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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

#121

Post by MaxRegret »

danpalmer wrote: post #76
justrealist wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and was not human rated The SLS has not launched a human.

No, but that was the plan all along, and it's built out of multiple components that have launched humans. I don't think the plan for F9 was to launch humans for a long time, or at least it didn't appear to be a focus for SpaceX until Commercial Crew came along.

Falcon 9 was designed from the beginning with safety factors consistent with human-rating, rather than the lower safety factors required for cargo (1.4 vs 1.2 if I recall correctly). And with the very first cargo Dragon flight in 2010, SpaceX talked about how the windows and life support system pointed towards their ambition of flying humans on the spacecraft.

Now, as always happens, actually completing the human-rating of Dragon required more work than expected, and Dragon 2 is quite different from Dragon. But, as far as I know, Falcon 9 did not require nearly as many upgrades to be human-rated.

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

#122

Post by GMoromisato »

ajross wrote: post #118
GMoromisato wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the word "inspire" as a short-hand for "benefits which have no practical value". We agree exactly on this: "Whether that knowledge has value or not is...subjective." Ultimately, we're talking about whether spending money on X has value. If you agree that the value of both crewed spaceflight and robotic probes is "subjective", then by definition there is no objectively correct answer. We support Hubble because…

"We" don't though. Plenty of people like telescopes but not meat cans (not least because you can get like twelve telescope for one meat can at the going rate!), and you can't short-circuit that (subjective) debate by just declaring "inspiration". At some point you need to convince people of a value proposition.

I like both.

And since the US Congress is currently funding both, it's actually you who needs to convince people to stop funding "meat cans". Good luck with that.

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

#123

Post by Nevermark »

I have an incredible idea, give the SLS vertical landing and relaunch capability.

Or just trade each $2 billion [0] SLS launch for a mix of 2000 $1 million [1] Starship launches to orbit, from orbit to destination, and/or returns.

Even if Starship launches have a significant likelihood of costing more than that, just 2 Starship launches per SLS seems like a bargain.

20 would be fantastic.

200 would be surreal.

2000 would be … what on (off) Earth could NASA do with 2000? Put all of NASA, its entire supply chain, and the Senate on Mars! O_o

Then achieve a further cost reduction for trips to Mars surface: just the cost of the electrical current required to operate a Mars habitat airlock.

Talk about time and cost efficiency!!

What is ridiculous is the crazy logic of all this is fairly sound, due to the beyond ridiculous (for today) SLS costs.

I have a funny feeling that the SLS’s days are numbered.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

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

#124

Post by lmm »

danpalmer wrote: post #39
TheRealPomax wrote: post #13

Not sure how this is "unaffordable"? Just buy one fewer F35's, done, you just funded the whole thing.

I recently found out the “price” is now at or below $100m per plane now which was a real surprise to me. I also found out (afraid I don’t have a source to hand) that re-engineering the A10 (is that right?), the darling of F35 criticisers would cost more to retrofit up to modern requirements.

> I recently found out the “price” is now at or below $100m per plane now which was a real surprise to me.

Yeah that's because every time the price of the programme goes up, they "buy" more planes so that the per plane cost goes down. Any plane can be "cheap" if you agree to pay up front for a million of them to be delivered "eventually, nudge-nudge, wink-wink".

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

#125

Post by lmm »

foobarian wrote: post #64
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, buying one fewer F-35 barely moves the needle on total cost, it just bumps up the per-unit costs of the project because its almost all fixed, not variable, costs.

> buying one fewer Well maybe buying a lot more F-35s would save us money then! :-)

That's exactly what they've done. When you read about how the costs have come down or been kept stable, that's an accounting fiction where they increase the number they're "buying" so that the unit cost comes down.

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

#126

Post by lazide »

r00fus wrote: post #51
westmeal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're joking but people actually believe this and will advocate for privatization of shit like this it's just so tiresome

I mean, it's not like Hollywood hasn't spent nearly a century carrying water for the moneyed elites. The premise of so many movies hinges on the solution being some superhero or Ayn Rand-ian mold-breaker that can only happen with privatized super-tech. We complain about China brainwashing its citizens when the US is the OG offender.

Hollywood has been taking a lot of money from China for a very long time now.

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

#127

Post by riffic »

plandis wrote: post #119
troyvit wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but not as corrupt as the US I’m wondering how you determined this?

Lawrence Lessig has extensively talked about the concept of ‘institutional corruption’ in American politics, where the political system is not necessarily corrupt in an explicit, quid-pro-quo sense, but rather is compromised by the influence of money, lobbying, and other factors that misalign the interests of politicians with those of the public. First thing to pop in my mind with your question.

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

#128

Post by TheRealPomax »

ramesh31 wrote: post #112
TheRealPomax wrote: post #13

Not sure how this is "unaffordable"? Just buy one fewer F35's, done, you just funded the whole thing.

The price of having the most capable EW platform on earth is nothing compared to its value for national defense. Traditional cost analysis does not apply to SOTA technology.

it does when it's not the only one you have and you can quite easily achieve the same goal with one fewer on an entire fleet.

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

#129

Post by TheRealPomax »

vxNsr wrote: post #15
TheRealPomax wrote: post #13

Not sure how this is "unaffordable"? Just buy one fewer F35's, done, you just funded the whole thing.

When people talk about the cost of f35s they’re often including the amortized cost of the whole project. Most that money has already been spent.

And most people who counter with that argument seem to forget that a jet has a life after delivery, where maintenance, replacement parts, and the cost of practice ordinance are substantial. You don't just save the cost of "the thing" by not buying it. You save "the entire lifetime cost of that thing".

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

#130

Post by mannerheim »

josh-sematic wrote: post #106
ajross wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 manne…

Even accepting this premise, there's no reason to pick the most expensive option for manned spaceflight.

The ISS cost $100 billion to launch and assemble (and $3 billion to maintain). Tiangong about $8 billion, reportedly. Mir, some $4-5 billion.

The total project cost of Dragonfly mission to Titan (to be launched in 2027 and landing 2034) is projected to be $1 billion. Even the JWST, which had massive cost overruns, still only cost $10 billion. If the NASA built a Tiangong instead of an ISS, who knows what they could have done with the remaining $90 billion. Maybe for a few billion, they could have sent a probe to Europa to search for life under the ice.

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