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NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

arstechnica.com

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Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#41

Post by ClumsyPilot »

chroma wrote: post #36
robomartin wrote: post #5

Space isn’t easy. Going to the moon is significantly harder than LEO. I don’t think one can claim functional and performance equivalence between SLS to FH. https://youtu.be/Y81vx__JngY Now, if the argument is: Why go to the moon? Well, that’s a different conversation.

Jim Bridenstine sounds like a competent guy, but the fact is that NASA as an organization is no longer competent. They can't build rockets anymore. SLS has been a complete failure. The program was announced in 2011. The plan was to make an expendable vehicle based on existing RS-25 engines, existing SRBs, and the existing Space Shuttle external tank. This idea of reusing all of these systems was based on the previous…

Firstly, this money is a pittance compared to the costs of development of F-22, which produced a habdfull of planes and thats it.

Second, the decision to use existing shuttle conoonebts was made basically by congress/ lobbyists. Congress gets insane amount of control over nasa, and can fund or de- fund individual projects. As a result, nasa has to tailor them to something congress will like and approve. This miopic managenent probably results in what weve got

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#42

Post by 7952 »

etrabroline wrote: post #14

> The core stage is structurally similar to the Space Shuttle external tank,[24][25] and initial flights will use modified RS-25D engines left over from the Space Shuttle program.[26] Later flights will switch to a cheaper version of the engine not intended for reuse.[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System So they reused as much of the space shuttle as possible, down to using left over engines. Develop…

It is difficult to assess risk without an indepth technical knowledge of the engine. Particularly when the engine could have a profound influence on how the rest of the rocket is designed.

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#43

Post by Traster »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #38
PostOnce wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's also a high quality job creation program that employs 17K at NASA and who knows how many at contractors it's also a military capability it's also saved who knows how many lives with weather satellites and ambulance GPS and satphone rescues it's also a meteor warning program it's also a global warming monitoring program it also begets companies like spacex and capabilities like GPS for all and inspires people to…

We can spend all the taxpayer money on creating 17k highly skilled jobs that actually do something. NASA does some useful stuff, but we could be doing much more useful stuff with the same money, while still having 17k+ jobs and good military technology and weather satellites etc.

Can we though? Or have we demonstrated over time that any suitably large program sustained over a suitably long time will innevitably need to account for the enormous incentive there is to exploit that funding. What do you propoes to do? Ask the defence companies if they would stop exploiting the government contracts that only exist because of their lobbying in the first place?

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#44

Post by greedo »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #41
chroma wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jim Bridenstine sounds like a competent guy, but the fact is that NASA as an organization is no longer competent. They can't build rockets anymore. SLS has been a complete failure. The program was announced in 2011. The plan was to make an expendable vehicle based on existing RS-25 engines, existing SRBs, and the existing Space Shuttle external tank. This idea of reusing all of these systems was based on the previous…

Firstly, this money is a pittance compared to the costs of development of F-22, which produced a habdfull of planes and thats it. Second, the decision to use existing shuttle conoonebts was made basically by congress/ lobbyists. Congress gets insane amount of control over nasa, and can fund or de- fund individual projects. As a result, nasa has to tailor them to something congress will like and approve. This miopic m…

A) Whataboutism B) The program cost for the F-22 was 67B. It produced more than "a habdfull of planes", it produced 187. The reason it ended up costing so much (per aircraft) is the development cost had to be spread across fewer airframes than planned. Truncating the purchase to 187 is perhaps one of the greatest military acquisition mistakes in my lifetime.

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#45

Post by hn_acc_1 »

tomohawk wrote: post #29

Richard Feynman was pulled in to investigate the space shuttle challenger disaster. He refused to sign the report unless his findings were included. They were eventually included as an appendix, which is well worth reading. There is a section on the main engines (you can search down to the SSME section) https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roge...

Thanks for sharing, this is a great read.

The bit about top-down vs. bottom-up design (Liquid Fuel Engine (SSME) section) is surprising to me. It appears for the Shuttle program, all the years of knowledge on how to successfully complete engineering projects with large CAPEX + large risk was just ignored.

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#46

Post by avian »

tomohawk wrote: post #29

Richard Feynman was pulled in to investigate the space shuttle challenger disaster. He refused to sign the report unless his findings were included. They were eventually included as an appendix, which is well worth reading. There is a section on the main engines (you can search down to the SSME section) https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roge...

> Thus, it is not unreasonable to guess there may be at least one surprise in the next 250,000 seconds, a probability of 1/500 per engine per mission.

It's interesting to read this in the context of the STS-93 incident [1] where a broken SSME injector came close to causing a mission abort. Was this Feynman's "one more surprise"? He was writing this report 70 missions before it happened in 1999.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-93

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#47

Post by valuearb »

djaque wrote: post #31
pfdietz wrote: post #28

The purpose of the space program isn't to explore space, it's to consume federal funds, accruing influence and kickback contributions to the politicians who arrange it. It's important you understand this primary purpose if you want to understand what happens at NASA. If you are a space program supporter who is okay with the situation as long as NASA is getting money, then you are the reason they can get away with thi…

The way I understand it is that during the space shuttle years, companies made ties and lots of money off of federal contracts. The whole SLS program has since been doninated by those companies using political pressure to get those contracts back on new missions.

The SLS design was required by congress to maximize use of Shuttle hardware and contractors.

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#48

Post by valuearb »

etrabroline wrote: post #14

> The core stage is structurally similar to the Space Shuttle external tank,[24][25] and initial flights will use modified RS-25D engines left over from the Space Shuttle program.[26] Later flights will switch to a cheaper version of the engine not intended for reuse.[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System So they reused as much of the space shuttle as possible, down to using left over engines. Develop…

Each Merlin Engine costs $1M.

A Raptor is expected to cost less than $1M each.

Blue Origins BE-4 is priced at $8M each.

So how did conservative NASA get cheaper RS-25 engines for only $147M each?

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#49

Post by valuearb »

mdorazio wrote: post #27
kds3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do we really need those C*O jobs and increased shareholder value? Probably keeping many of rocket science jobs could have been cheaper for taxpayers. But no one cares about that today, our children will be paying our debt, not us.

It's not C-level jobs, it's thousands of normal blue collar and white collar aerospace jobs across multiple states for many years.

Those jobs exist whether we build the utter waste of the SLS or not, those people will just be actually building something useful.

Re: NASA will pay $146M for each SLS rocket engine

#50

Post by valuearb »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #15
voz_ wrote: post #6

I don't understand - what is the motivation here? The article is a little short, and it gives good insight into just how expensive this is (compared to other similarly classed potential space purchases). However, what I am failing to grasp is... why? Why spend so much when these other options are available? Surely not ignorance. Is it malice? corruption? Someone's ego?

I'd say there's two main justifications: 1. Lower Risk - based on 40+ year old proven rockets. NASA can't have failures if it wants to get future funding. 2. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! - spreading out jobs means politicians are more likely to approve funding

40 year old rockets proven to kill 17 people and miss every cost and performance metric when they were operated.
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