From Mary Lynne Dittmar’s Op-ed;

    “For example, the environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) designed for crewed LEO spacecraft do not meet the requirements for longer-duration lunar missions. For another, it takes a super heavy launch vehicle with much more lift to get large payloads from the Earth to the moon and beyond relative to LEO. Simply put, substituting one spacecraft for another will not work.”

    And the recent Op-ed proposing Dragon2 to replace SLS/Orion for Artemis…

    https://www.washingtonpost….

    Send the SpaceX Dragon to the moon

    Opinion by Robert Zubrin and Homer Hickam
    June 22, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. CDT

    Looks like the Dinosaurs have noticed the mammals trying to take their pork away…

    • Tom Billings says:
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      “Looks like the Dinosaurs have noticed the mammals trying to take their pork away…”

      Worse, they have not, in their lifetimes, been involved in an Aeropspace Business system when it wasn’t pork. So, they, both the corporate vassals *and* the politicians who are the patrons, *do* think of it as stealing *their* pork, because they have never experienced it as anything else.

    • MAGA_Ken says:
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      NASA could spare a few million dollars to study using Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy to go to the Moon.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        They would probably have to do it as an RFI or RFP on using existing HSF as an alternative to SLS/Orion to stay within procurement rules.

        • MAGA_Ken says:
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          That’s fine. At least they would be meeting the spirit of Pence’s “by any means necessary”.

  6. tutiger87 says:
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    Your title says it all.

  7. ed2291 says:
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    Keith and the comments here nail it! If only our leaders and Mary Lynne were as aware and knowledgeable as Keith.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Dr. Dittmar has a long career in space advocacy and is not to be dismissed.

      Edit: OK, you anonymous down-voters…come out of the dark and explain your points. I just don’t think diminishing those with different views is useful, that’s all. I don’t agree with Dr. Dittmar most of the time. But any claim she’s not knowledgeable is silly. Her point of view is shared widely and must be deconstructed.

      • ed2291 says:
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        Keith made the point far better than I, but SLS is decades late, not making real progress, and billions over budget. Those are easily verifiable facts, not political claims. There is no excuse for this fraud, waste, and abuse on the United States government. Dittmar may have done some brilliant things in the past, but this piece of writing is nonsense and she should be called on it.

  8. Steve Pemberton says:
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    “does not convey the same intent”

    Track record is much more persuasive than lofty intentions.

  9. numbers_guy101 says:
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    That piece reminds me of the old Vietnam angle of apologists thinking if you are not sacrificing thousands your enemy won’t take you seriously. The code word motif was also implied in the 2nd Augustine report with the wording about a space program worthy of a great nation; read, you have to spend a lot in some peoples eyes or you are not serious.

    Incompetence as a feature, not a bug.

    • Jeff Greason says:
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      As one who participated in that title selection, I can say I had *nothing* like that in mind. Augustine 2 pointed out the dilemma we need to confront to make a civil government-funded space human spaceflight effort accomplish great things. Either we need to greatly increase NASA’s budget, or we have to pay the transition costs to shift funding away from traditional sources of supply.

      Where the “code word” issue comes in — a matter so delicate it was wordsmithed very carefully — is that “transition costs” means closing things that we don’t need any more, and there are closing costs associated with that that offset some of the near-term savings (just how much we couldn’t really determine, because people were strongly motivated to estimate closing costs on the very high side, and it took most of our study window just to establish that there were indeed alternatives to the traditional approach).

      In my own words, and not those of the report, we need a “BRAC for NASA” — the issue is analogous to the military base issue, but it is much more difficult because most states do not have more than one NASA center or large NASA contractor presence, so the closing of the one is a huge political cost. In the case of SLS, the point is not to close it — the point is to redeploy the funds to other purposes, such as buying Lunar landers, and doing the systems work needed to do Earth Orbit Rendezvous.

      If the funds are going to be redeployed, that means people are going to lose their job. It means closing test stands and test facilities unless one of more private companies can project a need for them and participate in sharing the costs. It probably means closing NASA facilities — possibly NASA centers. SLS was structured to use the same things Shuttle needed. Shuttle was structured to use the same things Apollo needed (and to take on some of what the ICBM industrial base needed). We’ve been kicking the can of how to “right size” NASA for an ever-involving industrial base since Apollo.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        “SLS was structured to use the same things Shuttle needed. Shuttle was structured to use the same things Apollo needed”

        A policy that seemed so obvious, didn’t it! At last, it was said, NASA learns, iterates, evolves! Many were screaming from the sidelines that not enough of the Shuttle was used.

        And now, here we are. I’m still not clear in my own mind how this obviously well-intended and logical plan was sidetracked into a costly beast (and I am mindful of parallels in the early STS program). Certainly we can diagnose, noting that the new guys threw out the old assumptions. But Mr. Musk will strongly disagree- he points out over and over that F1/F9 are iterations, that they were built from NASA history.

        There is much to be examined here.

      • mfwright says:
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        >we need a “BRAC for NASA” — the issue is

        >analogous to the military base issue

        During the Cold War with several bases throughout the country, also quantities of planes, tanks, personnel much higher with the draft but this was also the era of the citizen soldier. Now it is a caste system, much like NASA. Of course a few F22s can do a lot more than squadrons of F86s and F4s but highly unlikely we will ever return to the high quantities as back in 20th century. Same NASA will never return to Apollo levels of personnel and spending. A NASA Center may never close but they may become “smaller” like Ames is getting swallowed up by Google.

      • TheRadicalModerate says:
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        “Where the “code word” issue comes in — a matter so delicate it was wordsmithed very carefully — is that “transition costs” means closing things that we don’t need any more, and there are closing costs associated with that that offset some of the near-term savings…”

        Isn’t about 85% of this the MSFC/MAF/Stennis complex, and its associated contractor hangers-on?

        This seems like a pretty painless “transition”, because there are plenty of things for that work force to do. The big ticket item is to get NASA out of the launcher biz and redeploy the resources into the spacecraft and surface systems that enable deep space, lunar surface, and eventually martian surface ops.

        This is admittedly a lot less high-thrust propulsion work and a lot more tankage and lightweight structures work, but there are several mitigations:

        1) Human exploration runs on pressure vessels, and MAF is well-suited to make them.

        2) Just because MSFC gets out of the high-thrust biz doesn’t mean that they’re out of the low-thrust biz. Beyond that, Huntsville now has enough private propulsion infrastructure to ease the pain quite a bit. If NASA truly commits to distributed launch, then there’s a lot of demand for BE-4’s from Blue going forward. The same will be true for Vulcan cores, Centaur 5’s, Centaur 5 longs, and eventually ACES.

        3) I wouldn’t be incredibly surprised to see RL10 losing design wins to Blue Origin, which kinda has it bracketed with the BE-3U for large second stages and BE-7 for a lot of the things that an RL10 would do for landers or in-space systems. If that’s the case, there could be even more work in Huntsville. And as for Canoga Park, I seem to recall that there’s another company out there that’s building engines at a pretty decent clip…

        4) People seem to be snapping up idle Stennis resources at a pretty good clip so far. A lot of the companies doing so probably won’t make it, but a future with distributed launch instead of SLS is a future where you need more test stands, not fewer.

        Ultimately, I think you can avoid “BRAC for NASA” if you’re clever and willing to be politically creative. The more difficult problem is soft-landing the parts of the supply chain, which of course is intentionally spread out into as many different congressional districts as possible. However, again, a lot of smaller launchers grows the industry a lot more than a few big launchers.

        Note that this all assumes that Starship doesn’t grow up to be a category killer, which it absolutely will if it works as advertised and the rest of the industry doesn’t react real soon now. But I’d say that that’s a good reason to make the necessary reforms sooner rather than later.

    • mfwright says:
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      >space program worthy of a great nation

      I remember reading in one of Wayne Hale’s blog where he assisted in the 2nd Augustine committee but he didn’t want his name in the report. Reason is options were capped at $3 billion. Wayne felt this limited options that are worthy, some may cost a little more.

  10. Michael Spencer says:
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    Ms. Dittmar asks: Should the US field orbital class rockets as part of our armed forces?

    Ms. Dittmar’s argument is certainly hampered by SLS delays and projected costs. Her point, though, is worthy of discussion. And while her phraseology is crafty – “someone else’s rocket and crew vehicle” – her question is not.

    The failure of SLS does not immediately condemn the country’s need for a robust space-access system. In fact, vigorous discussions regarding SLS have deflected the argument.

    Certainly the Pentagon, looking out 50 years or more, sees a battlefield in space. From the POV of 2020, I can’t characterize that battlefield, nor can I predict what assets might be points of contention five or more decades from today. But I hope somebody is thinking about it.

    One thing likely, though: buying private rockets on a per-launch basis in order to access space is questionable policy. Imagine, for instance, a WWII battlefield in which tanks and artillery were owned and operated by private companies.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Consider that today’s launch vehicles used by DOD are all expendable (excepting the first stages of Falcon launch vehicles). Because of this, every launch requires the contractor to build an entirely new launch vehicle (or refurbish recovered stages and build a brand new upper stage). So, I’d argue that today it doesn’t really make much of a difference who “owns” the launch vehicle since it’s only used once anyway. In today’s world, it makes sense just to contract out the launch, just like DOD does when it flies cargo on commercial airliners.

      Now, in 50 years or more, I would expect all EELV size or bigger orbital launch vehicles to be reusable. In that future, it would make sense for DOD to own the vehicles. Just as they own and operate their own C-5 Galaxy transports, it would make sense they own and operate their own orbital transports as well.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Jeff: You’ve identified just how deeply SX has changed the way we think. Lower prices are sweet, to be sure. It’s rethinking so many base assumptions that has shaken a moribund industry. As we see it today, the implications of reuse are not fully obvious. I can wait to see what spaceship offers.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, the business model for the Starship/Super Heavy may well be to sell them to the military, private firms and even NASA to own and fly as often as they need.

        I could for example see VG buying a couple dozen to use for point to point passenger service on a network of routes between Folkestone, (UK), Sydney, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Tokyo.

        NASA could outfit a few as laboratories and use them in Earth orbit or lunar orbit as reusable space stations for months long deployments to replace permenant stations like the ISS. Unlike the ISS they could be reconfigured and used in different orbits as research requires, much like oceanographic research vessels.

    • Jeff Greason says:
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      I think a *much* better discussion is how we’re going to build up a space “post strike” capability. That’s a legitimate problem. Part of what makes striking US space assets attractive to an adversary is that we might not be able to replace them in time to affect a conflict — by the time the space assets were back up, the relevant Earthside war might be over.

      For example, we might need “after strike” basing for launch vehicles and a secure storage of satellites spares ready to go to reconstitute “good enough” capability. We *DO* need rapid space-debris clearing capabilities to ensure an operationally useful environment. We might need silo-launched, or mobile launched, or air-launched capabilities to get away from dependence on the Cape and Vandenberg which are vulnerable targets.

      In other words, the reality of space as a contested domain really *does* require us to think hard about new systems. It is by no means obvious that this is anything like “one more booster that has a different logo on the side”

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        As you apparently imply, we have yet to publicly initiate the sort of military re-thinking that will be necessary, given your examples, and many more.

        There is good reason to think that we are seeing a shift comparable to, for instance, the reassessment of battleships, or the utility of tanks. It is not fr-fetched to imagine military thinking dominated by space-based protection of assessments Earthside or on orbit. As you point out, rapid replacement but be part of the policy.

        And, so, here we are again; as imagined, SLS has/had/will have/would have had many of these capabilities. If not SLS, then another system.

    • James in Southern Illinois says:
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      It was private industry that made the tanks, planes, and guns that won WWII.

    • Tom Billings says:
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      “One thing likely, though: buying private rockets on a per-launch basis in order to access space is questionable policy. Imagine, for instance, a WWII battlefield in which tanks and artillery were owned and operated by private companies.”

      Except that we are not talking about buying tanks and artillery. In Space Force discussions what is talked about us buying is the same sort of service the Navy has bought for decades from private companies. These are logistical services before combat starts, to place assets where they are needed long before shooting starts.

      I should also note that buying combat services is completely legitimate. Highly competent private companies have provided such security services for decades. That is disliked by many, but has a *long* military tradition behind it, that turned out well far more often than it botched up. The idea, that the way we have done things for 200+ years is the *only*righteous*way* to accomplish a military task, … is, … questionable.

    • Not Invented Here says:
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      “Ms. Dittmar asks: Should the US field orbital class rockets as part of our armed forces?”

      She never asked this in the article.

      “One thing likely, though: buying private rockets on a per-launch basis in order to access space is questionable policy. Imagine, for instance, a WWII battlefield in which tanks and artillery were owned and operated by private companies.”

      That is because private companies have no interest in operating tanks and artillery themselves, these are weapons of war, they have no commercial value, only government needs them so it makes sense government owns them.

      Transportation to space has commercial usage and value, so it makes sense for private companies to own them. If government feels it needs full control of the space transportation system during war time, they can easily do so by exercising their war time power. Many civilian ships and airplanes were changed to military use during WWII, it doesn’t require government to own them beforehand.

  11. richard_schumacher says:
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    Yeah, when are they gonna start blowing those suckers up, anyway? We want some spectacle for our money.

  12. Bad Horse says:
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    NASA should get out of the launch vehicle business and buy rides.
    Our space agency should work on developing crewed spacecraft that can go to Mars. If Orion ever does go to Mars, it will be docked to something bigger. National prestige is bolster by US commercial companies being able to do what only other nations governments can. SLS is draining talent, dollars and national will.

  13. TheRadicalModerate says:
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    By giving an HLS contract to SpaceX to develop a non-EDL-capable version of Starship, NASA has tacitly acknowledged that the last thing that SLS/Orion is good for–getting crews from Earth’s surface to NRHO and back–is ultimately unnecessary. If a lunar Starship can shuttle crews from NRHO to the lunar surface and back, the only difference for getting them from LEO to the lunar surface and back is an extra refueling in NRHO. Then F9/Dragon 2 can take crews to and from LEO, and both SLS and Orion can be sent to the glue factory.

  14. rb1957 says:
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    Actually does she have a point ?
    Is it more impressive if a government chooses “to do the hard things” and invest public money where free enterprise doesn’t ?
    But once free enterprise is willing to make the investment, does it matter any more ?
    But then free enterprise is in it for their own ends, as opposed to a self-interested government (that changes every 4 or 8 years) ?