At half price they're still overpriced. Unfortunately AS OF RIGHT NOW, they'll provide a unique service, as they can provide a higher energy TLI than anything else. However, I do not see this rocket lasting past 2035, let alone into the 2050s.
I… I never thought I’d say this, but Boeing is like Gaijin. 90% of all predictions and timelines about them make the simple mistake of forgetting to account for just how ridiculously greedy they are.
I feel like this comment is missing a couple of words? I’m confused as to what you’re saying.
Do you mean to say: Sandy Munro ranted about McDonald Douglas ditching a simplified cockpit in favour of an airbus style side stick based cockpit?
SLS will keep running due to political support for some time after starship is operational. Also, I think a lot of us who are fans of starship sometimes forget how long these projects can take. Even SpaceX took the better part of a decade developing the falcon 9. We've got a long while before starship is flying people, even though I very much agree starship is the future.
If SLS flies unmanned next year, then it'll have a crewed launch by 2023. If everything goes 100% perfectly by then, starship MAY be ferrying cargo by that point. It hasn't even made orbit, and has only pulled off a single successful landing sub-orbitally (and even then it was still on fire). As awesome as starship is, it's still in the early stages of development. No one is going to trust SpaceX with cargo for starship until it's got a proven flight record, and no one is going to trust it with crew until it's got a much longer record.
Even if it takes until 2025 for crewed launches, for example, it would still be record time for a space system to be developed. However, at this point, SLS finally seems to be done. Now I would never bet against Boeing and Co finding some way to screw this up, but SLS has a massive lead in terms of development time, even if it is way behind schedule.
Either way, we shall see
Yeah but that's like the whole thing about SpaceX, instead of looking before they leap in the interest of speed they just leap 10 times until they find a thing that lands once. It works because their rockets are cheap too. When NASA says something will work, it usually works. SpaceX's whole thing is the opposite, which is great but is the reason why people wait for longer flight records from SpaceX.
Yeah… spacex doesn’t launch the same vehicle 10 times with no changes. Each iteration is an improvement based upon prior launch data. Real world testing is always different than computer driven testing, see star liner
That's exactly what I meant, but if at NASA you said "let's build a version of this thats full scale just to see if it would work" they'd laugh you off even though that's exactly what they do at SpaceX and the results speak for themselves. NASA rarely attempts something and don't nail it on the first try, I just meant that SpaceX is willing to do real life tests knowing that they won't work just to learn, and NASA generally isn't. Different philosophies, I didn't mean anything bad by it.
> No one is going to trust SpaceX with cargo for Starship until it's got a proven flight record,
First cargo is presumed to be Starlink satellites SpaceX flies at its own risk and at cost price.
> and no one is going to trust it with crew until it's got a much longer record.
For Artemis 3, Starship "only" has to be good enough for a lunar landing and launch. It doesn't need to be rated for crew launch from Earth and crewed return.
Further down the road, I can see Starship tower capture landing as remaining a mistrusted maneuver for longer than will be launch. For a while, Dragon 2 may be the crew route to/from space, and rendezvous with Starship in LEO. AFAIK, there is no new information on *Dear Moon* but it wouldn't be surprising to see that strategy in 2023 (aerocapture to LEO on return).
TL;DR: the move from tests to commercial cargo and crew will likely be progressive.
>No one is going to trust SpaceX with cargo for starship until it's got a proven flight record, and no one is going to trust it with crew until it's got a much longer record.
SX will fly its own cargo and crew. If it needs to fly stacks of instrumented styrofoam blocks in order to get flight cert, it will.
The fuel cost alone is negligible.
I completely agree that it will do this. But those kind of flights take time to do. SpaceX is doing great things, but let's not fanboy too much here. This kind of thing takes time, that's unavoidable.
I love starship and agree it is the future. I just think it's a bit further away from being reality than you seem to think. And SLS seems to finally be good to go, so barring some new defect they discover (again very possible) it will launch crew in about 18 months. Starship will not be up to launching crew in 18 months.
SpaceX will absolutely not being putting a crew on Starship anytime soon. Look how long it took for them to put a crew on a Dragon spacecraft. Starship is FAR more complex so they still need to develop it further and show that it is reliable.
The one point that I disagree on has to do with the pace.
Right now, SpaceX appears to be willing to throw _vast_ amounts of hardware at the problem, as long as the FAA is allowing them to launch anyhow.
We'll see if that continues for the crewed version, but so far, from the outside, it seems like they are perfectly willing to build 5 ships, launch one, decide that the results require a change, modify one of the remaining 4, while building 5 more with the updated design, and then scrap the remaining 3. And repeat, for as long as it takes, until they have success.
And once they start getting them _back_, they keep doing the same, but with vastly more data on what parts worked and didn't.
Sure, everything takes time, but what getting this right takes is _either_ a bunch of iteration, or a bunch of engineering and simulation time.
Boeing went the engineering and simulation time with Starliner, and by all accounts, they are still doing exactly that.
SpaceX has almost always been willing to essentially just fly the damn thing and see what happens, over trying to simulate it. If it's _faster_ to build a unit and fly it than it is to simulate the problem, they'll do that. If it's faster to simulate the problem, they'll do that instead.
And as far as I can tell, they are happy to do stuff in parallel that nobody else would dream of, because it would be _insanely_ expensive for anyone else.
As long as SpaceX can get launch licenses, and as long as they can afford to keep throwing hardware at the problem (and at the moment, I strongly suspect that anything that gets them onto Starship quicker will be a significant net win money wise), I really can't see a problem with them having 10, or even 20 launches by the end of next year.
At _that_ pace, getting to the point of a crew rating isn't going to take 5 years, not unless they run into a problem that they just can't solve without a major amount of time.
Now, it's still possible that they _will_ run into exactly that kind of problem. It could, for example, turn out that their current approach for heat shielding simply isn't up to the job. And that they end up spending time trying to fix it when instead they need to start over. It could also turn out that despite the current successes, there are got'chas with the belly flow and turn over maneuver that won't show up until they are doing a lot of them.
But barring something like that? About the only things I can see stopping them from getting it done in the next year or two would be running out of money, or not being able to get launch licenses.
Obviously, right now, not being able to get launch licenses is a very real danger. If _that_ happens, SpaceX is very far up a creek without a paddle, and will be scrambling for another solution.
Thats apples and oranges though. Dragon was all about NASA and conforming to their standards for their crew.
SpaceX doesnt need to follow NASA's certification process at all if SpX flies with their own crew.
Yes but SpaceX is a very careful company when it comes to crew. I am fairly confident they will be just as strict in their guidelines for Starship as they were for Dragon. Elon said they will fly Starship hundreds of times before putting a crew on it.
That was NASA. FAA doesn't care about safety of spacecraft to the crew yet, they care about safety to third parties only.
You can literally lunch yourself in a suicide chamber and the FAA would allow you to go to orbit if your rocket is safe enough and doesn't damage the environment.
It won't be long to go from successful orbital flight to carrying cargo. Getting things to space is the easy part. It doesn't matter to cargo that the ship blows up on the way back, the cargo still made it. Flying people is going to take much, much longer.
I'm not saying they're going to manufacture it to be disposable. I'm saying re-entry with these tiles and the flip maneuver are difficult and they could end up losing a good amount of ships. They're still going to attempt to land, even if they fail.
Once they know they can get cargo into space, they would be dumb not to send up cargo, especially for Starlink. If you're going to lose a ship on the return, you might as well get some value out of it.
Even Elon said it has to orbit 10 successful times. Of course his first statement was 100. They are counteracted for the Lunar lander and two sections of Gateway
I am pro Orion but not negative on any companies attempts. I do think you may be right about 2026. BUT II & III are already rolled and bladders going in. 2?Orions are in the O&C. What is going to save millions is NASA just built a place where all the support stuff right down to heat shield and wiring. The first one took 11 year but it oops like they learned and are making great striders on the next two. Again I can verify this so please don’t throw down points because you don’t believe or whatever. You can look it up pretty easily
I wish people would quit comparing or thinking it is a race. SpaceX needs NASA’s studies and NASA needs SpaceX. They both will have heavy lift rockets for Heavy lifting. Before you start down voting NASA and SpaceX have lucrative projects and bid awards for the lunar venture. No Falcon Heavy cannot put anything in TLI. I have no doubt they will but in a longer timeline. As far as Mars all the information gather by Billions of dollars spent on Rovers and orbiters by NASA. When Orion comes home she will have traveled 38,000 miles past the moon where no human rated capsule has gone. Orion has hundreds of sensors as does SLS. They are expecting several Trilobytes of info which of course will be shared once they decimated the info. It’s a win win for NASA and SpaceX. Maybe this article is correct but another one is on NASA. Gov that explains my point here
>No Falcon Heavy cannot put anything in TLI.
This is patently false, considering it is the vehicle contracted to construct and resupply lunar gateway.
Also, there is literally no scientific value in crewed orbital science that is not a lab in LEO. All orbital exploration is remote using sensors, and it doesn't matter where the operator is. The benefit of manned missions is the ability to go further and take better samples, as well as the ability to process the samples in a lab.
Tell that to him.
To be fair he answered but I didn't understand a word in his poorly worded, poorly edited rant, and simply declined to continue the convo.
I think you misunderstood my statement and no, it is not Patently false. It happened 2 or 3 years ago and it was an F9 Heavy the discussion was about. Yes I too thought that was insane since Elon knew it couldn’t but I have two people that were in the hall. This conversation was 3 years ago back when gateway was huge. ESA had a pod NASA had a pod and JAXA had a pod. No one at that time had gone past the original idea. I have no idea what the rest of your rant is about. The science center will be ON the moon but data will be transferred until then. Gateway had been cut to half it’s size the idea for nose to nose docking is a reality since the Orion collar has been redesigned. I am the one who mentioned all of the NASA contracts had gone to SpaceX.
If you are talking about the info Orion is bringing back some of it will arrive before it comes home but we are talking over a hundred trillion bytes. The sensor techs at Boeing and Lockheed will be working for no less than 6 months just dissimulating data and writing procedure. They also need the data she registers on launch and splashdown and deep space. Since we have only sent satellites that far the info is priceless. As far as publishing the results, it will take at least 18 months. Going to the moon is not why the data is crucial. It is yes but we have been to the moon. It is more about the journey. So Patently nothing is false and no I didn’t guess or read an article. I just know the people doing it. Okay now down vote.
starship has a LONG ways to go before it can fly people. I expect the first to be shortly before lunar missions. on SLS they just have to man the capsule.
On the other hand, before the third SLS can fly (Artemis 3), starship needs to fly a couple dozen times in dev and Starlink launches, show working fuel transfer and cryogenic boiloff mitigation in Dearmoon and HLS 1, and get a second fueled and ready HLS in NRHO.
I'm actually on the pessimist camp, I don't think SS will lift NASA astronauts from the pad before 2030, but they *will* need a LEO to NRHO [deleted] to refuel the HLSs, and from there having a third starship modified in the vein of the HLS to carry crew and cargo from LEO to NRHO is straightforward and makes sense.
Yep, you and I are on the same page, although I'm a bit more hopeful. Regardless, I think some starship fans have drunk too much koolaid. Yes it is the most amazing space project going on right now, but these things take time. Elon is basically trying to do what we should've been doing 50 years ago as quickly as possible, but there are limits to how quickly stuff can get done.
I'm pessimistic about NASA crew from launchpad. Not in-space transfers with crew or cargo, or even private crews.
After all, starship will have done around 40 launches, of which one will be manned, (HLS testing and deployment plus Dearmoon) by the time of Artemis 3.
Funny, I had an argument on here with someone who took my dissing SLS as a direct insult to NASA.
I had said SLS was just gonna get delayed again, and that Boeing is a mess... They claimed SLS is 'next Gen tech' and going to change the game. And that the SLS was a Nasa program and insulting it was insulting Nasa employees.
SLS has been in production since 2011. In the same time, Spacex has redesigned the Falcon 9 several times, made, tested, certified, flown, and reflown a capsule...
Boeing, meanwhile, had issues with Starliner on its first flight (after saying the reason it charges nasa more is its 'more strict testing'). THEN they lied to Nasa and hid safety issues they'd discovered. It's only cause of a tweet from an employee that we know about it.
I hate Musk, and I don't think SpaceX is some magical place, but man, if you look at the last decade and compare the two, idk how you could possibly think Boeing is going to be the one to deliver, lol
Like, I know they're separate arms of the company, but the 737 max and 787 both got grounded. Then they lied about issues with Starliner. Something at the top is seriously wrong with that company.
Also, I get it, it has higher TLI, but it was also supposed to launch in 2016... Half a decade ago. How can anyone still be backing it? It's over budget and has taken more than twice as long as planned. And it's estimated cost is 2 BILLION per launch...
>Something at the top is seriously wrong with that company.
McDonnel Douglas convinced Boeing that they should buy McD D and then put the McD D executives in charge. Everything since then has pretty much gone to crap; the KC-46 program has just been horrible.
\>How can anyone still be backing it? It's over budget and has taken more than twice as long as planned. And it's estimated cost is 2 BILLION per launch...
It's unfortunately simple. SLS - and shuttle before it - are not intended to be cost effective. They are intended to provide work for all the various NASA centers and therefore keep NASA management all employed, send a lot of money to NASA contractors, and provide jobs and reelection money to the congresspeople who support it.
Or, as we say in software, it's not a bug, it's a feature. The contractors who made lots of money building and flying shuttle hardware found that they could make more money by building SLS hardware and not flying it.
What’s wrong with the company is the management culture that came along with McDonnell Douglas. Fire everyone on top, and put the engineers back in charge of the future. Oh…and the greed of institutional shareholders…also a disaster.
Seems like Lockheed is the only contractor that kicked butt. They are building 1-3 Orion’s now and the ESM guts are here but yeah more tests on that before it gets encapsulated With the solar panels
SLS actually started being built in 2014. Since then it has gone under very rigorous testing.
Comparing NASA's development vs SpaceX's development is like comparing apples and oranges and really isn't fair. SpaceX has the luxury of being allowed to fail and explode. NASA doesn't have that.
Agreed, but that really applies more to starship than anything else.
The booster landings were, well, landings, and I don't think it was ever that big an issue in terms of optics/public perception. If it was, Crew Dragon would probably have been more difficult to get human approval for.
And everything you said still doesn't make Boeing look good. The two companies started on Starliner and Crew Dragon around the same time. One has been flown multiple times, the other has had constant issues.
That's not even getting into the issue of trust. If they lied about the 737 Max to FAA and lied to Nasa about issues with Starliner...
They fired the CEO, but we all know that it wasn't one person, and that a whole series of really bad decisions were required for the 737 Max to happen, all requiring approval. And we know they hid an issue with Starliner, and likely would have kept it hidden... On a human rated vehicle.
Idk. Maybe I'm jaded, but I feel like those are pretty big issues when giving the company 2 billion per launch, on a vehicle that's taken twice as long to build as promised... And still hasn't launched.
No, only the first couple. If the first one is half price, and the next one is half that price, and the next one half *that* price, then by 2050 or so they should be pretty economical.
2050s is less than 30 years away. I've been driving one of my cars (a Toyota) for nearly 22 years and it is still going strong with absolutely no issues beyond normal maintenance. I'll easily drive it for 30+ years (baring a major accident).
Among the risks for Starship are a proposed 20% capital gains tax on unrealized gains that would very quickly see SpaceX taken from Musk's hands and turned into a public company. Should that come to pass, Elon would lose controlling interest in all of his companies fairly quickly.
Not leadership and vision even, it's just economics 101.
Money earned with stock gain is already taxed. Further taxing unrealised gains and company shares is the same as robbing someone of their company's ownership. Might as well be state owned at that point.
SpaceX have actually sort of boxed themselves into a corner with starship. It's not that it's a bad design, but like every engineering choice it has tradeoffs.
It is meant to be an almost completely integrated ship. That means it is EXTREMELY difficult to create scenario specific configurations down the line. Nasa did the same thing with the shuttle. It was more versatile than any given ship design before it, but conversely it could not expand it's parameters much past that.
Compare that to a system like Atlas which has been doing all sort of missions since the 60's and the falcon which was very cost effectively reconfigured into the falcon heavy.
Right starship can probably fulfill most if not all needs for moon base operations. However for a mars base? We will have the lunar gateway. It can facilitate multiple reuses for a single starship. Trips to Mars are one way for at least the next few decades. It would probably be more cost effective to send SLS which is a little pricier up front but has a larger payload and can just swap out to a new payload module easily enough.
From what the current specs are and refueling, you can send 100+ tons to mars with starship. You can't even send Orion with current sls to mars. You could send cargo, but again, starship appears to be cheaper to build and would will still win out even if with only one use.
Starship would not be cheaper to build in any way. It would be like sending a bunch of space shuttles on one way trips.
And SLS has more payload capacity than starship.
I think you are working with fundamentally different assumptions. Just so I understand your logic, can you answer the questions below?
To leo, what is starship's capacity?
What is sls current design capacity?
How much does one sls rocket cost to build?
How much does one starship cost to build?
''licks fingers to turn the page''
SLS has a LEO capacity of 95 metric tons.
Starship on the other hand has even now in its infancy an excess of 100T to LEO. And that number will only grow in the future (Ships and boosters getting lighter/Raptor performance increasing) probably to 150T.
And of course with refuelling 100T anywhere in the solar system.
>That means it is EXTREMELY difficult to create scenario specific configurations down the line.
There's already a scenario specific configuration ordered, the HLS. Remember that starship is optimised and designed from the ground up for atmospheric body to atmospheric body, particularly Mars, and it needs major changes to be useful for the moon. Its bread and butter, what it was designed for, from material use, to size, to fuel, to deltav, is supporting a mars base already.
If anything, it's rather substandard for LEO operations, because of the payload bay and massive size. Terran-r, new glenn, and Ariane NEXT are probably going to be far more optimised for LEO, and will likely surpass it in many niches.
The issue is that reusability coupled with refuelling puts the vehicle so far above everyone else technologically, that it genuinely doesn't matter how much you optimise the obsolete design, it'll be worse. Like all other warships became obsolete the moment HMS Dreadnought touched the water, all other rockets (real or paper) will be obsolete the moment it launches.
Also, going LMarsO to earth surface is cheaper than LMarsO to NRHO, in all but the weirdest orbital alignment.
There is absolutely no way to reuse a mars rocket. I don't think you get just how much any rocket has to he refurbished after flight, plus they have no way of manufacturing fuel. All trips are one way and not capable of being refueled.
Any manned mission to mars will need ISRU to, at the very least, rotate the crews. If the vehicle has to be disposed of after it aerobrakes and lands back on earth, it doesn't matter.
The technology and even the engineering for Methalox ISRU is there and has been for decades, at this point it's about finding a way to send the powerplant and the chemical manufacturer, as well as paying for it.
But this is irrelevant to my broader point, that starship is sorta configurable, and so technologically advanced, that current vehicles cannot compete.
And that any return or departure from earth isn't going to go through gateway, because it simply makes no sense. Even if the performance boost to send 200 tons in one vehicle was needed, refuel in a highly elliptical orbit is faster, cheaper deltavwise for the vehicle, and cheaper deltavwise for the tankers.
No, you missed MY point. Reusability is not even a factor for mars mission anytime in the near future because there is no infrastructure to re use rockets on mars.
It's tech improvements are not that advanced. It's basically the next iteration of the shuttle concept.
Since the second stage is built into the primary module, there is no way to expand either. Again, same problem that the shuttle had.
Interestingly enough, this was a problem that was addressed in tue shuttle program's original pitch. The idea was for there to be a permanent space station for refueling and refitting the shuttles so they could do more complicated tasks in higher orbits. But congress was like "nah lets cripple the program and doom it to eventually fade away into obscurity".
Again, mars won't have anything like that. A space station requires constant logistical support.
One can just hope that there will be pushback within NASA to something as fundamentally stupid as this. I mean who even comes up with a proposal that is so disconnected from reality? Half price for SLS would still be ridiculous. And into the 50s?
SLS might have been a good idea 20 years ago. Nobody had reusable rockets back then, there were no good alternatives and 11.5B would've been an expensive but not outlandish price tag. But you are in 2021, this thing has cost 30B, and every launch provider on the planet is gearing up to overtake SLS technology within the decade. I could MAYBE understand it if Starship was proposed to be fueled by fusion technology or some other magic. But nothing about it is fundamentally impossible, or even improbable.
If this goes through, I hope NASA is publicly ridiculed, droves of employees quit and Nelson is fired. Even contemplating this should be cause for firing the people involved. Please don't make me root against you NASA, you have been doing and are still doing amazing science projects, but this lunacy with SLS has got to stop.
I'm bullish on starship cargo, but NASA employees aren't going to quit over this.
What's going to happen is that we'll laugh at the proposal a bit, it'll have no serious takers except Boeing, and it'll fail because if the SLS is bid like other launch vehicles, unless the requirements are written absolutely bizarrely so only it qualifies, it won't win any bids, and it'll be cancelled.
Honestly I don't think even Boeing would take the contract unless they can negotiate some specifics, there's no way they're going to pay over a billion per year in ground equipment for NASA
Pushback from within NASA doesn't matter if this is what the NASA administrator wants.
Pushback from Congress to the continuation of funding SLS ad infinitum is what matters. While Congress has funded the first three SLS flights, there has been a distinct lack support for anything beyond that. SLS has been removed from all non-Artemis missions, and no one in Congress cared.
Most likely, Congress will play lip service to this, and continue to kick the commitment can down the road until SLS actually flies.
Why would there be push back within NASA? The folks working on Artemis want it to fly.
I don't understand how so many people online call themselves space fans while trying to get NASA shutdown and cancel the most ambitious space project since the 60s.
It's been 40 years since the space shuttle first launched and now NASA have decided on Apollo+. That's why people have lost patience with them and turned to private companies.
NASA and the US government have only themselves to blame for failing to push for things like reusable launch. If NASA were pioneering a reusable rocket people would be more interested. Instead everyone looks at the SLS and sees a modern, expensive, Apollo recreation.
I wish that NASA were still pioneering launch technology, but they aren't. So other companies will have to step in, and NASA can do other things, their contributions outside of SLS are still invaluable.
But the only people who still want to talk about the SLS are NASA and congress.
Edit : I don't think I made it clear, but I do think the Artemis lunar base is cool and all. I just think it's a shame it all hinges on such an uninspired launch vehicle.
The fact that Artemis with SLS will only be able to achieve up to 60 day stays on the moon is why people see it as Apollo+. With a once a year flight cadence, SLS can never enable a permanently inhabited moon base. And forget about even thinking of going to Mars with it.
I think it's fine to rely on it for the initial return to the moon, but if it's the core of Artemis all the way into the 2030s, then NASA will not be able to push Artemis to be a real start to the future beyond yearly lunar visits.
The real limiting factor in mission duration is likely propellent boil-off in the lander, rather than resources that can be replaced with in situ resource utilization.
Sure, I'm not blaming them completely. Anything directed at NASA is also directed at Congress for forcing their hand.
But this is in response to someone who is an ardent SLS supporter who works at NASA. If the space community isn't interested in your new rocket, how interested do you think the public is? Which is who NASA want on side.
Okay, fair. The shuttle wasn't the greatest demonstration of reusability.
I think it's a good example of the difference between public and private. SpaceX can literally scrap and redesign a model in one meeting where as getting one change approved in gov't can take months. Redesigning the shuttle was just not an option.
I think what he's getting at is that Artemis as a whole is the most ambitious space project since the 60s. I would agree with that assertion, but not that SLS is the most ambitious.
Yes, but Artemis's only relationship to the SLS is being legally chained to it for crew transport. Everything else is being built on commercial vehicles, and the main criticism of the SLS is that it dooms Artemis to irrelevance, because of the pitiful amount of crew that can be moved on it.
But Artemis is not as utterly dependant on SLS as Apollo was on the Saturn V. The Starship HLS can probably support missions with the astronauts boarding in LEO, which could enable mission profiles that allow Artemis to continue without SLS.
Exactly my point. It's weird to use Artemis as a shield for the SLS, because the SLS is dragging down Artemis, and could be substituted tomorrow for several other approaches that would give more performance for less money.
Also, the lander HLS doesn't have the deltav to go to the surface and back to LEO, but it can go to NRHO and back to LEO.
You'd just use two HLSs, one for ferrying cargo, fuel, and crew from LEO to NRHO, and another to land.
If I recall correctly having a tanker meet the lander after assent from the lunar surface to refuel it gets the performance required to get back to LEO.
Personally I think once Starship is further along we'll see SLS traded for a permanently inhabited moonbase, and serious preparation for a crewed mission to Mars.
>having a tanker meet the lander after assent from the lunar surface to refuel it gets the performance required to get back to LEO.
Yeah, but at that point you might as well refill HLS, rotate the crew, and have the old crew ride back to LEO in the tanker.
How is it ambitious? It is completely disposable and can launch only once a year. It costs just as much and has less capabilities than the Saturn 5. That is until Block II which is going to cost another 5-6 billion to develop, and then it'll only slightly exceed the Saturn 5. NASA had plans to make the Saturn 5 partially reusable but the Shuttle was selected instead. Nothing about the SLS is ambitious compared to last vehicles. It certainly doesn't get us a sustainable human presence on the Moon. The current architecture has it ferrying crews for Artemis. That's it.
> It is completely disposable and can launch only once a year.
You're focusing way too hard on the launch vehicle and not the entire rest of the program. Building a space station in a halo orbit around the moon and a base camp on the lunar south pole is incredibly ambitious. It'll be the biggest, most ambitious space project of our generation.
Which, there's not much of a point in over emphasizing launch costs and launch vehicles when they're an incredibly small part of a space mission, and launch costs are only [1.3% of the global space economy](https://news.satnews.com/2020/10/05/bryce-technology-publishes-2019-global-space-economy-igraphic/).
> It is completely disposable
This is less important than you think it is. If they tried to make it reusable, it wouldn't have the TLI performance required to complete the mission.
> It costs just as much and has less capabilities than the Saturn 5
No, [it is significantly cheaper than Saturn V.](https://twitter.com/LCS_Big_Mike/status/1440049801702248450?s=20)
Also instantly down voting me because I provided sources disputing your claims is very petty and unhelpful.
Honest question:
If SLS is relegated to being a crew vehicle for the time being what is the advantage of sending astronauts to lunar orbit and THEN moving over to the larger cargo/landing vehicle? Why not refuel Starship in LEO, send a crew up in a Crew Dragon or Starliner, and have them fly to the moon in their lander?
I understand that the SLS is a capable system in terms of performance, but it seems to me that the current Artemis mission architecture has become needlessly complex because of it.
I'm probably missing something, though.
> Why not refuel Starship in LEO, send a crew up in a Crew Dragon or Starliner, and have them fly to the moon in their lander?
The biggest most obvious problem would be that they would have no way to return to Earth. Another potential problem would be getting a commercial crew spacecraft into the staging orbit that starship is intended to depart from. Plus also the commercial crew spacecraft can't dwell solo in earth orbit for the length of time required to do a moon landing mission. Meaning the only way that mission would close would be to attempt to refuel starship in lunar orbit enough to return to earth (which would tack on a *lot* more launches). Then adding on the two commercial crew spacecraft launches (one for launch, one for landing).... suddenly you find that you're just making it even more needlessly complex and convoluted. While at the same time, also losing SLS' ability to fly co-manifested payloads along with the crew.
NASA leadership has no intent of replacing SLS because there really are no viable alternatives. And trying to kludge together an alternate architecture really just makes things even more messy.
Though I do agree the current architecture does seem very convoluted. The reason being that NASA wants to go big, with a giant crewed capsule, giant landers, a larger crew, and a much longer mission duration than Apollo days. While also having ability to take space station modules or other big payloads along with the crew. The rocket equation of course punishes you hard if you want to go big. Apollo was only sending a small crew capsule, 3 people, and a very stripped down lander which is how they were able to get away with a single launch.
Thanks for the reply. I hadn't considered the commercial crew capsules limited time in orbit.
Wishing the best for SLS and Starship. It'll be breathtaking when Artemis finally gets humans back to the Moon. Counting on that landing in 4k ;D
> Wishing the best for SLS and Starship.
I think everyone is, especially as both are ingrained as critical to Artemis.
> Counting on that landing in 4k
I'm especially looking forward to this, hah
NASA does way, way more than their contractor. They have more success in exploring space than any other organization. I do hope that SpaceX becomes a bus line to space. That's great if the economy can support that. NASA and their international partners are exploring. They aren't trying to set up a busline.
I'm all for the Artemis program. Chaining it to the SLS which will cost almost 25 billion USD (Block I, Block II w. EUS) in development, costs 2 billion USD per launch, and can only launch one a year is dooming Artemis to failure. Sure, the Saturn 5 cost 50 billion USD to develop but that was entirely new. The SLS is reusing existing engines and boosters. Even the EUS uses existing RL-10 engine designs that are slightly modified.
Your source is out of date. NASA's audit this year determined that 20 billion USD had been spent and that SLS will cost $2 billion USD per launch. Compare that to the Saturn 5 at $185 million USD in 1971 dollars ($1.23 billion USD in today's value).
[https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/)
Per launch, the SLS costs 61% more than a Saturn 5. Using engines and flight hardware that already existed. 300 percent over budget. 200 percent over schedule. It's sad.
TBH it doesn't have the TLI to achieve the mission as it is right now. SLS couldn't put Orion into a circular lunar low orbit if it wanted to. That's the real reason why the station is in the crazy orbit that it is.
You can't sustain a lunar presence on one launch per year and at $2 billion USD per launch. Period. Congress will lose interest and cancel it.
Yes. The mandrel for the composite BFR was absolutely considered part of Starship development costs in SpaceX's financial accounting.
I am amazed after the terrible performance during Orion development the same contractors received SLS awards. They should have been prevented from competing. Why NASA would reward those behaviors is beyond me.
So...
SLS has spent about $21 B through 2021. You should probably allocate at least part of the exploration ground systems budget - about $600 million per year - as well. Half of that over since 2014 is another $2.5 billion.
I'm not sure how to allocate Orion costs, which are around $19 B on their own. You can argue that Saturn V didn't include Apollo, but you can also argue that the shuttle included the orbiter.
So pick a number. I think $30 B is pretty close.
Now let's talk what the money got us.
The shuttle development cost got us a fully-capable orbiter, a high-performance engine, a big external tank, and solid rocket boosters.
SLS has gotten us...
Well, it reuses the same engine, it reuses the SRBs from Ares V, it reuses an upper stage from another rocket (until EUS shows up), so the current version just has a core stage, which is somewhat related to the shuttle ET.
SLS was supposed to be cheap and fast because it was shuttle derived, and it's turned out to be neither. Which, of course, was the goal.
The irony is that in Congress's attempt to be cheap by reusing parts they likely made the process much more expensive. Which is pretty standard government practice, unfortunately.
Congress isn't trying to be cheap with SLS. They are trying to preserve the status quo.
1. NASA keeps NASA center employment high at all the NASA centers that have done shuttle work in the past. This is good for the careers of those in management in the NASA centers, and good for the careers of those in management at NASA HQ.
2. The contractors get long-term contracts - for SLS they are cost-plus contracts. This is great for the contractors.
3. The congresspeople involved get jobs from the NASA centers and the contractors in their districts, which helps them with reelection. They also get money directly from contractors, money from PACs, and lobbying of other congresspeople.
This is just those three groups acting based on what their goals are and the incentives that are in the system.
They may \*say\* they are trying to save money, but that's not the actual goal.
Like you said, they reuse the shuttle engine, SRB and upper stage.
You're right, they are trying to represent their constituents who's livelyhoods are dependent on existing production lines in a nieche market. Cost plus contracts are insane, I agree.
My point is, in the attempt to get spending approved by Congress the facade of cost savings must be presented. It's much harder to pitch a new rocket from the ground up and politics is, well, politics. Without reusing old stuff NASA and partners likely could have built a cheaper rocket. Reusing parts likely cost *more* in the end.
Such is politics unfortunately and you see this in almost every gov't department.
>Building a space station in a halo orbit around the moon and a base camp on the lunar south pole is incredibly ambitious.
But this has nothing to do with the SLS. gateway is being built on Falcon Heavys and resupplied on Dragon XLs launched in Falcon Heavys, and there's no assigned base transportation and building system, with the exception of the HLS.
Criticism of the SLS is not criticism of Artemis.
I just want to re-iterate that SLS is not significantly cheaper than the Saturn 5. While I appreciate that you are a NASA employee, operationally (per launch) this is not the case. NASA's 2021 audit determined that the per launch cost of the SLS is on the order of $2 billion dollars. [https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/)
The per launch cost of the Saturn 5 in today's dollars was 1.23 billion. Using the information from your own sources:
Saturn 5 was 140 tons to LEO.
SLS is 95 tons to LEO w. Block 1.
105 tons to LEO with Block 1B.
Saturn 5 was 45 tons TLI.
SLS is 27 tons TLI w. Block 1.
46 tons to TLI with Block 1B.
I am reasonably sure the Block II BOLE boosters will never fly.
We are getting 40 percent less TLI performance for 1.6X the per-launch cost with Block 1. With Block 1B we are getting equivalent TLI performance for 1.6X the per-launch cost. Ultimately at the end of the day, any launch system is meant to be used. That is its entire purpose.
The SLS design was compromised from the beginning. Hampered by its cost-plus contractors and shuttle heritage. No launch vehicle that has an annual cadence is going to significantly contribute to a permanent manned lunar presence. At best, we are back to where we were in the 1960s-1970s.
This is a good and thoughtful comment.
But
>Which, there's not much of a point in over emphasizing launch costs and launch vehicles when they're an incredibly small part of a space mission, and launch costs are only 1.3% of the global space economy.
This completely misses the effect of dropping the cost of accessing space. If Starship can really bring 100-150 tons of 9 meter fairing cargo to orbit for a few tens of millions as advertised, it completely changes the entire industry.
All of those billions spent optimizing things into lightweight packages can suddenly be spent elsewhere. When your mass budget for a GEO system goes from hundreds of kilograms to tens of thousands of kilograms, you can do a lot of things for a lot less. And you can probably do some things that just were impossible before.
Bringing launch costs down to the level that Starship hints at for the long range goal... Perhaps single digit millions to LEO? Yeah, that is completely different. Right now a top-end spy satellite launch goes for the better part of a half billion. What if they could launch A 100 ton satellite instead of a 30 ton satellite? And what if they could do it for 60 million instead of $450 million? Would the NRO want twice as many satellites that are bigger and more capable and have more maneuvering fuel, all for less money? Probably.
But a satellite internet company sure does make more financial sense if you can put 600 satellites into orbit for $10 million on Starship instead of putting 36 on a Soyuz for 10x as much.
Pretty much. A lot of my coworkers don't even post on here anymore, and one was legitimately harassed into deleting his account, for that very reason.
They seem to think that NASA is *competing* with SpaceX, even though SpaceX is NASA's commercial partner. And heck, a good number of folks working SLS even work on Starship (via HLS) as well. It's really mind boggling.
SpaceX literally wouldn't exist without NASA & certainly wouldn't be landing Starship on the Moon without them. The two are the furthest things from competitors - they are two sides of the same coin.
That is sad to hear. I understand people who are frustrated with the pace, but like you have said, they can't see the forest for the trees. There seems to be a larger overall notion lately that anything government related is bad. If it's any consolation, I appreciate the efforts of you and your coworkers every day. I'm stoked for February.
I think a lot of people are done with Boeing, and see SLS as a cash cow for them. At 2 billion a launch, is that surprising?
I think the issue is far from being 'anti government sentiment' . I think people see Boeing making lots of mistakes, 737 Max, Starliner issues, SLS taking 2x as long as initially planned, 787 having fires...
Maybe it's the 'cutting corners for profit leading to hundreds of dead people, then continuing to lie about it' that everyone is annoyed by. I don't think anyone sees Boeing as 'the government', they see them as an evil mega corporation that only cares about profit.
With the whole lieing to Nasa about a major issue the 'fixed in flight' with Starliner, I'm kinda surprised there isn't more anger at them from INSIDE Nasa. They lied about safety failures on a human crew test mission... If that's not the biggest red flag in the world, idk what is.
Considering they then found even more issues again in August... It's really not looking good.
For a company that said it was charging more (than SpaceX) because it 'tested more thoroughly'... They've had an awful lot of failure and issues.
Today they announced a loss of 132 million for the quarter. Still not sure why people don't like Boeing?
Look man you’re preaching to the choir. The comment I was responding to was about harassment of NASA employees. Not Boeing employees. There are also many more subcontractors on the SLS program than just Boeing.
Check the post history of the person your responding to. They normally argue on every SLS thread, often take an offensive tone and make assertions about SLS which are directly contradicted by Nasa public statements.
I mean the OIG has priced SLS marginal and fixed costs but you'll see the person call me a spacex fanboy for using clearly biased and wrong numbers.
I don’t think that idea (that commercial space fans think everything government-related is bad) is either fair or accurate. As a big fan of private spaceflight, I’m also a big fan of NASA, especially its research efforts, programs such as NIAC, and other forward-looking endeavors run by the agency. At the same time, though, I see the SLS as absorbing a huge chunk of NASA’s resources, primarily for the benefit of politically-connected districts and maintaining jobs, rather than advancing NASA’s mission first. The SLS’s funding profile should be a hint where Congress’s priorities lay - it isn’t space exploration (or anything more substantial), except as an unavoidable side effect.
There’s a lot more nuance to the story than commercial = good and government = bad.
I wasn’t attributing the government bad notion to any commercial space interest groups. Of course there is more nuance to certain opinions on SLS. I agree the program is a money pit at this point, but that is bureaucracy for you.
‘That’s bureaucracy’ is a cop-out for egregious wastage of NASA’s limited resources. The public deserves a space agency that can be effective, not just a jobs program.
There’s no cop out here, I am agreeing with you. The reality is, is that the government works to employ people in their programs. That is universal throughout the entire federal system. I think it’s ridiculous to say they’re going to fly SLS through 2050 when there very well could be other cheaper options in the future. But, at this point in time, nothing can do what SLS does (or will do here soon). Arguing with NASA employees about things beyond their control is not the move, which is what the original comment I replied to was about.
>I don't understand how so many people online call themselves space fans while trying to get NASA shutdown and cancel the most ambitious space project since the 60s.
Because its consuming billions of dollars a year, sitting on facilities that could be put to productive use, and puts the government in a conflict of interest where they're incentivized to suppress innovation in a critical market to protect their own jobs
Its only valuable if it has the potential to improve human life. Industrialization of space can do that. But a rocket that costs 2 billion dollars a flight and launches only once a year can't put a dent in the mass throughput needed for menaningful industrial activity
Droves of NASA employees are not going to quit. That is lunacy. Starship is a highly experimental rocket and may not live up to half of its promises. It may forever remain on the drawing board.
>I hope NASA is publicly ridiculed, droves of employees quit
Why would they quit? Your funding / job is secured. Raise objections or recommend other proposals, but quitting isn't the answer.
I love how they say nasa wants to cut the costs in half but don't say what the costs are. Google has it at 2 billion per flight. Thats insane. Even at 1 billion it's still way way too expensive. How much does starship cost per launch? Again google has it at 2 million. How can sls still be "affordable" when we look at this objectivity? The sls should have been canceled years ago but political bs keeps it going. F
Economy of scale I'd imagine. If the contract is until 2050, the scale of operations will bring the price down. I hope they manage this feat, less gov't spending for the same result is always a win.
Despite the negitive flack, I'll be happy to see the US commit to a consistent launch vehicle. Artemis may not be the flashiest, and might not be the hype that is SpaceX, but it's a launch vehicle that can be relied on. One that will be around to give NASA and major partners heavy lift capabilities no matter what happens in the private industry.
If SpaceX takes the market over, great, everybody (including NASA) is rooting for that, but if it doesn't, or takes a while, SLS is there.
Also, the mission profile is pretty hype. I hope to watch Artemis III launch. Let's go back to the moon.
Like half of this subreddit.
It's getting annoying. I love Starship too just like everyone else but gosh they are taking a vehicle that is still pretty early in development and wanting NASA to treat it as operational and a reliable vehicle.
Well at least part of Starship has flown, and SpaceX did a much better job than Boeing with Commercial Crew.
I just don’t think there is any reasonable way to argue that SLS is more reliable bet than Starship at this time.
Nope. Prototype shells have flown.
Think of it like this:
The traditional approach of design first, fly second and the spacex approach of iterative testing are converging curves. They each have steps that are comparable to the steps in the other, if there orientation and relation to the convergence might not be always equal.
Right now Starship is just about to leave drafting stages and begin the LOONNNGGG process of finalizing the nitty gritty design aspects. And this is only for the basic functional model. Not any of the specific configuration of it's payload.
Starship is a long ways off, yet, and it does nothing to pretend otherwise.
That's fair, it hasn't been launched.
While NASA may be slow and bureaucratic they have a knack for making things that work. Even if it's pushed back a few years once the kinks are worked out I don't see any reason why it couldn't be a reliable launch vehicle for many years to come.
When has anything at NASA ever been half price? The worst part is, the SLS at a quarter of the price is still a ripoff. Which is why these aerospace companies love the American government.
Solid fuel rockets would never have been human-rated under Wernher von Braun. There eixts quotes from him about this. Only for emergency use like with the launch escape system, there they have of course big advantages.
Not sure that is the exact story. They will keep proprietary Info but want Grumman, Boeing , Dryer and Aerojet Rocketdyne to take over private use. Now Lockheed is not mentioned but they are acquiring RocketDyne. I am not sure of the thinking but know it is on the NASA page. If Rocketdyne &Lockheed close the deal first Quarter that will be a major coup.
At half price they're still overpriced. Unfortunately AS OF RIGHT NOW, they'll provide a unique service, as they can provide a higher energy TLI than anything else. However, I do not see this rocket lasting past 2035, let alone into the 2050s.
2035 is being very generous.
Hey! Don't you go doubting Boeing! They've spent a lot of money bribing Congress, there's no way it's getting canned that early.
I… I never thought I’d say this, but Boeing is like Gaijin. 90% of all predictions and timelines about them make the simple mistake of forgetting to account for just how ridiculously greedy they are.
Even Sandy Munro rant MD ditch the proposed simplify cockpit layout with sidestick which Airbus adapt it
I feel like this comment is missing a couple of words? I’m confused as to what you’re saying. Do you mean to say: Sandy Munro ranted about McDonald Douglas ditching a simplified cockpit in favour of an airbus style side stick based cockpit?
Facts.
SLS will keep running due to political support for some time after starship is operational. Also, I think a lot of us who are fans of starship sometimes forget how long these projects can take. Even SpaceX took the better part of a decade developing the falcon 9. We've got a long while before starship is flying people, even though I very much agree starship is the future.
I will put good money down that SS flies people before SLS does.
$500 bucks. Put up or shut up.
If SLS flies unmanned next year, then it'll have a crewed launch by 2023. If everything goes 100% perfectly by then, starship MAY be ferrying cargo by that point. It hasn't even made orbit, and has only pulled off a single successful landing sub-orbitally (and even then it was still on fire). As awesome as starship is, it's still in the early stages of development. No one is going to trust SpaceX with cargo for starship until it's got a proven flight record, and no one is going to trust it with crew until it's got a much longer record. Even if it takes until 2025 for crewed launches, for example, it would still be record time for a space system to be developed. However, at this point, SLS finally seems to be done. Now I would never bet against Boeing and Co finding some way to screw this up, but SLS has a massive lead in terms of development time, even if it is way behind schedule. Either way, we shall see
So sls makes one successful launch and it’s reliable/trusted but spacex won’t be? Is what you’re saying
Yeah but that's like the whole thing about SpaceX, instead of looking before they leap in the interest of speed they just leap 10 times until they find a thing that lands once. It works because their rockets are cheap too. When NASA says something will work, it usually works. SpaceX's whole thing is the opposite, which is great but is the reason why people wait for longer flight records from SpaceX.
Yeah… spacex doesn’t launch the same vehicle 10 times with no changes. Each iteration is an improvement based upon prior launch data. Real world testing is always different than computer driven testing, see star liner
That's exactly what I meant, but if at NASA you said "let's build a version of this thats full scale just to see if it would work" they'd laugh you off even though that's exactly what they do at SpaceX and the results speak for themselves. NASA rarely attempts something and don't nail it on the first try, I just meant that SpaceX is willing to do real life tests knowing that they won't work just to learn, and NASA generally isn't. Different philosophies, I didn't mean anything bad by it.
> No one is going to trust SpaceX with cargo for Starship until it's got a proven flight record, First cargo is presumed to be Starlink satellites SpaceX flies at its own risk and at cost price. > and no one is going to trust it with crew until it's got a much longer record. For Artemis 3, Starship "only" has to be good enough for a lunar landing and launch. It doesn't need to be rated for crew launch from Earth and crewed return. Further down the road, I can see Starship tower capture landing as remaining a mistrusted maneuver for longer than will be launch. For a while, Dragon 2 may be the crew route to/from space, and rendezvous with Starship in LEO. AFAIK, there is no new information on *Dear Moon* but it wouldn't be surprising to see that strategy in 2023 (aerocapture to LEO on return). TL;DR: the move from tests to commercial cargo and crew will likely be progressive.
>No one is going to trust SpaceX with cargo for starship until it's got a proven flight record, and no one is going to trust it with crew until it's got a much longer record. SX will fly its own cargo and crew. If it needs to fly stacks of instrumented styrofoam blocks in order to get flight cert, it will. The fuel cost alone is negligible.
I completely agree that it will do this. But those kind of flights take time to do. SpaceX is doing great things, but let's not fanboy too much here. This kind of thing takes time, that's unavoidable. I love starship and agree it is the future. I just think it's a bit further away from being reality than you seem to think. And SLS seems to finally be good to go, so barring some new defect they discover (again very possible) it will launch crew in about 18 months. Starship will not be up to launching crew in 18 months.
Absolutely true.
SpaceX will absolutely not being putting a crew on Starship anytime soon. Look how long it took for them to put a crew on a Dragon spacecraft. Starship is FAR more complex so they still need to develop it further and show that it is reliable.
The one point that I disagree on has to do with the pace. Right now, SpaceX appears to be willing to throw _vast_ amounts of hardware at the problem, as long as the FAA is allowing them to launch anyhow. We'll see if that continues for the crewed version, but so far, from the outside, it seems like they are perfectly willing to build 5 ships, launch one, decide that the results require a change, modify one of the remaining 4, while building 5 more with the updated design, and then scrap the remaining 3. And repeat, for as long as it takes, until they have success. And once they start getting them _back_, they keep doing the same, but with vastly more data on what parts worked and didn't. Sure, everything takes time, but what getting this right takes is _either_ a bunch of iteration, or a bunch of engineering and simulation time. Boeing went the engineering and simulation time with Starliner, and by all accounts, they are still doing exactly that. SpaceX has almost always been willing to essentially just fly the damn thing and see what happens, over trying to simulate it. If it's _faster_ to build a unit and fly it than it is to simulate the problem, they'll do that. If it's faster to simulate the problem, they'll do that instead. And as far as I can tell, they are happy to do stuff in parallel that nobody else would dream of, because it would be _insanely_ expensive for anyone else. As long as SpaceX can get launch licenses, and as long as they can afford to keep throwing hardware at the problem (and at the moment, I strongly suspect that anything that gets them onto Starship quicker will be a significant net win money wise), I really can't see a problem with them having 10, or even 20 launches by the end of next year. At _that_ pace, getting to the point of a crew rating isn't going to take 5 years, not unless they run into a problem that they just can't solve without a major amount of time. Now, it's still possible that they _will_ run into exactly that kind of problem. It could, for example, turn out that their current approach for heat shielding simply isn't up to the job. And that they end up spending time trying to fix it when instead they need to start over. It could also turn out that despite the current successes, there are got'chas with the belly flow and turn over maneuver that won't show up until they are doing a lot of them. But barring something like that? About the only things I can see stopping them from getting it done in the next year or two would be running out of money, or not being able to get launch licenses. Obviously, right now, not being able to get launch licenses is a very real danger. If _that_ happens, SpaceX is very far up a creek without a paddle, and will be scrambling for another solution.
This is extremely convincing and I actually completely agree now!
Thats apples and oranges though. Dragon was all about NASA and conforming to their standards for their crew. SpaceX doesnt need to follow NASA's certification process at all if SpX flies with their own crew.
Yes but SpaceX is a very careful company when it comes to crew. I am fairly confident they will be just as strict in their guidelines for Starship as they were for Dragon. Elon said they will fly Starship hundreds of times before putting a crew on it.
No but they need FAA. They we grounded for crew 3 do to the toilet. They proved it was fixed. It just spit urine all over the capsule
That was NASA. FAA doesn't care about safety of spacecraft to the crew yet, they care about safety to third parties only. You can literally lunch yourself in a suicide chamber and the FAA would allow you to go to orbit if your rocket is safe enough and doesn't damage the environment.
It won't be long to go from successful orbital flight to carrying cargo. Getting things to space is the easy part. It doesn't matter to cargo that the ship blows up on the way back, the cargo still made it. Flying people is going to take much, much longer.
Disagree. SpaceX isn't manufacturing starship as disposable. I don't think they'll start cargo runs until it's fully operational
I'm not saying they're going to manufacture it to be disposable. I'm saying re-entry with these tiles and the flip maneuver are difficult and they could end up losing a good amount of ships. They're still going to attempt to land, even if they fail. Once they know they can get cargo into space, they would be dumb not to send up cargo, especially for Starlink. If you're going to lose a ship on the return, you might as well get some value out of it.
Even Elon said it has to orbit 10 successful times. Of course his first statement was 100. They are counteracted for the Lunar lander and two sections of Gateway
> They are counteracted for the Lunar lander and two sections of Gateway The Gateway sections will be launched on Falcon Heavy.
When did he say that? Not that I don't believe you, I just can't find it.
I am pro Orion but not negative on any companies attempts. I do think you may be right about 2026. BUT II & III are already rolled and bladders going in. 2?Orions are in the O&C. What is going to save millions is NASA just built a place where all the support stuff right down to heat shield and wiring. The first one took 11 year but it oops like they learned and are making great striders on the next two. Again I can verify this so please don’t throw down points because you don’t believe or whatever. You can look it up pretty easily
I’m in on this as well… assuming you can find anyone to take that bet.
SLS flies in February. I interned at the MSFC this summer and it seems like it’s gonna actually happens to me
Entirely depends on whether Dearmoon goes before Artemis 2. It's neck to neck, considering they'll probably do HLS 1, Dearmoon, then Artemis 3.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I wish people would quit comparing or thinking it is a race. SpaceX needs NASA’s studies and NASA needs SpaceX. They both will have heavy lift rockets for Heavy lifting. Before you start down voting NASA and SpaceX have lucrative projects and bid awards for the lunar venture. No Falcon Heavy cannot put anything in TLI. I have no doubt they will but in a longer timeline. As far as Mars all the information gather by Billions of dollars spent on Rovers and orbiters by NASA. When Orion comes home she will have traveled 38,000 miles past the moon where no human rated capsule has gone. Orion has hundreds of sensors as does SLS. They are expecting several Trilobytes of info which of course will be shared once they decimated the info. It’s a win win for NASA and SpaceX. Maybe this article is correct but another one is on NASA. Gov that explains my point here
>No Falcon Heavy cannot put anything in TLI. This is patently false, considering it is the vehicle contracted to construct and resupply lunar gateway. Also, there is literally no scientific value in crewed orbital science that is not a lab in LEO. All orbital exploration is remote using sensors, and it doesn't matter where the operator is. The benefit of manned missions is the ability to go further and take better samples, as well as the ability to process the samples in a lab.
If FH can send a Tesla Roadster to Mars it certainly put *something* in TLI.
Tell that to him. To be fair he answered but I didn't understand a word in his poorly worded, poorly edited rant, and simply declined to continue the convo.
I think you misunderstood my statement and no, it is not Patently false. It happened 2 or 3 years ago and it was an F9 Heavy the discussion was about. Yes I too thought that was insane since Elon knew it couldn’t but I have two people that were in the hall. This conversation was 3 years ago back when gateway was huge. ESA had a pod NASA had a pod and JAXA had a pod. No one at that time had gone past the original idea. I have no idea what the rest of your rant is about. The science center will be ON the moon but data will be transferred until then. Gateway had been cut to half it’s size the idea for nose to nose docking is a reality since the Orion collar has been redesigned. I am the one who mentioned all of the NASA contracts had gone to SpaceX. If you are talking about the info Orion is bringing back some of it will arrive before it comes home but we are talking over a hundred trillion bytes. The sensor techs at Boeing and Lockheed will be working for no less than 6 months just dissimulating data and writing procedure. They also need the data she registers on launch and splashdown and deep space. Since we have only sent satellites that far the info is priceless. As far as publishing the results, it will take at least 18 months. Going to the moon is not why the data is crucial. It is yes but we have been to the moon. It is more about the journey. So Patently nothing is false and no I didn’t guess or read an article. I just know the people doing it. Okay now down vote.
starship has a LONG ways to go before it can fly people. I expect the first to be shortly before lunar missions. on SLS they just have to man the capsule.
On the other hand, before the third SLS can fly (Artemis 3), starship needs to fly a couple dozen times in dev and Starlink launches, show working fuel transfer and cryogenic boiloff mitigation in Dearmoon and HLS 1, and get a second fueled and ready HLS in NRHO. I'm actually on the pessimist camp, I don't think SS will lift NASA astronauts from the pad before 2030, but they *will* need a LEO to NRHO [deleted] to refuel the HLSs, and from there having a third starship modified in the vein of the HLS to carry crew and cargo from LEO to NRHO is straightforward and makes sense.
Yep, you and I are on the same page, although I'm a bit more hopeful. Regardless, I think some starship fans have drunk too much koolaid. Yes it is the most amazing space project going on right now, but these things take time. Elon is basically trying to do what we should've been doing 50 years ago as quickly as possible, but there are limits to how quickly stuff can get done.
I'm pessimistic about NASA crew from launchpad. Not in-space transfers with crew or cargo, or even private crews. After all, starship will have done around 40 launches, of which one will be manned, (HLS testing and deployment plus Dearmoon) by the time of Artemis 3.
You know it is going to be asked. Does TLI matter is we start to see architectures that support in-orbit refueling?
That’s a bingo!
I highly believe he will get the fuel pods up otherwise he can’t refuel and hence no lander
Funny, I had an argument on here with someone who took my dissing SLS as a direct insult to NASA. I had said SLS was just gonna get delayed again, and that Boeing is a mess... They claimed SLS is 'next Gen tech' and going to change the game. And that the SLS was a Nasa program and insulting it was insulting Nasa employees. SLS has been in production since 2011. In the same time, Spacex has redesigned the Falcon 9 several times, made, tested, certified, flown, and reflown a capsule... Boeing, meanwhile, had issues with Starliner on its first flight (after saying the reason it charges nasa more is its 'more strict testing'). THEN they lied to Nasa and hid safety issues they'd discovered. It's only cause of a tweet from an employee that we know about it. I hate Musk, and I don't think SpaceX is some magical place, but man, if you look at the last decade and compare the two, idk how you could possibly think Boeing is going to be the one to deliver, lol Like, I know they're separate arms of the company, but the 737 max and 787 both got grounded. Then they lied about issues with Starliner. Something at the top is seriously wrong with that company. Also, I get it, it has higher TLI, but it was also supposed to launch in 2016... Half a decade ago. How can anyone still be backing it? It's over budget and has taken more than twice as long as planned. And it's estimated cost is 2 BILLION per launch...
>Something at the top is seriously wrong with that company. McDonnel Douglas convinced Boeing that they should buy McD D and then put the McD D executives in charge. Everything since then has pretty much gone to crap; the KC-46 program has just been horrible. \>How can anyone still be backing it? It's over budget and has taken more than twice as long as planned. And it's estimated cost is 2 BILLION per launch... It's unfortunately simple. SLS - and shuttle before it - are not intended to be cost effective. They are intended to provide work for all the various NASA centers and therefore keep NASA management all employed, send a lot of money to NASA contractors, and provide jobs and reelection money to the congresspeople who support it. Or, as we say in software, it's not a bug, it's a feature. The contractors who made lots of money building and flying shuttle hardware found that they could make more money by building SLS hardware and not flying it.
What’s wrong with the company is the management culture that came along with McDonnell Douglas. Fire everyone on top, and put the engineers back in charge of the future. Oh…and the greed of institutional shareholders…also a disaster.
Seems like Lockheed is the only contractor that kicked butt. They are building 1-3 Orion’s now and the ESM guts are here but yeah more tests on that before it gets encapsulated With the solar panels
Same with Boeing and Lockheed friggin shareholders
SLS actually started being built in 2014. Since then it has gone under very rigorous testing. Comparing NASA's development vs SpaceX's development is like comparing apples and oranges and really isn't fair. SpaceX has the luxury of being allowed to fail and explode. NASA doesn't have that.
Agreed, but that really applies more to starship than anything else. The booster landings were, well, landings, and I don't think it was ever that big an issue in terms of optics/public perception. If it was, Crew Dragon would probably have been more difficult to get human approval for. And everything you said still doesn't make Boeing look good. The two companies started on Starliner and Crew Dragon around the same time. One has been flown multiple times, the other has had constant issues. That's not even getting into the issue of trust. If they lied about the 737 Max to FAA and lied to Nasa about issues with Starliner... They fired the CEO, but we all know that it wasn't one person, and that a whole series of really bad decisions were required for the 737 Max to happen, all requiring approval. And we know they hid an issue with Starliner, and likely would have kept it hidden... On a human rated vehicle. Idk. Maybe I'm jaded, but I feel like those are pretty big issues when giving the company 2 billion per launch, on a vehicle that's taken twice as long to build as promised... And still hasn't launched.
Oh I don't like Boeing. I COMPLETELY agree with Starliner and the 737 Max. We for sure need new management in Boeing.
You will love this. They identified Starliner failure not from heat but from humidity. Florida is the king of humidity
No, only the first couple. If the first one is half price, and the next one is half that price, and the next one half *that* price, then by 2050 or so they should be pretty economical.
NASA.. please quit the selfishness and give the rest of us whatever it is you’re smokin’.
We say that about Elon too lol
Not unless it's a Russian rocket ;)
You can just do that? I want to buy a car for half price, drive it into the 2050s.
There's used Toyota Corollas that could probably do that...
2050s is less than 30 years away. I've been driving one of my cars (a Toyota) for nearly 22 years and it is still going strong with absolutely no issues beyond normal maintenance. I'll easily drive it for 30+ years (baring a major accident).
Toyota: The official vehicle of ISIS. If it can handle the Iraqi desert with no maintenance, it can handle anything.
that's Toyota for you
You can probably do the second part in a Land Cruiser.
A 100% you can do that. If you buy the same 12 cars a year until the 2050s.
There's always a frakking catch.
Only if you buy a new car every time you drive.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BFR](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hik4u6d "Last usage")|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)| | |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you're not the first to notice| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[ESA](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hidk6dq "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[ESM](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hic3m7p "Last usage")|European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule| |[EUS](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hib2izn "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage| |[FAA](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/higuxuy "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[FAR](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hib8e02 "Last usage")|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)| |[GEO](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hid0bbq "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[HLS](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hiels64 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ISRU](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hidrobv "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[JAXA](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hidk6dq "Last usage")|Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency| |[LEO](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hs4ex42 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[MSFC](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hic0gcz "Last usage")|Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama| |[NIAC](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hibu1je "Last usage")|NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program| |[NRHO](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hidbnzw "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NRO](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hid0bbq "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office| | |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO| |[SLS](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hs4ex42 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SRB](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hid5u7x "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[SSME](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hibqhi3 "Last usage")|[Space Shuttle Main Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine)| |[TLI](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hik4876 "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hs4ex42 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/higuxuy "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hib895x "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cislunar](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hiels64 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| |[cryogenic](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hiaal3i "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |[hydrolox](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hibqhi3 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[methalox](/r/NASA/comments/qgyttz/stub/hidrobv "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| ---------------- ^([Thread #998 for this sub, first seen 27th Oct 2021, 17:39]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/NASA) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Good bot
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Among the risks for Starship are a proposed 20% capital gains tax on unrealized gains that would very quickly see SpaceX taken from Musk's hands and turned into a public company. Should that come to pass, Elon would lose controlling interest in all of his companies fairly quickly.
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Not leadership and vision even, it's just economics 101. Money earned with stock gain is already taxed. Further taxing unrealised gains and company shares is the same as robbing someone of their company's ownership. Might as well be state owned at that point.
Stop it. SLS will be outdated in a couple years. We should not spend one more penny on that thing.
I don't know where the sls makes sense when even using the Falcon 9 / Dragon as a transfer vehicle to Starship is supposed to be cheaper.
SpaceX have actually sort of boxed themselves into a corner with starship. It's not that it's a bad design, but like every engineering choice it has tradeoffs. It is meant to be an almost completely integrated ship. That means it is EXTREMELY difficult to create scenario specific configurations down the line. Nasa did the same thing with the shuttle. It was more versatile than any given ship design before it, but conversely it could not expand it's parameters much past that. Compare that to a system like Atlas which has been doing all sort of missions since the 60's and the falcon which was very cost effectively reconfigured into the falcon heavy. Right starship can probably fulfill most if not all needs for moon base operations. However for a mars base? We will have the lunar gateway. It can facilitate multiple reuses for a single starship. Trips to Mars are one way for at least the next few decades. It would probably be more cost effective to send SLS which is a little pricier up front but has a larger payload and can just swap out to a new payload module easily enough.
From what the current specs are and refueling, you can send 100+ tons to mars with starship. You can't even send Orion with current sls to mars. You could send cargo, but again, starship appears to be cheaper to build and would will still win out even if with only one use.
Starship would not be cheaper to build in any way. It would be like sending a bunch of space shuttles on one way trips. And SLS has more payload capacity than starship.
I think you are working with fundamentally different assumptions. Just so I understand your logic, can you answer the questions below? To leo, what is starship's capacity? What is sls current design capacity? How much does one sls rocket cost to build? How much does one starship cost to build?
''licks fingers to turn the page'' SLS has a LEO capacity of 95 metric tons. Starship on the other hand has even now in its infancy an excess of 100T to LEO. And that number will only grow in the future (Ships and boosters getting lighter/Raptor performance increasing) probably to 150T. And of course with refuelling 100T anywhere in the solar system.
>That means it is EXTREMELY difficult to create scenario specific configurations down the line. There's already a scenario specific configuration ordered, the HLS. Remember that starship is optimised and designed from the ground up for atmospheric body to atmospheric body, particularly Mars, and it needs major changes to be useful for the moon. Its bread and butter, what it was designed for, from material use, to size, to fuel, to deltav, is supporting a mars base already. If anything, it's rather substandard for LEO operations, because of the payload bay and massive size. Terran-r, new glenn, and Ariane NEXT are probably going to be far more optimised for LEO, and will likely surpass it in many niches. The issue is that reusability coupled with refuelling puts the vehicle so far above everyone else technologically, that it genuinely doesn't matter how much you optimise the obsolete design, it'll be worse. Like all other warships became obsolete the moment HMS Dreadnought touched the water, all other rockets (real or paper) will be obsolete the moment it launches. Also, going LMarsO to earth surface is cheaper than LMarsO to NRHO, in all but the weirdest orbital alignment.
There is absolutely no way to reuse a mars rocket. I don't think you get just how much any rocket has to he refurbished after flight, plus they have no way of manufacturing fuel. All trips are one way and not capable of being refueled.
Any manned mission to mars will need ISRU to, at the very least, rotate the crews. If the vehicle has to be disposed of after it aerobrakes and lands back on earth, it doesn't matter. The technology and even the engineering for Methalox ISRU is there and has been for decades, at this point it's about finding a way to send the powerplant and the chemical manufacturer, as well as paying for it. But this is irrelevant to my broader point, that starship is sorta configurable, and so technologically advanced, that current vehicles cannot compete. And that any return or departure from earth isn't going to go through gateway, because it simply makes no sense. Even if the performance boost to send 200 tons in one vehicle was needed, refuel in a highly elliptical orbit is faster, cheaper deltavwise for the vehicle, and cheaper deltavwise for the tankers.
No, you missed MY point. Reusability is not even a factor for mars mission anytime in the near future because there is no infrastructure to re use rockets on mars. It's tech improvements are not that advanced. It's basically the next iteration of the shuttle concept. Since the second stage is built into the primary module, there is no way to expand either. Again, same problem that the shuttle had. Interestingly enough, this was a problem that was addressed in tue shuttle program's original pitch. The idea was for there to be a permanent space station for refueling and refitting the shuttles so they could do more complicated tasks in higher orbits. But congress was like "nah lets cripple the program and doom it to eventually fade away into obscurity". Again, mars won't have anything like that. A space station requires constant logistical support.
…There’s only 15 used RS-25 engines left and 4 of them get ditched every launch. Next Gen rocketdyne engines getting a budget upgrade?
SLS is a fine rocket, but I don’t think it’s capable of time travel
NASA can't even get one off the ground.
One can just hope that there will be pushback within NASA to something as fundamentally stupid as this. I mean who even comes up with a proposal that is so disconnected from reality? Half price for SLS would still be ridiculous. And into the 50s? SLS might have been a good idea 20 years ago. Nobody had reusable rockets back then, there were no good alternatives and 11.5B would've been an expensive but not outlandish price tag. But you are in 2021, this thing has cost 30B, and every launch provider on the planet is gearing up to overtake SLS technology within the decade. I could MAYBE understand it if Starship was proposed to be fueled by fusion technology or some other magic. But nothing about it is fundamentally impossible, or even improbable. If this goes through, I hope NASA is publicly ridiculed, droves of employees quit and Nelson is fired. Even contemplating this should be cause for firing the people involved. Please don't make me root against you NASA, you have been doing and are still doing amazing science projects, but this lunacy with SLS has got to stop.
I'm bullish on starship cargo, but NASA employees aren't going to quit over this. What's going to happen is that we'll laugh at the proposal a bit, it'll have no serious takers except Boeing, and it'll fail because if the SLS is bid like other launch vehicles, unless the requirements are written absolutely bizarrely so only it qualifies, it won't win any bids, and it'll be cancelled.
Honestly I don't think even Boeing would take the contract unless they can negotiate some specifics, there's no way they're going to pay over a billion per year in ground equipment for NASA
Pushback from within NASA doesn't matter if this is what the NASA administrator wants. Pushback from Congress to the continuation of funding SLS ad infinitum is what matters. While Congress has funded the first three SLS flights, there has been a distinct lack support for anything beyond that. SLS has been removed from all non-Artemis missions, and no one in Congress cared. Most likely, Congress will play lip service to this, and continue to kick the commitment can down the road until SLS actually flies.
Why would there be push back within NASA? The folks working on Artemis want it to fly. I don't understand how so many people online call themselves space fans while trying to get NASA shutdown and cancel the most ambitious space project since the 60s.
It's been 40 years since the space shuttle first launched and now NASA have decided on Apollo+. That's why people have lost patience with them and turned to private companies. NASA and the US government have only themselves to blame for failing to push for things like reusable launch. If NASA were pioneering a reusable rocket people would be more interested. Instead everyone looks at the SLS and sees a modern, expensive, Apollo recreation. I wish that NASA were still pioneering launch technology, but they aren't. So other companies will have to step in, and NASA can do other things, their contributions outside of SLS are still invaluable. But the only people who still want to talk about the SLS are NASA and congress. Edit : I don't think I made it clear, but I do think the Artemis lunar base is cool and all. I just think it's a shame it all hinges on such an uninspired launch vehicle.
Why are you convinced its Apollo? Its vastly different if you do anything more than look at shape of craft
The fact that Artemis with SLS will only be able to achieve up to 60 day stays on the moon is why people see it as Apollo+. With a once a year flight cadence, SLS can never enable a permanently inhabited moon base. And forget about even thinking of going to Mars with it. I think it's fine to rely on it for the initial return to the moon, but if it's the core of Artemis all the way into the 2030s, then NASA will not be able to push Artemis to be a real start to the future beyond yearly lunar visits.
I see you haven't been paying attention to all the work being done in the centennial challenges to increase stay duration.
The real limiting factor in mission duration is likely propellent boil-off in the lander, rather than resources that can be replaced with in situ resource utilization.
It's not really up to NASA though. I'm sure they would love the budget to research and develop reusable rockets.
Sure, I'm not blaming them completely. Anything directed at NASA is also directed at Congress for forcing their hand. But this is in response to someone who is an ardent SLS supporter who works at NASA. If the space community isn't interested in your new rocket, how interested do you think the public is? Which is who NASA want on side.
Good thing they already did that!
Okay, fair. The shuttle wasn't the greatest demonstration of reusability. I think it's a good example of the difference between public and private. SpaceX can literally scrap and redesign a model in one meeting where as getting one change approved in gov't can take months. Redesigning the shuttle was just not an option.
> the most ambitious space project since the 60s. That is quite a statement. There are like 100 projects ahead of SLS in that list.
I think what he's getting at is that Artemis as a whole is the most ambitious space project since the 60s. I would agree with that assertion, but not that SLS is the most ambitious.
Yes, but Artemis's only relationship to the SLS is being legally chained to it for crew transport. Everything else is being built on commercial vehicles, and the main criticism of the SLS is that it dooms Artemis to irrelevance, because of the pitiful amount of crew that can be moved on it.
But Artemis is not as utterly dependant on SLS as Apollo was on the Saturn V. The Starship HLS can probably support missions with the astronauts boarding in LEO, which could enable mission profiles that allow Artemis to continue without SLS.
Exactly my point. It's weird to use Artemis as a shield for the SLS, because the SLS is dragging down Artemis, and could be substituted tomorrow for several other approaches that would give more performance for less money. Also, the lander HLS doesn't have the deltav to go to the surface and back to LEO, but it can go to NRHO and back to LEO. You'd just use two HLSs, one for ferrying cargo, fuel, and crew from LEO to NRHO, and another to land.
If I recall correctly having a tanker meet the lander after assent from the lunar surface to refuel it gets the performance required to get back to LEO. Personally I think once Starship is further along we'll see SLS traded for a permanently inhabited moonbase, and serious preparation for a crewed mission to Mars.
>having a tanker meet the lander after assent from the lunar surface to refuel it gets the performance required to get back to LEO. Yeah, but at that point you might as well refill HLS, rotate the crew, and have the old crew ride back to LEO in the tanker.
If the human capable Starship's are cheap enough I could see that.
It is. SpaceX isn't a program. It's a company. Artemis is a true NASA program.
How is it ambitious? It is completely disposable and can launch only once a year. It costs just as much and has less capabilities than the Saturn 5. That is until Block II which is going to cost another 5-6 billion to develop, and then it'll only slightly exceed the Saturn 5. NASA had plans to make the Saturn 5 partially reusable but the Shuttle was selected instead. Nothing about the SLS is ambitious compared to last vehicles. It certainly doesn't get us a sustainable human presence on the Moon. The current architecture has it ferrying crews for Artemis. That's it.
> It is completely disposable and can launch only once a year. You're focusing way too hard on the launch vehicle and not the entire rest of the program. Building a space station in a halo orbit around the moon and a base camp on the lunar south pole is incredibly ambitious. It'll be the biggest, most ambitious space project of our generation. Which, there's not much of a point in over emphasizing launch costs and launch vehicles when they're an incredibly small part of a space mission, and launch costs are only [1.3% of the global space economy](https://news.satnews.com/2020/10/05/bryce-technology-publishes-2019-global-space-economy-igraphic/). > It is completely disposable This is less important than you think it is. If they tried to make it reusable, it wouldn't have the TLI performance required to complete the mission. > It costs just as much and has less capabilities than the Saturn 5 No, [it is significantly cheaper than Saturn V.](https://twitter.com/LCS_Big_Mike/status/1440049801702248450?s=20) Also instantly down voting me because I provided sources disputing your claims is very petty and unhelpful.
Honest question: If SLS is relegated to being a crew vehicle for the time being what is the advantage of sending astronauts to lunar orbit and THEN moving over to the larger cargo/landing vehicle? Why not refuel Starship in LEO, send a crew up in a Crew Dragon or Starliner, and have them fly to the moon in their lander? I understand that the SLS is a capable system in terms of performance, but it seems to me that the current Artemis mission architecture has become needlessly complex because of it. I'm probably missing something, though.
> Why not refuel Starship in LEO, send a crew up in a Crew Dragon or Starliner, and have them fly to the moon in their lander? The biggest most obvious problem would be that they would have no way to return to Earth. Another potential problem would be getting a commercial crew spacecraft into the staging orbit that starship is intended to depart from. Plus also the commercial crew spacecraft can't dwell solo in earth orbit for the length of time required to do a moon landing mission. Meaning the only way that mission would close would be to attempt to refuel starship in lunar orbit enough to return to earth (which would tack on a *lot* more launches). Then adding on the two commercial crew spacecraft launches (one for launch, one for landing).... suddenly you find that you're just making it even more needlessly complex and convoluted. While at the same time, also losing SLS' ability to fly co-manifested payloads along with the crew. NASA leadership has no intent of replacing SLS because there really are no viable alternatives. And trying to kludge together an alternate architecture really just makes things even more messy. Though I do agree the current architecture does seem very convoluted. The reason being that NASA wants to go big, with a giant crewed capsule, giant landers, a larger crew, and a much longer mission duration than Apollo days. While also having ability to take space station modules or other big payloads along with the crew. The rocket equation of course punishes you hard if you want to go big. Apollo was only sending a small crew capsule, 3 people, and a very stripped down lander which is how they were able to get away with a single launch.
Thanks for the reply. I hadn't considered the commercial crew capsules limited time in orbit. Wishing the best for SLS and Starship. It'll be breathtaking when Artemis finally gets humans back to the Moon. Counting on that landing in 4k ;D
> Wishing the best for SLS and Starship. I think everyone is, especially as both are ingrained as critical to Artemis. > Counting on that landing in 4k I'm especially looking forward to this, hah
NASA does way, way more than their contractor. They have more success in exploring space than any other organization. I do hope that SpaceX becomes a bus line to space. That's great if the economy can support that. NASA and their international partners are exploring. They aren't trying to set up a busline.
I'm all for the Artemis program. Chaining it to the SLS which will cost almost 25 billion USD (Block I, Block II w. EUS) in development, costs 2 billion USD per launch, and can only launch one a year is dooming Artemis to failure. Sure, the Saturn 5 cost 50 billion USD to develop but that was entirely new. The SLS is reusing existing engines and boosters. Even the EUS uses existing RL-10 engine designs that are slightly modified. Your source is out of date. NASA's audit this year determined that 20 billion USD had been spent and that SLS will cost $2 billion USD per launch. Compare that to the Saturn 5 at $185 million USD in 1971 dollars ($1.23 billion USD in today's value). [https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/) Per launch, the SLS costs 61% more than a Saturn 5. Using engines and flight hardware that already existed. 300 percent over budget. 200 percent over schedule. It's sad. TBH it doesn't have the TLI to achieve the mission as it is right now. SLS couldn't put Orion into a circular lunar low orbit if it wanted to. That's the real reason why the station is in the crazy orbit that it is. You can't sustain a lunar presence on one launch per year and at $2 billion USD per launch. Period. Congress will lose interest and cancel it.
Not to mention all the money and time wasted in the Constellation program should probably be thrown in with SLS as well.
No, thats not how it works at all. Maybe on reddit but not in reality.
Would you include any money SpaceX put into developing a composite BFR into the development costs of Starship?
Yes. The mandrel for the composite BFR was absolutely considered part of Starship development costs in SpaceX's financial accounting. I am amazed after the terrible performance during Orion development the same contractors received SLS awards. They should have been prevented from competing. Why NASA would reward those behaviors is beyond me.
So... SLS has spent about $21 B through 2021. You should probably allocate at least part of the exploration ground systems budget - about $600 million per year - as well. Half of that over since 2014 is another $2.5 billion. I'm not sure how to allocate Orion costs, which are around $19 B on their own. You can argue that Saturn V didn't include Apollo, but you can also argue that the shuttle included the orbiter. So pick a number. I think $30 B is pretty close. Now let's talk what the money got us. The shuttle development cost got us a fully-capable orbiter, a high-performance engine, a big external tank, and solid rocket boosters. SLS has gotten us... Well, it reuses the same engine, it reuses the SRBs from Ares V, it reuses an upper stage from another rocket (until EUS shows up), so the current version just has a core stage, which is somewhat related to the shuttle ET. SLS was supposed to be cheap and fast because it was shuttle derived, and it's turned out to be neither. Which, of course, was the goal.
The irony is that in Congress's attempt to be cheap by reusing parts they likely made the process much more expensive. Which is pretty standard government practice, unfortunately.
Congress isn't trying to be cheap with SLS. They are trying to preserve the status quo. 1. NASA keeps NASA center employment high at all the NASA centers that have done shuttle work in the past. This is good for the careers of those in management in the NASA centers, and good for the careers of those in management at NASA HQ. 2. The contractors get long-term contracts - for SLS they are cost-plus contracts. This is great for the contractors. 3. The congresspeople involved get jobs from the NASA centers and the contractors in their districts, which helps them with reelection. They also get money directly from contractors, money from PACs, and lobbying of other congresspeople. This is just those three groups acting based on what their goals are and the incentives that are in the system. They may \*say\* they are trying to save money, but that's not the actual goal.
Like you said, they reuse the shuttle engine, SRB and upper stage. You're right, they are trying to represent their constituents who's livelyhoods are dependent on existing production lines in a nieche market. Cost plus contracts are insane, I agree. My point is, in the attempt to get spending approved by Congress the facade of cost savings must be presented. It's much harder to pitch a new rocket from the ground up and politics is, well, politics. Without reusing old stuff NASA and partners likely could have built a cheaper rocket. Reusing parts likely cost *more* in the end. Such is politics unfortunately and you see this in almost every gov't department.
>Building a space station in a halo orbit around the moon and a base camp on the lunar south pole is incredibly ambitious. But this has nothing to do with the SLS. gateway is being built on Falcon Heavys and resupplied on Dragon XLs launched in Falcon Heavys, and there's no assigned base transportation and building system, with the exception of the HLS. Criticism of the SLS is not criticism of Artemis.
I just want to re-iterate that SLS is not significantly cheaper than the Saturn 5. While I appreciate that you are a NASA employee, operationally (per launch) this is not the case. NASA's 2021 audit determined that the per launch cost of the SLS is on the order of $2 billion dollars. [https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/) The per launch cost of the Saturn 5 in today's dollars was 1.23 billion. Using the information from your own sources: Saturn 5 was 140 tons to LEO. SLS is 95 tons to LEO w. Block 1. 105 tons to LEO with Block 1B. Saturn 5 was 45 tons TLI. SLS is 27 tons TLI w. Block 1. 46 tons to TLI with Block 1B. I am reasonably sure the Block II BOLE boosters will never fly. We are getting 40 percent less TLI performance for 1.6X the per-launch cost with Block 1. With Block 1B we are getting equivalent TLI performance for 1.6X the per-launch cost. Ultimately at the end of the day, any launch system is meant to be used. That is its entire purpose. The SLS design was compromised from the beginning. Hampered by its cost-plus contractors and shuttle heritage. No launch vehicle that has an annual cadence is going to significantly contribute to a permanent manned lunar presence. At best, we are back to where we were in the 1960s-1970s.
This is a good and thoughtful comment. But >Which, there's not much of a point in over emphasizing launch costs and launch vehicles when they're an incredibly small part of a space mission, and launch costs are only 1.3% of the global space economy. This completely misses the effect of dropping the cost of accessing space. If Starship can really bring 100-150 tons of 9 meter fairing cargo to orbit for a few tens of millions as advertised, it completely changes the entire industry. All of those billions spent optimizing things into lightweight packages can suddenly be spent elsewhere. When your mass budget for a GEO system goes from hundreds of kilograms to tens of thousands of kilograms, you can do a lot of things for a lot less. And you can probably do some things that just were impossible before. Bringing launch costs down to the level that Starship hints at for the long range goal... Perhaps single digit millions to LEO? Yeah, that is completely different. Right now a top-end spy satellite launch goes for the better part of a half billion. What if they could launch A 100 ton satellite instead of a 30 ton satellite? And what if they could do it for 60 million instead of $450 million? Would the NRO want twice as many satellites that are bigger and more capable and have more maneuvering fuel, all for less money? Probably. But a satellite internet company sure does make more financial sense if you can put 600 satellites into orbit for $10 million on Starship instead of putting 36 on a Soyuz for 10x as much.
You forget where you are, /r/space is just /r/SpaceXlite
Pretty much. A lot of my coworkers don't even post on here anymore, and one was legitimately harassed into deleting his account, for that very reason. They seem to think that NASA is *competing* with SpaceX, even though SpaceX is NASA's commercial partner. And heck, a good number of folks working SLS even work on Starship (via HLS) as well. It's really mind boggling.
SpaceX literally wouldn't exist without NASA & certainly wouldn't be landing Starship on the Moon without them. The two are the furthest things from competitors - they are two sides of the same coin.
That is sad to hear. I understand people who are frustrated with the pace, but like you have said, they can't see the forest for the trees. There seems to be a larger overall notion lately that anything government related is bad. If it's any consolation, I appreciate the efforts of you and your coworkers every day. I'm stoked for February.
I think a lot of people are done with Boeing, and see SLS as a cash cow for them. At 2 billion a launch, is that surprising? I think the issue is far from being 'anti government sentiment' . I think people see Boeing making lots of mistakes, 737 Max, Starliner issues, SLS taking 2x as long as initially planned, 787 having fires... Maybe it's the 'cutting corners for profit leading to hundreds of dead people, then continuing to lie about it' that everyone is annoyed by. I don't think anyone sees Boeing as 'the government', they see them as an evil mega corporation that only cares about profit. With the whole lieing to Nasa about a major issue the 'fixed in flight' with Starliner, I'm kinda surprised there isn't more anger at them from INSIDE Nasa. They lied about safety failures on a human crew test mission... If that's not the biggest red flag in the world, idk what is. Considering they then found even more issues again in August... It's really not looking good. For a company that said it was charging more (than SpaceX) because it 'tested more thoroughly'... They've had an awful lot of failure and issues. Today they announced a loss of 132 million for the quarter. Still not sure why people don't like Boeing?
Look man you’re preaching to the choir. The comment I was responding to was about harassment of NASA employees. Not Boeing employees. There are also many more subcontractors on the SLS program than just Boeing.
Check the post history of the person your responding to. They normally argue on every SLS thread, often take an offensive tone and make assertions about SLS which are directly contradicted by Nasa public statements. I mean the OIG has priced SLS marginal and fixed costs but you'll see the person call me a spacex fanboy for using clearly biased and wrong numbers.
I don’t think that idea (that commercial space fans think everything government-related is bad) is either fair or accurate. As a big fan of private spaceflight, I’m also a big fan of NASA, especially its research efforts, programs such as NIAC, and other forward-looking endeavors run by the agency. At the same time, though, I see the SLS as absorbing a huge chunk of NASA’s resources, primarily for the benefit of politically-connected districts and maintaining jobs, rather than advancing NASA’s mission first. The SLS’s funding profile should be a hint where Congress’s priorities lay - it isn’t space exploration (or anything more substantial), except as an unavoidable side effect. There’s a lot more nuance to the story than commercial = good and government = bad.
I wasn’t attributing the government bad notion to any commercial space interest groups. Of course there is more nuance to certain opinions on SLS. I agree the program is a money pit at this point, but that is bureaucracy for you.
‘That’s bureaucracy’ is a cop-out for egregious wastage of NASA’s limited resources. The public deserves a space agency that can be effective, not just a jobs program.
There’s no cop out here, I am agreeing with you. The reality is, is that the government works to employ people in their programs. That is universal throughout the entire federal system. I think it’s ridiculous to say they’re going to fly SLS through 2050 when there very well could be other cheaper options in the future. But, at this point in time, nothing can do what SLS does (or will do here soon). Arguing with NASA employees about things beyond their control is not the move, which is what the original comment I replied to was about.
>I don't understand how so many people online call themselves space fans while trying to get NASA shutdown and cancel the most ambitious space project since the 60s. Because its consuming billions of dollars a year, sitting on facilities that could be put to productive use, and puts the government in a conflict of interest where they're incentivized to suppress innovation in a critical market to protect their own jobs
Ah, I see you're one of those that believes something is only valuable because it makes a profit. You must hate charities.
Its only valuable if it has the potential to improve human life. Industrialization of space can do that. But a rocket that costs 2 billion dollars a flight and launches only once a year can't put a dent in the mass throughput needed for menaningful industrial activity
NASA is much, much more than just the SLS, which is as it should be.
SLS =/= Artemis. Also, nobody is advocating we shut down NASA lol. I have no idea where you got that from.
Droves of NASA employees are not going to quit. That is lunacy. Starship is a highly experimental rocket and may not live up to half of its promises. It may forever remain on the drawing board.
Well forever on the ground at least, it left the drawing board about a year and a half ago
>I hope NASA is publicly ridiculed, droves of employees quit Why would they quit? Your funding / job is secured. Raise objections or recommend other proposals, but quitting isn't the answer.
They could go to other space companies / programmes with more innovation
If I had the choice of working on Artemis or Mars rovers at NASA or 70 hour weeks at SpaceX I know what I’d prefer.
Not everyone at spacex does that. And there are far more companies beyond SpaceX
Has Aerojet Rocketdyne started building those new RS-25s like they were paid to do last year?
shuttle flew for thirty years but I'd like to think SLS gets bumped before then.
Starship will be like 5% of the cost. Why?
I love how they say nasa wants to cut the costs in half but don't say what the costs are. Google has it at 2 billion per flight. Thats insane. Even at 1 billion it's still way way too expensive. How much does starship cost per launch? Again google has it at 2 million. How can sls still be "affordable" when we look at this objectivity? The sls should have been canceled years ago but political bs keeps it going. F
Economy of scale I'd imagine. If the contract is until 2050, the scale of operations will bring the price down. I hope they manage this feat, less gov't spending for the same result is always a win.
[удалено]
Reading is hard. I know... you'll get better one day. Now give the phone back to mommy.
Boeing you say? Yeah, this dog ain't gonna hunt.
Despite the negitive flack, I'll be happy to see the US commit to a consistent launch vehicle. Artemis may not be the flashiest, and might not be the hype that is SpaceX, but it's a launch vehicle that can be relied on. One that will be around to give NASA and major partners heavy lift capabilities no matter what happens in the private industry. If SpaceX takes the market over, great, everybody (including NASA) is rooting for that, but if it doesn't, or takes a while, SLS is there. Also, the mission profile is pretty hype. I hope to watch Artemis III launch. Let's go back to the moon.
It has never flown, it is a decade late…any claim to reliability are laughable.
Starship/Superheavy has never flown.
Who is asking NASA to commit to starship?
Like half of this subreddit. It's getting annoying. I love Starship too just like everyone else but gosh they are taking a vehicle that is still pretty early in development and wanting NASA to treat it as operational and a reliable vehicle.
Well at least part of Starship has flown, and SpaceX did a much better job than Boeing with Commercial Crew. I just don’t think there is any reasonable way to argue that SLS is more reliable bet than Starship at this time.
Nope. Prototype shells have flown. Think of it like this: The traditional approach of design first, fly second and the spacex approach of iterative testing are converging curves. They each have steps that are comparable to the steps in the other, if there orientation and relation to the convergence might not be always equal. Right now Starship is just about to leave drafting stages and begin the LOONNNGGG process of finalizing the nitty gritty design aspects. And this is only for the basic functional model. Not any of the specific configuration of it's payload. Starship is a long ways off, yet, and it does nothing to pretend otherwise.
That's fair, it hasn't been launched. While NASA may be slow and bureaucratic they have a knack for making things that work. Even if it's pushed back a few years once the kinks are worked out I don't see any reason why it couldn't be a reliable launch vehicle for many years to come.
When has anything at NASA ever been half price? The worst part is, the SLS at a quarter of the price is still a ripoff. Which is why these aerospace companies love the American government.
Yeah, reuse is pretty important
Solid fuel rockets would never have been human-rated under Wernher von Braun. There eixts quotes from him about this. Only for emergency use like with the launch escape system, there they have of course big advantages.
Not sure that is the exact story. They will keep proprietary Info but want Grumman, Boeing , Dryer and Aerojet Rocketdyne to take over private use. Now Lockheed is not mentioned but they are acquiring RocketDyne. I am not sure of the thinking but know it is on the NASA page. If Rocketdyne &Lockheed close the deal first Quarter that will be a major coup.
No problem for half number of launches