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After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

arstechnica.com

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Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#11

Post by Isinlor »

JackFr wrote: post #2

I’m not a rocket scientist and I also don’t want to bash NASA, but the size of the budget here coupled with the lack of transparency about the failure is in stark contrast with what we’ve seen out of both SpaceX and Blue Origin. Maybe what NASA is trying to do here from an engineering perspective is much, much harder. I also feel there may be unjustified spin in this article. But to an untrained eye this article sure…

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY

Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2...

Mass to the Moon:

- Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes

- SLS: 43 metric tonnes

- Starship: 156 metric tonnes

Price per launch:

- Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars

- SLS: 0.875B dollars

- Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$)

Price per kg:

- Satrun 5: 25 600 $

- SLS: 20 000 $

- Starhip: 2 000 $ worse case scenario (Elon aims at 40$)

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#12

Post by imglorp »

bob1029 wrote: post #9
JackFr wrote: post #2

I’m not a rocket scientist and I also don’t want to bash NASA, but the size of the budget here coupled with the lack of transparency about the failure is in stark contrast with what we’ve seen out of both SpaceX and Blue Origin. Maybe what NASA is trying to do here from an engineering perspective is much, much harder. I also feel there may be unjustified spin in this article. But to an untrained eye this article sure…

Nothing about SLS makes sense to me economically. F9 Launch Cost (without reuse): $65mm FH Launch Cost (without reuse): $150mm SLS Launch Cost: >$2,000mm How does anyone square this arrangement? What saving graces does SLS have (from an engineering perspective) compared to the SpaceX programs? There are certainly a lot of downsides and I would be really disappointed to learn that there are no upsides.

It's all about Congress, the native American criminal class. They're already $14 billion in.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/10/nasa-buying-ten-sls-ro...

I'd like to point out the development process appears to be waterfall. Instead of many cheap iterations, blowing stuff up and continually improving, they want few, complete, expensive articles: that means many tests like OP article is going to need spin as a "failure" and not a learning cycle.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#13

Post by sandworm101 »

Isinlor wrote: post #11
JackFr wrote: post #2

I’m not a rocket scientist and I also don’t want to bash NASA, but the size of the budget here coupled with the lack of transparency about the failure is in stark contrast with what we’ve seen out of both SpaceX and Blue Origin. Maybe what NASA is trying to do here from an engineering perspective is much, much harder. I also feel there may be unjustified spin in this article. But to an untrained eye this article sure…

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 2…

>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$)

Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for free. Unless SpaceX is given its own range, its own giant chunk of the atlantic ocean closed to everything but spaceX, massive launches are still going to cost well over 0.1B, 100 million.

And... insurance.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#14

Post by credit_guy »

sandworm101 wrote: post #13
Isinlor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 2…

>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for f…

Insurance, regulatory compliance, the guy with the destruct button, all these costs go down as you demonstrate higher and higher reliability. If you only launch 10 rockets per year, and you get one failure once every two years, there's a lot of risk, and not that many points to draw statistical inference. If you launch 2000 rockets per year, and only one in 500 fails, then it's a completely different picture.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#15

Post by interestica »

messe wrote: post #3

SLS is often jokingly referred to as the Senate Launch System for good reason. Its bloated budget and insistence on reusing space shuttle components means that it’s more a jobs program, than a serious attempt at building a launch vehicle.

It's not like they actually sent a member of Congress into space in 1985....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-D

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#17

Post by yamoriyamori »

This article published the day before the SLS test, but I think it's important context (engineering vs. financial corporate culture) for Boeing's involvement, and just how dang difficult it is to get systems integrated (software, hardware, and um giant rockets). The article notes just how well Spacex has been doing even under greater scrutiny by NASA, while Boeing might have been implicitly trusted as a name/brand with a legacy, but had delivery/design/testing stumbles anyways.

(WSJ, paywall etc.)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeings-other-big-problem-fixin...

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#18

Post by rblatz »

michaericalribo wrote: post #8

Bummer! Especially this line: > All of this casts very serious doubt on NASA's plans to launch its Artemis I mission—an uncrewed precursor mission to sending humans to the Moon—before the end of this year. This outcome seems like good safety engineering: prioritize safety and control over speed. Still, it’s a disappointing setback. I want to go to space now! And this moves the eventual realization of space tourism ba…

I don’t think the SLS has been on anyone’s realistic roadmap to space tourism for over half a decade. Private companies like SpaceX and to a lessor extent Blue Origin have blown past NASA in that department.

This shows nothing besides how broken the politics around NASA are, and how Congress is optimizing for a totally different thing than getting people into space cheaply and safely.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#19

Post by Isinlor »

sandworm101 wrote: post #13
Isinlor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 2…

>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for f…

It's reality. They do reusable Falcon Heavy flights at 90 million right now. Good chunk of that cost is second stage and fairings that are expendable.

Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#20

Post by throwaway45349 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #13
Isinlor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 2…

>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for f…

They probably said the same things about cargo planes once.
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