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Commercialization

Why Do We Need SLS?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 8, 2018
Filed under , ,
Why Do We Need SLS?

SpaceX could save NASA and the future of space exploration, Lori Garver op ed, The Hill
“NASA has spent more than $15 billion to try and develop their own heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), with a first flight planned in roughly two years – assuming all goes according to plan. Once operational, SLS will cost NASA over $1 billion per launch. The Falcon Heavy, developed at zero cost to the taxpayer, would charge NASA approximately $100M per launch. In other words, NASA could buy 10 Falcon Heavy launches for the coat of one SLS launch – and invest the remainder in truly revolutionary and meaningful missions that advance science and exploration. It is understandable that government employees, contractors and their elected officials want to keep this expensive rocket development program going. A large share of NASA’s roughly $19billion budget has been spent on this constituency, and in turn is protected by them. We have come to accept this “tax” on the agency, but It is time for the nation to decide if we want a space program – or a jobs program.”

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

111 responses to “Why Do We Need SLS?”

  1. SouthwestExGOP says:
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    This might be a good time to sell a house in Huntsville, Alabama.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Remember, Blue Origin is building its engines there. And if SLS is gone NASA could work on true Interplanetary ships, ones assembled in orbit and which are reusable.

      • SouthwestExGOP says:
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        Interplanetary ships – the technology to make a closed environmental control system is still in it’s infancy. The engines needed for those are still in the PowerPoint stage. After all, how soon until we can run a Lunar landing? Ten years? There may be a workforce for missions like those but it will be small.

        • fcrary says:
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          Fully closed life support doesn’t exist and probably never will. But closing the gas and water loops isn’t technology in it’s infancy. Maybe not 100% closure. If you look at the numbers, supplying food, as well as enough water, oxygen and nitrogen to make up for less than 100% closure, it isn’t all that much mass.

          I’m not sure what sort of engines you’re imagining. I’m for solar electric. The state of the art isn’t up to human spaceflight to Mars, but it’s well beyond the PowerPoint stage.

          Finally, I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation for why, today, we can’t do something within ten years, given the fact that it actually was done in the 1960s within eight years. (Note, I wrote, “can’t” not “don’t” or “won’t”.)

      • jamesmuncy says:
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        YES!!! This is the real point. Smart minds in Huntsville could work on real, cutting edge, and important projects while the more pedestrian work of launching stuff to LEO can be handled by companies, including ones located next door in Decatur. But Charlie Bolden never offered that trade to Sen. Shelby, and the result is the Rocket to Nowhere.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Expanding the point, imagine a world where NASA focuses on the construction of true ‘space ships’ (Aldrin Cycler?) which would, at some point, also give way to private efforts.

          It’s a big shift in mindset, though.

      • Tim12278 says:
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        Only if they are selected by ULA and even then the earliest versions will be built in Seattle.

    • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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      Shutting down SLS and transferring the money to an effective Lunar/cislunar program won’t ever happen without some major Congressional deal to replace the current NASA SE regional cashflow. (The last White house tried scaling MSFC way back without any such deal, and ended up instead with SLS mandated and specified by Congress, leading to the current mess.)

      My thought on the matter: Missile defense needs expanding, and Huntsville is already a center of that. More Congressional funding for Huntsville SMDC plus regional contractors, while scaling back MSFC to a place where the dysfunctional management checks each other’s paperwork – a classic “No Output Division” – while the actual technical talent at MSFC gets productive new jobs with SMDC or its contractors or in the growing private launch industry.

      (He modestly proposes…)

      • fcrary says:
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        It’s a bit off topic, but your comment about the “No Output Division” reminded me of a flow chart and I just had to post it. See the box labeled “management directives.” https://uploads.disquscdn.c

        • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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          I first heard the “No Output Division” concept from Jerry Pournelle in the late eighties – oddly enough in the context of a discussion of what to do with NASA’s ineffectual space transportation developers. (This problem has been around for a while.)

          It’s what you do with an organization that can neither be disbanded nor trusted with any real task without damaging the overall mission. Send them to the Land of NOD – pay their salaries, keep the lights on in their offices, then give them zero-funding busywork till they retire (or for the unfortunate competent few embedded in the morass, leave and find useful work.)

          It wasn’t original with Jerry – earliest mention of a NOD I can find is from 1982, here http://archive.computerhist

          Anyway, great flow chart! Every NOD is different, but yes, the “Management Directives” box from your chart (second down from top left) on its own would be the appropriate org chart for this one – if ever my modest proposal is adopted…

  2. Keith Vauquelin says:
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    Precisely. SLS has been rendered obsolete.

    • ed2291 says:
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      This is so so true! I hope our government is not so hopelessly corrupt that it can recognize the logic in this article.

    • Keith Vauquelin says:
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      I see in the comments that there is some opinion that engineers are responsible for the ridiculous costs of SLS.

      They are not – they are merely doing the job they have been asked to do. Our government is responsible for the expense of the leviathan SLS boondoggle and black hole of waste.

      Love(d) the Saturn V architecture – imagine if it had been allowed to evolve into something with recover and reuse in mind. I have seen artists’ concepts of such a scenario.

      But, we all know hindsight is 20/20. Saturn V is long gone – and SLS needs to be put down, now.

      Time to cut the losses, and move to a far better future than the dead end / waste of tax payer money / jobs program that SLS is.

      NASA should be tasked with pure R & D, and the private sector tasked with making exploration and infrastructure architecture reliable and affordable.

      I think all of us could get behind my proposal. SpaceX’ approach is certainly setting standards and best practices that all the traditional launch providers are gnashing their teeth over.

      Time for them to die, or evolve, also.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        I agree and it is a shame NASA is wasting engineering talent on it. Imagine what they could do if turned loose on pure R&D projects as in the NACA days.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          What I see happening is this: NASA (and, I think the public) wants expansion into the solar system. Government wants to continue to appear relevant to the process–so that they can get credit for it.
          SLS is the vehicle by which Congress gets what they want. DSG and DST give SLS a purpose, thereby giving Congress relevance to the process. They also look on the surface like they need Congress also.
          Except they don’t really. The engine and hab tech is being developed like Commercial Crew, so that at a certain point along the way, once that tech is developed, SLS can be allowed to die after it is fully surpassed and also even DSG and DST eventually, and we are left with a fully enabled private sector. This arrangement of “You, private industry, can have LEO and we, gov. agency, will take everything else” is just a line drawn on papers to hand out to clueless Congressfolk who don’t understand that the only difference between one orbit and another is just a little more delta v.

      • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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        The engineers, no.

        The management/organizational/political structure they’re embedded in, however, very much is responsible for what SLS has become.

        Some effective way to fix – or if unfixable, work around – that structure must be found and implemented, before NASA can accomplish great things in human spaceflight again.

        Put another way, there is a lot of talent within NASA’s launcher development establishment. But they’re like chocolate chips in a concrete cookie. Try to get any good out of that cookie as-is, and all you’re going to do is break your teeth.

    • Leonard McCoy says:
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      Its dead Jim

  3. Henry Vanderbilt says:
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    With Falcon Heavy flying, SLS is Dead Rocket Walking.

    Lori points out the ~10X price difference, but leaves out a factor almost as significant for a serious deep-space human exploration program: Launch cadence.

    At best, if all works out as planned, SLS ground facilities are nominally designed to support 2 flights a year. Even taking that at face value, a flight every six months is no way to run a serious Lunar/cislunar program. And at a more realistic one SLS per year? Not much of a program.

    F9H cadence? I expect to some considerable degree it could be as much faster than that as people will pay for F9H flights.

    True, the relatively small LEO payload difference between F9H and SLS Block 1 does get larger at cislunar distances. And you might say, RSN we’ll have 140-ton Block 2 SLS with a fancy new NASA-developed hydrogen-fuel large upper stage?

    Right – RSN, and, affordable too. Ayup. On the recent NASA in-house development record, “soon” and “affordable” maybe not the way to bet there…

    But consider: Anything a big new extended-ops-duration hydrogen upper stage might do for SLS, it can do for F9H. And likely also, as with F9H versus SLS Block 1, years faster and 10x cheaper, if it’s also commercially developed by an experienced vendor.

    Hmm. An experienced US commercial developer of hydrogen upper stages, where might we find such a beast? Aside from ULA…

    True, under normal commercial circumstances an appropriately-sized ULA ACES stage flying on an F9H would be laughably unlikely. But a major White House NASA mandate to expand human presence to Luna and cislunar space radically sooner & cheaper than has been recent agency practice – IE, a near-term funded market for quite a few such launches – could make for strange bedfellows.

    What might a NASA Lunar/cislunar program accomplish with, say, a dozen 80%-of-SLS-Block-2-to-cislunar payloads per year for less than the cost of two SLS Block 2’s?

    Just modestly proposin’…

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Congress is still holding out the hope of turning ISS resupply and crew transport into pork through SLS/Orion as a “backup” (I loved watching Bolden shake his head and laugh condescendingly when they would bring it up)…in spite of the momentum and energy that is there for all to see. DSG, lunar bases, etc. will all end up resupplied by the private sector, not SLS, because of cost and launch cadence. Then, when one copy of DSG and DST and a lunar base are built, Congress won’t see the ax until it is too late and “Starman” (the metaphor) suddenly lands on Mars.

  4. Steve Harrington says:
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    NASA Marshall should be working on payloads, not launch systems. Lunar and Mars mission technology could be developed for future exploration.

  5. Chris says:
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    I don’t understand why the politicians and NASA overall don’t look at what SpaceX has been able to do. The PR alone would be more than enough to develop their own versions of reusable rockets. Never mind easily elect them with the jobs, and tech sectors that would flock to the sites.

    Heck part of the $15 billion could be used to modernize and redesign NASA flight center and so on.

  6. ThomasLMatula says:
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    The key is giving the engineers building the SLS something else to do. Just a thought, but does NASA still have these two telescopes from NSA in storage? FH might be a cheap way to launch them to Mars or the Moon.

    https://www.space.com/16000

    This would give MSFC something to do short term. If they are the same size as the Hubble their mass would be only 25,000 lbs, so it should be possible to place one in Mars orbit which would be able to get some great views of the rovers on the surface 🙂

    • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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      Just a thought to bear in mind: After its track record in recent decades – billions per year reliably spent for nothing useful ever flying – do you really want to entrust MSFC management with ANY project you care about?

      The bureaucratic structure there strike me as dysfunctional beyond any hope of reform or salvage. Slash their budget, NOD them, and fund useful regional alternative projects for the technical talent (for the competent workers in general) to move over to. MHO, FWIW.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Nope, but you have to give them something to do to keep the Congress Critters happy. Otherwise they will do what the safety office is doing with Commercial Crew and start meddling with things that are important 🙂

    • Synthguy says:
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      “The key is giving the engineers building the SLS something else to do.”

      Exactly! NASA should get out of the space launch business entirely, and had that over to the private sector. Let SpaceX and Blue Origin and others cover that.

      Instead NASA should build spaceships. These would be carried into orbit by F9H or New Glenn, or whatever launch vehicle was appropriate – assembled in orbit, and operate from and in space. They don’t return to Earth. Their role is to provide safe, cost-effective and efficient human transportation or payload transport between Earth and Moon / CisLunar space, or to the Near Earth Asteroids, or to Mars. I’m thinking something like Nautilus-X (https://www.youtube.com/wat… ) . NASA could build a small fleet of these – some of which are based at commercial space platforms in LEO or at the Deep Space Gateway in lunar orbit, and then NASA takes us around the solar system.

      They recapture their exploration mission, and work side by side with commercial space operators, flying BFR / BFS. That to me is a much better future than an SLS that is way over budget, behind schedule and economically impractical.

    • Michael Kaplan says:
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      Why would one put a telescope on the Moon? The lunar dust, huge temeperature gradients…Yuck! Lunar orbit….you’d have a very low obsrvational efficiency avoiding stray light from the Earh, Moon and Sun.

      Mars orbit…tt would be far, far cheaper to build an upgraded MRO with HiRISE version 2.0 than to modify a “WFIRST-class” optical system.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        You wouldn’t be looking out into space, you would be studying the lunar surface. The resolution would be fantastic, great for surveying landing sites, base options, geological formations.

        • Michael Kaplan says:
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          It’s significant overkill. It would be far cheaper to build a “LRO version 2” than modifying a former NRO asset, probably by a factor 5 in cost savings.

      • fcrary says:
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        Radio astronomy. No ionospheric cutoff, and no “light” pollution from terrestrial broadcasts (assuming it’s on the far side.) Now ask me if the science justifies the costs, and we’ll have a different conversation.

        • Michael Kaplan says:
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          I agree. Far side could be especially exciting…just need to figure out how to get the data back to Earth. It’ll be done eventually, of course.

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, this year. Part of the Chang’e 4 mission is a relay satellite on an Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit. Oh, except NASA can’t use that, since it would be congressionally-forbiden, bilateral cooperation with China.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Ooops!

    • cb450sc says:
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      The more complete one is assigned to WFIRST/AFTA. The problem is the mirrors are a small fraction of the total mission cost, and you don’t necessarily have a mission in the queue to use the second one. Creating work to use it would just be a drain on already assigned resources.

    • SouthwestExGOP says:
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      The way it works is that we decide what to do and then acquire the workforce to do it. We don’t find make work for the existing workforce just to give them something to do. There are many things that would be nice to do – but we have all sorts of studies to determine our priorities. If Falcon Heavy can supply that need then the work force needs to reconsider its options.

      • fcrary says:
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        I’m afraid that’s not the case, and hasn’t been for a long time. To avoid offending anyone living and non-retired, I’ll point to NASA’s _official_ history of the Viking program. Although from the start, it was a Mars mission focused life-detection, the details were all about center work force. Which center did the orbiters, the entry, decent and landing systems, the lander and the payload, was all about who had staff looking for work as Apollo wound down.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      I advise reading more. NASA is using one in the IR WF space telescope. I think it will launch by Atlas in ’21. There was a story here 2 months ago that they had to cut costs.

    • tutiger87 says:
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      If you took the bureaucrats out of the way and let the engineers work, we’d have a rocket already. Please stop your continuing ridiculous disparaging of the engineers.

      • fcrary says:
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        I don’t think he was disparaging the engineers. Part of the problem is congressional interest in jobs for people in their districts. In this case, the engineers are those people. So, given the fact that Congress won’t go for anything which reduces the workforce at Marshall (or other NASA centers), and SLS is (arguably) a waste of time and effort, what should we (or NASA) do? Suggesting we find some other, more meaningful project for the engineers to work on isn’t disparaging them.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Yes, I am not disparaging the engineers, they have to work on what NASA assigns them to work on and work under those constraints which is really sad given their talent and what they could do if turned loose on pure R&D projects as in the old NACA days.

      • Eric Reynolds says:
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        The problem is that engineers become managers and bureaucrats! They “just want to build big rockets” and think it is their “right” to use public money to do so. It is time to have this debate.

        • james w barnard says:
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          Where the problem with “engineers become managers and bureaucrats” is that they are coerced into it by their superiors or the customer (NASA, et al)! And when they try to recommend or order things as engineers, they are told, “Stop thinking like an engineer and start thinking like a manager!” And then people wonder why things (and people 🙁 ) start falling out of the sky in flaming pieces! If this had been some other country, the individual who made that statement would have been given a gun or some pills and told to “go do the honorable thing”!
          If, as a design engineer on a program that was supposed to provide commercial launch services in competition with Ariane IV, I had told my management that it was ridiculous to try to compete with a French government subsidized $78M price with a $125M price tag, I would have been told, “get back to your drawing board and leave the business end to us managers!” The outfit I worked for sold three launch vehicles to commercial customers (one of which failed) and the fourth to NASA, and because of lack of coordination as to what measurement system was to be used between the contractor and the customer landed a high-value payload in “instant disassembly mode” at a location everyone aspires to go to! (Names changed to protect the guilty!)
          Ad LEO! AD LUNA! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!

    • Carlos DelCastillo says:
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      I agree. NASA should be doing the things others are not doing. I am a big proponent of the “As only NASA can” mantra. We should be learning how to fly into orbit and pushing the limits or planetary and earth science research. Keep in mind that one launch of the SLS can pay for a nice end-to-end ~10 year research satellite mission!!
      c

    • fcrary says:
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      That’s not a bad idea, but I’m not sure how practical it is. You need to do more than employ the same number of people in the same congressional districts. You need to employ more-or-less the same people. Otherwise certain senators and representatives will be unhappy with the turnover. Also, the facilities at Marshall (and other places) are geared toward particular types of work.

      As a practical matter, an engineer who knows all about testing hydrogen/oxygen engines (and has a test stand to do so) can’t be shifted to designing an orbital telescope or a space-rated nuclear reactor. He’d be the wrong person for the job. If you asked him to shift over the methane/oxygen engines, that shouldn’t be a problem.

  7. Synthguy says:
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    See my point below re Nautilus-X and NASA getting into the spaceship business. I’d also add that NASA could really focus on solving some of the engineering, biomedical and environmental challenges of human spaceflight across the solar system. I think it is utterly pointless and needlessly dangerous to spend 18 months getting to Mars. The faster the better – so NASA should really focus on high thrust propulsion, including spacecraft nuclear power and propulsion. Likewise, NASA should be finding ways to protect humans on board from the hazards in the space environment. All the money being poured into SLS / Orion could be diverted into making faster, better, safer and more economical means of sending humans around the inner solar system.

    Shutting down SLS / Orion does not mean losing jobs or shutting down NASA. It does mean using money more effectively and in different areas and most importantly, it means challenging out-dated mindsets and thinking that continue to dominate NASA as an organisation. The path forward is not a step back to Apollo Mark 2 – its about embracing risk and innovation and doing something fundamentally new.

  8. KptKaint says:
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    First there has been some taxpayer money used to develop Falcon rocket technology. Not very much compared to the SLS. F9H does need a LOX/ LH upper stage to improve its performance. 2 additional F9 boosters for the first stage would also help. The SLS is nothing more that an expensive effort to keep leftover shuttle technology and processes around. It’s time to certify the Orion spacecraft to fly on a F9H. The SpaceX BFR is also coming.

    • fcrary says:
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      I think that would be a bad idea. Since BFR is coming (on a Musk-like schedule, but sometime down the road), why mess with the Falcon Heavy design? I suppose you could add a cryogenic upper stage, but most payloads wouldn’t need it. With some additional pad facilities you can just have the occasional customer who needs one provide it as part of the payload. Adding more cores would probably be a major reengineering project. The SpaceX plan is to focus development work on BFR. Falcon Heavy is probably good enough in the short term, and improving it would probably delay BFR development.

      • Michael Halpern says:
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        A raptor upper stage may be useful as that isn’t too far from BFR development but if it isn’t needed why bother

  9. KptKaint says:
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    When I read about NASA and their delays with the SLS compared to the progress SpaceX has made, I think about the original von Braun team that came over to NASA from the US Army. von Braun’s Germans were used to build their own rockets much like SpaceX does. They inspected and disassembled rockets built by NASA contractors finding problems along the way such as the famous glove. The Germans are gone and NASA continues to rely on politically dictated contractors. It’s time to build rockets like SpaceX does.

  10. zug42 says:
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    I would rather have the engineers push on the edge like the Nautilus-X. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

  11. Brian_M2525 says:
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    What NASA and Nelson are doing is corruption plain and simple. Maybe NASA can give MSFC back to the US Army?

  12. Paul451 says:
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    The Falcon Heavy […]would charge NASA approximately $100M per launch.

    Not entirely true. NASA (and the DoD) pay a “government surcharge” compared to commercial customers, due to the higher costs to SpaceX of complying with their requirements. A Falcon 9 mission that might cost $60m for a commercial vendor, would cost NASA upwards of $100m. I would expect a FH launch, around $90m commercially, would cost NASA upwards of $150m.

    Doesn’t change Garver’s point, but we shouldn’t exaggerate.

    Nor do we need to. When I’ve played FH-what-ifs, I usually blow out the cost of FH to $200-250m or so per launch. It doesn’t matter, the advantage remains. It’s hard to invent an architecture as bad as SLS.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      Except Ares. NASA said they would get it right this time. Not.

      • Carlos DelCastillo says:
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        You are correct. The question is why is this “government surcharge” necessary for mission success?

    • Roger Jones says:
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      This is mostly true in terms of additional oversight (which effectively replaces the insurance commercial customers purchase; gov’t is self-insured), but you have wildly overestimated the “surcharge” – it’s maybe half what you’ve stated.
      Also, the “internet price” for a F9 is cash upfront. Not sure if all of the commercial customers do that, or pay (more) over time on a milestone basis (like the government does). So, the price difference is there but not so extreme as you’re suggesting.
      I think the larger point is that even with these “surcharge” prices the government is getting more for the money than other current launch providers.

      • fcrary says:
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        I don’t quite see how the additional oversight is a replacement for insurance. The former is about reducing risk of failure (in theory) and the later is about dealing with the consequences of a failure. The government doesn’t insure because they have deep enough pockets to pay for a replacement if they want, and given that, the premium on the insurance would be a waste.

  13. numbers_guy101 says:
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    Critics of the SLS are being overly kind when saying the SLS will cost NASA about 1 billion dollars a flight. Thay are repeating the party line as if its a starting point for saying how bad a direction this is. Practically speaking that billion a launch is the most optimistic, least likely, lowest cost, and far, far in the future, once an operation gets in gear, decades away.

    Any year the flight rate is less than 2 that years costs will still accrue. Plain and simple, like with the Shuttle, same acquisition basis, the budget never changed much year to year. For example, perhaps 10 years after 1st flight in 2020 and say a 2.5 billion a year budget, and say 4 flights, you would be at 25 billion divided by 4, or 6.25 billion a flight. Other likely scenarios…well, you get the idea.

    To top it off, there will be that SLS budget sucking sound, even more funds for upgrades or fixes of this or that. The very upgrades and fixes that guess what – likely reduce the accumulated flight rate over time. NASA will try to say that’s not SLS but it really is all part of doing and owning the SLS. Add hundreds of millions more per year.

    1 billion an SLS launch? Dream on! Get out the calculator. We could only wish the SLS cost per flight will be THAT LOW!

    • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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      One approach to estimating actual full cost of an SLS flight is to assume the current SLS annual expenditure, ~$3 billion, continues, and divide it by the assumed number of flights per year.

      (Assuming the funding would be scaled back after SLS is flying strikes me as a lot less politically realistic than assuming it would continue more or less as-is.)

      (Ignore for now the additional current ~$1 billion/year for Orion.)

      Max nominal number of SLS flights per year that the support infrastructure is designed for: Two. Giving ~$1.5 billion per SLS flight, ignoring payload cost. (By the same metric, an Orion capsule payload would add ~$500 million per flight.)

      Fewer flights, more cost per flight. My guess is that between support infrastructure shortfalls-from-nominal and delays in developing the very large & complex missions that would justify an SLS flight, the likely SLS annual flight rate would be closer to, One. Yielding a cost per flight of ~$3 billion, plus payload costs.

  14. Saturn1300 says:
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    I agree. Musk said he could do the Moon with FH but does not recommend it. Wait for BFS maybe? Orion Expedition One could be launched sooner, rather than slipping. In a destruct the solids would burn the capsule parachutes and spread burning chunks of fuel over a wide area. The fuel has to burn out it can not be put out. It burned right thru cars in the parking lot. Kerosene burning(AMOS} is not much of a problem. A dike is needed to keep it out of the storm drains. Maybe Trump will decide to do something

    • Zed_WEASEL says:
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      FH is great to get stuff to Lunar orbit. Then What? There is no lander, surface habitat or orbital facilities being funded let alone available in a reasonable period of time (2 US Presidential terms).

      The NASA Deep Space Gateway outpost is just make work for the SLS. Since it could not support lander operations, it’s basically a manned observatory of the Lunar surface that is crewed part time that will take many SLS flights to assembled.

      However the BFS changes everything. Because it could do so many tasks. Cis-Lunar transportation, Lunar surface access, orbital facility, Lunar habitat, propellant depot and Earth return. It is likely that the BFS will not be as optimized as possible for any one task. But you only have to developed and build one vehicle class that can also gets you to Mars and beyond.

  15. sunman42 says:
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    What a concept: a heavy-lift launch vehicle denned by enthusiastic, young engineers over one designed by a Senate subcommittee.

  16. Corbly says:
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    Like any large ongoing federal project, SLS does have a constituency of employees and corporations with reasons to keep it going. But, a NASA proposal to abandon SLS and replace it with SpaceX, etc., vehicles would have to pass political muster with Congress and the White House. While the lower costs of using SpaceX could free significant dollars in NASA’s budget, there’s is no guarantee that Congress wouldn’t, now or in the future, see those savings as an opportunity to cut NASA’s budget.

    When the private sector can provide vehicles capable of supporting the missions NASA wants to fly, of course that’s what NASA should do. Transitioning to that from programs like SLS means, among other things, transferring jobs and money from some states and Congressional districts to other states and Congressional districts. Congress is fully capable of keeping something like SLS alive as a pork barrel project.

  17. achilles03 says:
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    To be fair in this discussion, people should make it an apples-to-apples comparison. A Falcon Heavy may cost $100m, and it may be able to lift 62mT to LEO, but not the same time. Spacex is good at marketing themselves, and quote the cost for a reusable FH, but quote the capability when used as expendable. What’s the real cost to get a 62mT to LEO via the FH? Probably closer to $300m since you loose 3 booster stages and 27 engines (and the upper stage). In fact, an expendable falcon 9 can lift more than a reusable FH since the reusability results in a huge performance loss. Also, as mentioned in other comments, the FH’s performance beyond LEO diminishes a lot faster than SLS. In fact, the FH has less than half the payload performance to Mars than SLS block 1B (second flight).

    So taking that into account, the cost discrepancy for SLS and FH for mass to Mars is probably less than a factor of 2. Additionally, the fairing size on FH is half of what SLS will have 5.2m vs 10m). The increased cost and complexity of designing hardware for deep space exploration isn’t insignificant if you have to break up the hardware for multiple launches and fit it into a 5m fairing.

    Taking a step back, there seems to be a perception by some that SLS and FH are in some sort of reality show where one contestant is must be eliminated, or that the US is better off putting all it’s eggs in one basket with one heavy lift rocket. I would much prefer having more than only one vehicle to use for deep space exploration. Looking at case studies in other industries, having a single source isn’t always in the best interest of mankind.

    • Skinny_Lu says:
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      You make a good case for saving SLS… As well as it could it possibly be justified. The political winds are powerful and will surely cling to such arguments. But even Congress will have a hard time ignoring the math. Re-usability is the future. Solid Rocket Boosters are relics from the the Shuttle program, not suitable for human spaceflight in the 21st century. I’d look to Blue Origin as a credible competitor to follow SX. Falcon Heavy is already flying and laying the ground work for the follow-on BFR. SX uses an evolving process, learning from F9 and FH experience. Instead, NASA is hunkering down with obsolete technology such as hydrogen fueled SSMEs (now rebranded RS-25) and segmented solid rocket boosters, each segment is a big “loaded gun” from the time the propellant is cast, through transport by rail, to handling and stacking. SRB are good for missiles that must sit in a silo or submarine for years, that’s about it.

      • Michael Halpern says:
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        I don’t think congress will have trouble doing the math, they just often use different math, they count in voters in their districts that benefit.

        SRBs have a shelf life too, they can be damaged by light and vibration, they might blow up or they might blow up after you light them, they store reasonably well, but not forever, and can go off when you dont want them to when damaged, thats part of why I think for rockets that have to sit around, hybrids are probably better (they also take up less space and are controllable)

    • Bill Housley says:
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      The difference in specific impulse between kerosene and liquid hydrogen pales compared to the difference between chemical rockets and ion drives…and that is where we will be before any serious Mars colony construction and support. The Mars spacecraft that will be used will end up with an electric drive, which will serve the purpose of the Tuesday test flight’s third burn. So why do we care which fuel lifts the beast to transfer orbit??
      And FH and SLS are in a perceived competition, and they shouldn’t be, because FH will fly a half a dozen or more times before EM1 and several dozen times before EM2 flies over Moon colonies put there by FH…and probably others. In fact, by the time EM2 is scheduled to launch FH will be as seasoned as F9 is currently and after last Tuesday there will be a lot more voters that know about it and watch the launches than F9 has had.

      • Michael Halpern says:
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        Ion is too slow for manned outside of leo stationkeeping mostly, hydrogen is too low density for economical first stage,

        • Bill Housley says:
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          I’m not talking about what it is today, but what it will be somewhere between 2025 and 2045…the target date range for serious Mars exploration. The ion tech is in advancement under NASA’s NextStep program to up the wattage.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            the amount of power you can put in isn’t the problem, its getting that power in the first place, I am very skeptical about the practicality of reactors in space, until you get spacecraft the mass of aircraft carriers.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            The development of reactors has been sporadic, but the Kilopower concept appears simple and practical, a HEU reactor with a single solid fuel element and a single control rod, linked by a heat pipe to a 4-cylinder free-piston Sterling engine to provide electrical power. We will have to see if it recieves consistent funding to operational status. If so, in combination with a Mars or outer planet probe and an ion thruster package, it might be a suitable payload for the FH. https://docs.google.com/vie

          • Bill Housley says:
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            Well, I just refreshed my research on the Deep Space Gateway and Deep Space Transport and at least according to publicly released information on the plan both will use electrically powered propulsion.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            Because without propellant depots that is your only option

          • Bill Housley says:
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            We’ve been using chemical propulsion to conduct planetary science for over 4 decades. There have been recent exceptions gat ise electric propulsion for the main engine that have resulted in record speeds, so folks are looking at larger implementations of that as the best option for the future. Also, what makes you think that a 300 watt electric propulsion will not some day need refueling stations? Larger engines will use more fuel.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            A 300 watt electric propulsion system will be slow, it will need fuel but electric propulsion is better for station keeping

          • Bill Housley says:
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            I’m fairly sure the the DSG will use 50 watt solar electric propulsion. I’d have to look that up to be sure.

            Edit: I looked it up. 50kW solar electric propulsion…developed as a public-private partnership under NextStep…

            https://www.nasa.gov/press-

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            Which is station keeping

          • Bill Housley says:
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            True.
            However, if the accel curve per watt is the same between the DSG and the Dawn probe (which I am not qualified to say whether it is or it isn’t), then the thrust to weight ratio at 1 AU is comparable. At 3 AU for Dawn (where Ceres orbits) it has roughly one tenth the thrust to weight ratio that DSG will have in its orbit.
            But it did take Dawn 17 months to flyby Mars.
            Still all other numbers being equal (and assuming that the thrust per watt and specific impulse of a small electric engine launched in 2007 is comparable to that of a large engine launched in 2022) it seems that you are basing your distinction at least as much on the mission of the spacecraft as on the capability of the engines.
            Edit: I used the launch mass for Dawn, not the dry mass which would have been more appropriate when judging its thrust to weight ratio at Ceres. Recalculated, Dawn at Vesta and Ceres has roughly 28% the thrust to weight ratio of DSG at Luna. All of my numbers come from wikipedia.

          • Michael Halpern says:
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            Easier to use methalox with fueling in LEO

        • fcrary says:
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          I’m not so sure of that. Those statements look like things “everyone knows” and that’s gotten us in trouble before (when they were building the Shuttle, everyone knew you needed the highest performance, highest specific impulse, highest thrust-to-weight engines you could get…)

          There are current Hall effect thrusters and solar arrays that could get a spacecraft from Earth’s orbit (as in a 1 AU circular, solar orbit) with three or four months of thrust. Those are (very) small ones, so you’d have to scale up for human spaceflight. But I’d expect specific power of solar arrays to increase with size. I don’t see the state of the art every supporting a sprint (few month) trip to Mars any time soon. But a slow trip is fine for supplies, and even for sending people, a nine to twelve month trip might not be so bad. Most of the problems with a long trip can be solved by throwing mass at them (centrifugal gravity, radiation shielding, etc.) With the higher specific impulse of an ion thruster, you might have enough mass to throw at those problems.

          For hydrogen as a fuel, what sort of application are you considering? If you consider the use of extra-terrestrial resources for fuel, and depending on your source of material, hydrogen might be much easier to produce in situ than hydrocarbons (even methane.) If that’s the case, it might be better overall to accept the problems of tanking hydrogen.

    • Synthguy says:
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      Problem is – SLS (when it eventually flies) will cost a $1Bn per launch and it will be lucky to fly once or twice a year. In the meantime, SpaceX will be boosting payload almost on a weekly or fortnightly basis, whether its with advanced Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and eventually, hourly or daily with BFR carrying 150 tons to LEO.

      I think SLS could easily be dropped with no loss in launch capability given Falcon Heavy, BFR and eventually New Glenn on the horizon.

      Then we have to factor in spaceplanes, which will challenge the basis for expendable boosters at the lower range of payload requirements. If Reaction Engines gets Skylon operational, how does that change the equation? What about airborne launch with Stratolaunch and Virgin Orbital?

      SLS is yesterday’s concept – in effect re-making the Saturn V – from yesterday’s thinking by an organisation that is risk averse, refuses to innovate, and cannot break free from an Apollo era mindset. Its really built to support human missions to Mars, which by NASA’s current planning and budget, won’t happen until the 2040s (and then only to orbit – not to the surface). By then, SpaceX is likely to have bases on the moon and on Mars – NASA is falling further and further behind the transformational wave of space technology.

    • Richard Malcolm says:
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      I would much prefer having more than only one vehicle to use for deep space exploration.

      Actually, I agree. And in 2019, we WILL have two such vehicles on the U.S. commercial market: Falcon Heavy, and New Glenn.

      And if you count ULA’s Vulcan (which has a notional three core heavy version) – also due to begin test flights in 2019 – you’d have three.

      So again: Why do we need SLS?

    • George Purcell says:
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      Your numbers don’t work.

      List price on the FH is $90M reusable. There’s absolutely no evidence that an expendable one would cost $300M. Think half of that and probably less.

      SLS isn’t going to cost $1B/launch. It’s easily going to cost $2B/year for the standing army as long as it is “operational” and have a launch cadence of no greater than 1/year. Realistically it will launch once every 18 months and thus cost $3B a pop in operations expense alone.

      But wait, it gets worse. Those Falcon costs above include all development expenses. So add in the $20 billion or so for SLS development to that tiny launch rate over 20 years. And that doesn’t include the $5B utterly wasted on the Ares-I nonsense nor the ridiculous costs for the mobile launch pad.

      And of course this doesn’t even begin to add costs in for Orion.

      But it has a better upper stage so that makes it better? Guess what! SLS costs above don’t include those costs but we know that at least $1.5B were completely wasted on the J2-X that’s been discarded.

      And, of course, while SLS is staggering along once every 18 months SpaceX is launching dozens of missions and iterating its operations and equipment to further reduce costs and improve reliability and performance.

      • Paul451 says:
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        There’s absolutely no evidence that an expendable one would cost $300M. Think half of that

        Good guess!

        Musk recently priced the fully expendable version at $150m.

        (In the same twitter-thread, he talked about options to lengthen the second stage, they are changing the fairing to a slightly wider diameter, and would apparently be happy to build a longer fairing “if demand was there”, or if BFS is delayed.)

    • Not Invented Here says:
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      The exact capability is irrelevant, what FH proves is that private companies are fully capable of building heavy lift launch vehicle at a much lower development cost (over $500 million vs probably $20 billion for SLS). We are not suggesting a one to one replacement of SLS by FH. Instead we’re advocating NASA should get out of launch vehicle building business, instead turn to commercial sector for heavy lift capabilities, using contracts like COTS which can save billions. There wouldn’t be single point failure like SLS, instead NASA can pick and choose at least two heavy lift launch providers.

      BTW, how you get $300 million for expendable FH is beyond me, you do realize a F9 only cost $60 million? So even if you treat expendable FH as 3 F9s (it’s not, since FH only has one 2nd stage instead of 3), it would only cost $180 million.

      And a expendable F9 can only put 22t to LEO, while reusable FH can put 30t to LEO.

    • Paul451 says:
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      A Falcon Heavy may cost $100m, and it may be able to lift 62mT to LEO, but not the same time. […] What’s the real cost to get a 62mT to LEO via the FH? Probably closer to $300m since you loose 3 booster stages and 27 engines (and the upper stage).

      For future reference, SpaceX has recently answered that case. The book-price for a fully expendable FH is listed at $150m.

      Essentially, you can price expendability of F9/FH cores at around $20m/core on top of the reusability pricing.

  18. Michael Spencer says:
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    Speculation: The drum beats are going to get louder and louder as various personages test the anti-SLS waters.

    Next: A call for a blue-ribbon committee tp assess the future of heavy lift (otherwise known as political cover).

    • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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      As in, the moment the kid yells “hey, the Emperor is buck naked!” and everyone else starts to realize it’s not just them.

      In modern terms, a preference cascade. Could be. (Long past due, if so.)

  19. Michael Spencer says:
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    While comparing SLS and FH can involve some fairly ‘deep in the weeds’ thinking, even so one quickly realizes that these two rocket systems are far from ‘apples and apples’. Comparing cost per launch, or kg to orbit, for instance, is very misleading.

    The current discussion is incorrectly framed and over simplified. SLS and FH aren’t apples and apples. About the closest direct comparison would be throw weight to LEO for FH vs. early SLS configurations (which would be a laughable mission for SLS, but still). In this arena, pointing to the direct launch cost delta makes some small sense.

    But anything beyond LEO and the issue gets more complicated.

    Bottom line: it’s too easy to toss around phrases like ‘it costs a tenth as much!’ without actually examining the capabilities of each rocket family.

    Yes, SLS has been expensive. No, I don’t know how to explain why SLS has cost a factor of ten (although it’s not for lack of asking the question).

    This is a serious question requiring serious assessment without being blinded by political predilection – which is what got us into the current mess.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Bottom line: it’s too easy to toss around phrases like ‘it costs a tenth as much!’ without actually examining the capabilities of each rocket family.

      Honestly, Michael, I’m sick to death of people acting as is SLS-opponents are too stupid or ignorant to understand relative capacities to critical orbits. See achilles03 in this thread, in addition to your own comment here. We know what their respective capabilities are. That’s always been factored into the discussion. It was last year. And the year before that. It was when FH’s capability was 25% lower than it is now.

      People can stop with these passive aggressive “reminders” in every single freakin’ FH/SLS thread.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I’m not entirely sure if you have me behind the barn with a whip in your hand, of if you are agreeing with me!

        I’ll say this, though: these days, ‘simplifying’ complex issues in public policy has become all the rage, ignoring the incredibly complex implications of nearly any public policy position.

        WRT to the SLS/FH discussion, I’ve been guilty of wholly writing off SLS. And once that position is taken, broad criticism of SLS and the Congress are nearly de rigueur.

        As I’ve become more educated I’ve come to realize much of the time folks disparaging SLS are comparing only two things: cost and throw weight. Period. And while it is true that SLS certainly gets the short stick on these two metrics, it is also true that SLS≠FH.

  20. Leonard McCoy says:
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    It’s dead, Jim

  21. Bill Housley says:
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    She’s right, and we all saw that one coming.

  22. John Adley says:
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    I have doubts about the costs quoted for both FH and SLS. SLS uses hardware from the Space Shuttle, and it is surprising why should it be so expansive. On the other hand, FH is designed from scratch and that costs a lot of money. The company can absorb a lot of that because it can take massive debts and because of the private investments SpaceX is able to attract. Of course FH can save a lot from reusable boosters, but that shouldn’t create a factor of 10 difference between the two systems.

    • Richard Malcolm says:
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      SLS uses hardware from the Space Shuttle

      A lot less than you think.

      Honestly. the main thing that is getting reused are the RS-25’s. Almost everything else is essentially new.

      There was this idea back in 2010 when the SpaceAct was passed that the DIRECT guys had won the day with their Jupiter. But SLS is not the Jupiter. It’s a slightly downscaled Ares V more than anything else.

      The company can absorb a lot of that because it can take massive debts and because of the private investments SpaceX is able to attract.

      That and the fact that it has other customers for the Falcon Heavy to amortize out its development costs. Whereas SLS has only one customer: NASA.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        And unfortunately there are only enough RS-25s for four flights, after which new ones will have to be manufactured.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      The space shuttle cost 1.5 billion average cost per launch why would you think SLS would be cheap by utilizing VERY EXPENSIVE heritage hardware?

      • John Adley says:
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        I simply believe neither NASA’s way of accounting, nor SpaceX’s.

        • Michael Halpern says:
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          Investment does’t work like that, Remember f9 is already inexpensive before reuse 62m, they can be lower but they have no reason to be and they are recouping investment, hence the 90m, they are able to be that low largely because of vertical integration (business not payload) and economies of scale. It costs less than 30% of a new booster to refurb a flight proven one, and block 5s wont need refurb for 10 flights FH pricing is based on block 5. SpaceX wouldn’t be able to do what they do if they werent making money, the reusable rocket program costed them an estimated $1bn, for instance.

    • Not Invented Here says:
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      It’s the flight rate. SpaceX’s annual expenditure is about $1.5 billion, this is not far away from annual SLS funding of about $2 billion. But SpaceX launches 10 to 20 Falcon per year (plus a few Dragons), while SLS in the best case scenario can only launch 1 to 2 times per year. Per launch cost = annual expenditure / # of launches per year, if you have high annual expenditure and low flight rate, the per launch cost will go through the roof no matter what you do.

  23. space1999 says:
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    Musk said they wouldn’t be using the Falcon Heavy for crewed missions, so it’s not going to replace crewed SLS block 1. Also the FH core diameter is 3.66 m vs 8.4 m for SLS (according to Wikipedia), so it would seem the cargo fairing for SLS would enclose a significantly larger volume, if not mass. Seems like the real competition will be between SLS block 2 and BFR… and/or New Glenn.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      The D. you quote is the 1st stage. It gets smaller and smaller until 16′ of Orion. I think the payload section below is only 16′ also. Have not seen what the fairing would be for the cargo version. The normal fairing is 16′ an increase from 12′ of the 2nd stage. I doubt they could increase the ratio that much from the 2nd stage of SLS to get to say 28′. Larger volume yes maybe.

      • space1999 says:
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        The decreasing diameter for the crewed version is due to Orion. The cargo SLS will not decrease in diameter… at least according to the diagram on the Wikipedia page. The FH will not be crewed… assuming we believe Musk, so it doesn’t really make sense to compare crewed SLS to FH. Comparing FH to SLS cargo, FH is at a disadvantage volume wise. The more relevant comparison would seem to be SLS cargo and BFR.

        • Michael Halpern says:
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          main reasons are its a pain to human rate it, and BFR is coming along faster than expected according to Musk (which is saying something because its Elon)

        • space1999 says:
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          Well actually, SLS cargo vs BFR isn’t really a good comparison either unless NASA sticks something like SNC’s Dream Chaser (crewed) in the cargo bay… highly unlikely. So no real apples apples comparison. That thought brings a question to mind… will BFR have a launch abort system? Wonder how that would work…

          • Saturn1300 says:
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            If the problem is in the 1st stage they will launch Spaceship. If the problem is Spaceship? Like any capsule problem I suppose.

  24. Matthew Black says:
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    The Falcon Heavy with an upgraded upper stage would certainly make SLS look a bit pointless. Make the upper stage 5.2 meters wide to match the SpaceX payload fairing – for an increased propellant load. And whether that upgraded stage was using a single Raptor engine with methane fuel or merely a further upgraded Merlin vacuum with kerosene – the Falcon Heavy could probably then push more than 25 tons beyond Earth Orbit. Bloody useful in ANYONE’S language! And a heck of a lot cheaper than $1.5 billion per launch, that’s for sure.

    SLS is a bit of a ‘Coulda/shoulda/woulda’ situation. They could have designed it with reusable LOX/Kerosene flyback boosters from the beginning, making a large part of the infrastructure reusable. More development costs, yes, but… They should have been pushing for the most capable ‘Block 2’ version of SLS from the very beginning – if you were going to throw away that much amazing hardware with every launch; then maximize the investment. They SHOULD have designed the corestage to use 5 or even 6 RS-25 engines. The current 4x engine design leaves it a tad underpowered.

    And they possibly would have configured the SLS to be the large Sidemount Heavy Lifter, proposed by John Shannon and his team in 2009 – that would have been almost rational thinking. It would have given even better lifting power than SLS Block 1 and would have been ready years sooner, for billions less. But it would have been ready a lot sooner than any payloads. Sidemount was also a victim of “Better later is the enemy of good enough, now”.

  25. HammerOn1024 says:
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    While I laud the attempt, the SLS is to be a man rated platform from the get-go, Falcon Heavy is not.
    So for this to proceed, NASA would have to pay to man rate it. So how much to do that? Anyone have any idea? I would suspect a billion minimum given the way NASA works.

  26. theThinker says:
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    Boeing rep: “The government shall pay us to build a very big rocket”
    NASA rep: “I’m sorry but NASA is getting out of rocketbuilding and…”
    Boeing rep makes a call.
    NASA rep: ‘… so you see, we don’t need any new rockets.”
    Washington Senator walks in the door, both he and the Boeing rep hang up their phones, and senator fires NASA rep.

    Repeat until NASA funded SLS.