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Pigs may not be able to fly but soon we'll get proof of pork barrels being able to do so. What does SLS add to the already existing panoply of launchers, other

Pigs may not be able to fly but soon we'll get proof of pork barrels being able to do so. What does SLS add to the already existing panoply of launchers, other than revenues for those companies which stood to lose out on the retirement of the Space Shuttle? Why is this thing set to dump SSMEs which were designed for reuse into the ocean after a single launch? Did they at least fix the problems with those o-rings which caused the loss of an orbiter before using derivatives of those SRBs on this launcher?

bayesian_horse 4y ago
What does SLS add "to the existing panoply of launchers"? It can lift almost 100 effing tons into LEO... and is human rated. It's the only rocket currently capable of putting Humans near the moon. And now its about to prove itself or not...
Vecr 4y ago
The seals were already somewhat fixed after the shuttle blew up. It would still be better not to have any seals at all and just have the boosters be one piece, but you would have to build a new factory (probably in a different state, can't have that!) to make them. It's probably mostly fine how it is.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Or you know, you could just not use solid rocket boosters at all. Solid rocket booster make absolutely no sense at all, they are only used because they represent a political interest. Note how there was no attempt at using them for Apollo and no new rocket company uses them. The only reason so many countries relay on them because it sharing costs with ICBMs. NASA own internal investigation suggested the same thing, but politics is more important.
  - bryondowd 4y ago
    If there's significant overlap with ICBMs I could see it being reasonable from the perspective of maintaining military production readiness. Imagine you need a bunch of people trained to do X, and machines capable of Y, in order to build your missiles, but you don't need many missiles right now, but if a war against a major power broke out you'd need to ramp up production massively and instantly. Either you keep making missiles you don't need, or you somehow train people and maintain machines without actually using them, either way you're spending just to maintain readiness for no immediate value. Or you find a close enough use where you can get some value by producing something similar enough that you can convert to military use rapidly. That wouldn't be so much political pork as actually practical. But I know little to nothing in this area, so just speculation.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Solid fuels have a limited shelf life. There is always low level production to replace expired rockets whether you use them or not.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        And there are also regular tests as systems get upgraded etc.
    - bandyaboot 4y ago
      I would think that if you find yourself engaged with a major power, expending your supply of ICBMs, replacing them is probably one of the few things you no longer need to worry about.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      > If there's significant overlap with ICBMs I could see it being reasonable from the perspective of maintaining military production readiness. In the US this is partly historical. The Shuttle style large solids have no practical military application. In general, I think by now the technology has diverged quite a bit as the requirements for launching potentially humans and ICBMs is quite different. I don't know how closely the technologies are still linked between the solids used on rockets like Vulcan and ICBMs. In France this is certainty the case for example. > major power broke out you'd need to ramp up production massively and instantly. Lets hope we don't need to rapidly ramp up production of ICBMs since they are mostly just used to carry nukes. If you think its politically necessary to fund that infrastructure just do so with your military budget. Tying down other space activities, specially civilian, is a bad idea.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        > In the US this is partly historical. The Shuttle style large solids have no practical military application. The huge Space Shuttle SRBs were never an ICBM part themselves. The military angle enters the picture when you realize the SRB fuel is the same fuel used in ICBMs, made by the same company (originally Thiokol, then ATK, which merged with Orbital Sciences to form Orbital ATK, which was then purchased by Northrop Grumman.)
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Japan's space program focuses on cost effective solid rocket boosters and does not build ballistic missiles out of them. Liquid engines generally have the advantage in ISP, which is why they dominate large rockets. But solid rockets have substantial savings in manufacturing and operational simplicity that shouldn't be simply handwaved away.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Nobody builds SRBs "out of" missile boosters, but they are built by the same manufacturers. Fat contracts for one keep the business afloat for the other, keep the workers for one busy and practiced for the other. It's welfare for defense contractors using the same technology, facilities and expertise as the weapons, NOT part re-use. Part re-use was never the argument, not with the Shuttle and not now. > Japan doesn't have ballistic missiles. The Japanese SRBs are built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Do you know what else they manufacture? Missiles of course. Not ICBMs, but they do manufacture missiles, particularly the powerful SM-3 Block II.
    - idontwantthis 4y ago
      Japan focused on solid fuels because they needed to build rockets that were impractical enough to not be usable as ICBMs. They had to do crazy things like launch them sideways.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        This comment makes no sense. Missile and rockets both go sideways. Modern missiles all use solid fuel. Japan's solid fuel rockets are build by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which uses the same fuel and manufacturing expertise to also manufacture missiles.
        idontwantthis 4y ago
        https://youtu.be/UZaIs6oSlOI https://youtu.be/UZaIs6oSlOI - By sideways I mean slanted on launch because they had no guidance system.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
The shuttle o-rings were working exactly as designed. The shuttle management was full of bureaucracy that decided it needed to 'move fast and break things' and ignore known cold weather launch condition issues like failure of o-rings. The o-ring engineers/designers objected to the launch and refused to sign off on it, but they were overruled by management and ignored.
- UIUC_06 4y ago
  There is a presentation by Edward Tufte claiming that PowerPoint caused, in part, the shuttle disaster. Hang on... The claim is that PP's economy of words meant that the presentations to each level of management got more and more dismissive of the danger, the higher up the chain they went. Euphemisms got more and more bland, until the top people thought "screw it, we're launching." Note that I'm not endorsing that theory, since I haven't seen the slide decks that got used. It's disputed here: https://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the-challenger https://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-th... I find that dismissal to be completely missing the point. Tufte wasn't arguing physics, he was arguing that PP euphemisms caused top execs to minimize the danger.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    There is a presentation by Edward Tufte claiming that PowerPoint caused, in part, the shuttle disaster. I can imagine him blaming a presentation style, but PowerPoint? The Challenger exploded in 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas... PowerPoint didn't exist until 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      Powerpoint is such an enormous force it has collapsed in on itself into a blackhole that tunneled through space and time. Powerpoint is slowly leaking into the past and destroying our history before our very eyes.
unethical_ban 4y ago
SpaceX and Blue Origin were nowhere near where they are today in terms of launch capacity, reliability, or reuse. The fact you're referencing "did they fix the defect from Challenger in 1986" tells me what I need to know.
the_third_wave 4y ago
> soon we'll get proof of pork barrels being able to do so. Leaky pork barrels don't fly it seems, the launch was scrubbed due to (among others) an engine bleed problem [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32637493

bayesian_horse 4y ago

What does SLS add "to the existing panoply of launchers"? It can lift almost 100 effing tons into LEO... and is human rated. It's the only rocket currently capable of putting Humans near the moon. And now its about to prove itself or not...

Vecr 4y ago

The seals were already somewhat fixed after the shuttle blew up. It would still be better not to have any seals at all and just have the boosters be one piece, but you would have to build a new factory (probably in a different state, can't have that!) to make them. It's probably mostly fine how it is.

panick21_ 4y ago
Or you know, you could just not use solid rocket boosters at all. Solid rocket booster make absolutely no sense at all, they are only used because they represent a political interest. Note how there was no attempt at using them for Apollo and no new rocket company uses them. The only reason so many countries relay on them because it sharing costs with ICBMs. NASA own internal investigation suggested the same thing, but politics is more important.
- bryondowd 4y ago
  If there's significant overlap with ICBMs I could see it being reasonable from the perspective of maintaining military production readiness. Imagine you need a bunch of people trained to do X, and machines capable of Y, in order to build your missiles, but you don't need many missiles right now, but if a war against a major power broke out you'd need to ramp up production massively and instantly. Either you keep making missiles you don't need, or you somehow train people and maintain machines without actually using them, either way you're spending just to maintain readiness for no immediate value. Or you find a close enough use where you can get some value by producing something similar enough that you can convert to military use rapidly. That wouldn't be so much political pork as actually practical. But I know little to nothing in this area, so just speculation.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Solid fuels have a limited shelf life. There is always low level production to replace expired rockets whether you use them or not.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      And there are also regular tests as systems get upgraded etc.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    I would think that if you find yourself engaged with a major power, expending your supply of ICBMs, replacing them is probably one of the few things you no longer need to worry about.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > If there's significant overlap with ICBMs I could see it being reasonable from the perspective of maintaining military production readiness. In the US this is partly historical. The Shuttle style large solids have no practical military application. In general, I think by now the technology has diverged quite a bit as the requirements for launching potentially humans and ICBMs is quite different. I don't know how closely the technologies are still linked between the solids used on rockets like Vulcan and ICBMs. In France this is certainty the case for example. > major power broke out you'd need to ramp up production massively and instantly. Lets hope we don't need to rapidly ramp up production of ICBMs since they are mostly just used to carry nukes. If you think its politically necessary to fund that infrastructure just do so with your military budget. Tying down other space activities, specially civilian, is a bad idea.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > In the US this is partly historical. The Shuttle style large solids have no practical military application. The huge Space Shuttle SRBs were never an ICBM part themselves. The military angle enters the picture when you realize the SRB fuel is the same fuel used in ICBMs, made by the same company (originally Thiokol, then ATK, which merged with Orbital Sciences to form Orbital ATK, which was then purchased by Northrop Grumman.)
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Japan's space program focuses on cost effective solid rocket boosters and does not build ballistic missiles out of them. Liquid engines generally have the advantage in ISP, which is why they dominate large rockets. But solid rockets have substantial savings in manufacturing and operational simplicity that shouldn't be simply handwaved away.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Nobody builds SRBs "out of" missile boosters, but they are built by the same manufacturers. Fat contracts for one keep the business afloat for the other, keep the workers for one busy and practiced for the other. It's welfare for defense contractors using the same technology, facilities and expertise as the weapons, NOT part re-use. Part re-use was never the argument, not with the Shuttle and not now. > Japan doesn't have ballistic missiles. The Japanese SRBs are built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Do you know what else they manufacture? Missiles of course. Not ICBMs, but they do manufacture missiles, particularly the powerful SM-3 Block II.
  - idontwantthis 4y ago
    Japan focused on solid fuels because they needed to build rockets that were impractical enough to not be usable as ICBMs. They had to do crazy things like launch them sideways.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      This comment makes no sense. Missile and rockets both go sideways. Modern missiles all use solid fuel. Japan's solid fuel rockets are build by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which uses the same fuel and manufacturing expertise to also manufacture missiles.
      - idontwantthis 4y ago
        https://youtu.be/UZaIs6oSlOI https://youtu.be/UZaIs6oSlOI - By sideways I mean slanted on launch because they had no guidance system.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

The shuttle o-rings were working exactly as designed. The shuttle management was full of bureaucracy that decided it needed to 'move fast and break things' and ignore known cold weather launch condition issues like failure of o-rings. The o-ring engineers/designers objected to the launch and refused to sign off on it, but they were overruled by management and ignored.

UIUC_06 4y ago
There is a presentation by Edward Tufte claiming that PowerPoint caused, in part, the shuttle disaster. Hang on... The claim is that PP's economy of words meant that the presentations to each level of management got more and more dismissive of the danger, the higher up the chain they went. Euphemisms got more and more bland, until the top people thought "screw it, we're launching." Note that I'm not endorsing that theory, since I haven't seen the slide decks that got used. It's disputed here: https://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the-challenger https://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-th... I find that dismissal to be completely missing the point. Tufte wasn't arguing physics, he was arguing that PP euphemisms caused top execs to minimize the danger.
- philipkglass 4y ago
  There is a presentation by Edward Tufte claiming that PowerPoint caused, in part, the shuttle disaster. I can imagine him blaming a presentation style, but PowerPoint? The Challenger exploded in 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas... PowerPoint didn't exist until 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    Powerpoint is such an enormous force it has collapsed in on itself into a blackhole that tunneled through space and time. Powerpoint is slowly leaking into the past and destroying our history before our very eyes.

unethical_ban 4y ago

SpaceX and Blue Origin were nowhere near where they are today in terms of launch capacity, reliability, or reuse. The fact you're referencing "did they fix the defect from Challenger in 1986" tells me what I need to know.

the_third_wave 4y ago

> soon we'll get proof of pork barrels being able to do so. Leaky pork barrels don't fly it seems, the launch was scrubbed due to (among others) an engine bleed problem [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32637493