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NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

arstechnica.com

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Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#101

Post by troyvit »

rgbrenner wrote: post #85
roody15 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its sp…

Which adversary are you thinking of that has less corruption and less waste than the US? And then has the economy to take advantage of this?

The Taliban is a good example. IMO they're evil, but not as corrupt as the US. They did a pretty good job running us out of Afghanistan.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#102

Post by avhon1 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #98
marcusverus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have to wait? Falcon Heavy already has ~75% of SLS Block 1's payload capacity (to LEO). For the $11.2 Billion that's earmarked for the next 4 years of SLS, you could buy 112 Falcon Heavy launces--one every ~17 days for four years. In contrast, the wiki lists a single planned flight for SLS during that period.

It's cheaper to buy, for sure. But we don't know the costs. It's possible that these launches are far less expensive than SLS, but equally unsustainable.

How might that be? SpaceX doesn't have to manufacture whole new rockets for every Falcon Heavy launch, but even if they did, as far back as 2016 they could build 16 new cores (5 Falcon Heavy's worth) per year.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-seeks-to-accelerate-falcon-9-pr...

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#103

Post by Angostura »

smfugit wrote: post #81
roody15 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its sp…

> weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole That already happened with 2008 GFC. Whats happening with NASA is a small rounding error compared to the amount of pure junk that has accumulated on the FED balance sheet since then, to keep delusions afloat. So the stock market/health care/edu/real estate/iphone/sls prices keep rising. Even though its all pure junk.

'weakened' is not a binary. Every small step to correct issues is important

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#104

Post by wmf »

Karellen wrote: post #100
wmf wrote: post #7

Time for a "backup plan" Commercial Lunar Crew program.

Do you mean the Human Landing System program? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Landing_System

No, because HLS still uses SLS. Imagine if NASA used commercial fixed-price contracts to get astronauts onto HLS in addition to the existing HLS contracts.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#105

Post by lmm »

roody15 wrote: post #60
techdragon wrote: post #5

Important context… SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for in order to achieve its mission goals… it’s the rocket they were forced into using due to lobbying and senate shenanigans, there’s a reason it has the nickname “senate launch system”. The fact the pork barrel project is so bloated it’s “unaffordable” is irrelevant as far as the senators who are voting for it are concerned. My bet is that the senate wi…

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its sp…

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

I've heard just the opposite about the similar SDI/"Star Wars" - that the US pouring billions into this blatantly impossible and pointless programme, and suffering no real consequences for doing so, was what finally convinced the USSR they couldn't win.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#106

Post by josh-sematic »

ajross wrote: post #74
GMoromisato wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common sentiment, but I don't share it. Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. For many, gaining knowledge about the universe is its own reward, even if it doesn't lead to cancer cures or longer-lasting batteries. In the same way, sending people into space connects us to all those namele…

> Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. That's true only in a very strained and tautological sense of "inspire". Science has quantifiable results. There are facts that we know and theories we've understood (and discarded!) because of telescopes and probes that we would not know had they not flown…

There are also facts we know and things we’ve built because someone watched a manned space flight as a kid and decided to go work in STEM because it’s just so freaking cool. Discounting “inspiration” on the grounds that it has no immediate, tangible results is pretty shortsighted.

Also if you’re willing to count facts like “details of Martian geology” as potentially valuable, then one can also say that by doing manned space flight we have learned a lot about how to transport humans to space and keep them alive there, no?

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#107

Post by woooooo »

mannerheim wrote: post #97
woooooo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that, I said I've never seen it swing a vote. I'm sure people working at the missile factory vote but it's a relatively small number. Re: infra, you're right, I guess I'm just letting my personal bias in when wondering why they don't do more of that compared to the weapons. It seems like such an easier sell to voters, but the emphasis seems to go the other way. (Also, in my limited sample size, all of th…

Raytheon employs 12,000 people in Tucson alone, about 6% of the number of people who voted in the election for Arizona's 7th congressional district in 2022. Those people also have friends and family who would care if they got laid off.

Thanks for the numbers, that puts it in better perspective.

Although I'm guessing that was an uncontested election, sounds like <10% turnout. Still, it's material.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#108

Post by ivanjermakov »

belval wrote: post #3

> NASA recently said that it is working with the primary contractor of the SLS rocket's main engines, Aerojet, to reduce the cost of each engine by 30 percent, down to $70.5 million by the end of this decade. [...] And even at $70.5 million, these engines are very, very far from being affordable compared to the existing US commercial market for powerful rocket engines. Blue Origin manufactures an engine of comparable…

Because it is rocket science after all. Changing engines means changing fuel system, weight distribution, avionics, etc.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#109

Post by bewaretheirs »

belval wrote: post #3

> NASA recently said that it is working with the primary contractor of the SLS rocket's main engines, Aerojet, to reduce the cost of each engine by 30 percent, down to $70.5 million by the end of this decade. [...] And even at $70.5 million, these engines are very, very far from being affordable compared to the existing US commercial market for powerful rocket engines. Blue Origin manufactures an engine of comparable…

Rockets are not LEGO.

You can't just swap engines without a significant redesign of the rocket and ground support equipment to match.

the RS-25 burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen; the BE-4 and Raptor burn methane and liquid oxygen, but the Raptor uses supercooled densified propellants while the BE4 takes them at closer to their boiling point. Switching between BE-4 and Raptor would require nearly as much work as a switch from RS-25 to either.

The varying density, temperature, and fuel-to-oxidizer ratios mean the propellant tanks would need to change size, and that may have some tricky structural implications with respect to the side boosters of the SLS. And the ground support equipment (launch pad, tower, etc., ) would of course also need to be adjusted to match.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#110

Post by ramesh31 »

wmf wrote: post #38
ramesh31 wrote: post #10

You have to view the cost of SLS like insurance. Premiums are also a huge waste of money until you need to make a claim. In this case, we didn't; SpaceX came through with flying colors. But that was far from a sure thing 15 years ago, and the risk of being left without access to space was real.

SLS doesn't provide any meaningful access to space.

>SLS doesn't provide any meaningful access to space.

It could have though.

Imagine a world where SpaceX burnt out in the late 2000s, and all that talent and energy moved to Boeing/Lockheed et. al.

Point being that they were far from a sure thing in 2008. The traditional contractors were seen as a safe bet by everyone involved. And the speed at which federal government moves means these things are measured in decades.

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