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Just a little reminder: Should have launched in 2015 for the cost of 12 billion. Launched in 2022 for the cost of 23 billion. It costs 3 billion per launch. (A
by xrayarx 4y ago
Just a little reminder:
Should have launched in 2015 for the cost of 12 billion.
Launched in 2022 for the cost of 23 billion.
It costs 3 billion per launch. (As per Wikipedia)
And it is recycled Space Shuttle design and material.
Compare that with Space X Falcon Heavy launch costs of 100-150 million per launch.
- sidcool 4y ago$3 billion per launch! That seems a lot. Even if they throw away the entire rocket.
- nightski 4y agoFalcon Heavy is not designed for crew. Starship is but is still under development. On the other hand, this launched today. We can afford the extra cost, I celebrate the success. Some day Starship will have its moment as well.
- Thlom 4y agoAs far as I understand Starship can only reach LEO and requires refueling from several refueling missions while in orbit for longer missions. Great if spacex is able to pull it off, but it is years if not decades until they get there.
- szundi 4y agoSeveral refueling is actually much cheaper than having it launched in a single piece because of the "rocket equation", google it. It is a good thing.
- tehbeard 4y agodownplaying the difficulties of on orbit refuelling. This isn't kerbal space program... Fluid's gonna fluid dynamics in a 0g environment...
- cnlevy 4y agoDifferential pressure + milli-g induced gravity using thrusters should help a lot. I bet it won't take more than 5 tries to do a full tank Starship transfer. And SpaceX iterates quickly
- mlindner 4y ago> downplaying the difficulties of on orbit refuelling. Every single person I've heard say this hasn't given a reasonable reason why it's difficult other than "we've never done it before". Also on-orbit refueling has been done, just not with cryogenics. Additionally it's only been done in zero-G with bladders. A slight vehicle spin to settle tanks seems like it would be sufficient to feed some low speed pumps without bladders.
- randomsearch 4y agoDescribing anything SpaceX are already working on as “decades out” seems a bit risky given their rapid successes!
- mlindner 4y agoStarship didn't even exist other than in the form of some slides and early test articles as of 3 years ago. Now it's a fully built vehicle with one almost completed pad and one pad in early construction, getting very close to launch. Predicting decades when it took them only 3 years to go from "nothing" to on the pad is a bit much.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoOn the other hand, by the time SLS launches a second time, Starship will probably have launched ten times. The launch cadence for SLS is terrible.
- rblatz 4y ago“Let’s be very honest, We don’t have a commercially available heavy-lift vehicle. The Falcon 9 Heavy may some day come about. It’s on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.” If in 2014, when this was said, NASA asked and funded SpaceX to human rate Heavy, they’d have launched already.
- somat 4y agoNot designed for crew does not mean much, there is nothing inherent about that rocket that means you can't put a crew capsule on it. hell, project mercury slapped one on an atlas icbm. The aprophical story was that the astronauts could feel the rocket seeking to fulfill it's ballistic missile targeting duties when the signal from the ground stations cut out momentarily. which I don't believe for a minute, but it does make for a good story.
- ddalex 4y ago> there is nothing inherent about that rocket that means you can't put a crew capsule on it But there is; gold standard for human rated missions is 98% reliability rate. This means testing every single component, and making sure that Product(Px) > 0.98 where Px is the probability failure of component x. This drives the cost up exponentially. E.g. if the rocket has Px = 0.99 and the crew capsule has Pcapsule = 0.99, then Psystem = 0.98, barely clearing the threshold. Falcon 9 had 3.5 failures out of 185 launches, giving it a Pfalcon9 = 0.98; PfalconHeavy then is,at most, 0.98^3 = 0.84, way too low to make it human-rateabale. The difference between Procket 0.84 and P0.99 is exponential cost.
- pilsetnieks 4y ago0.98^3 is 0.94, not 0.84
- ddalex 4y agoOf course, you are right and I am wrong - fat fingered the calculation. The point however still stands - every extra point of reliability costs 10x.
- philipwhiuk 4y agoPrior to this launch SLS was 0/0. It's now 1/1. Falcon Heavy has never had a launch failure. It's 4/4 If you're arguing it's had a failure because it shares heritage then SLS was 133/135 before the launch which is worse and so shouldn't fly crew until it does way more than just one flight.
- Denvercoder9 4y ago> Falcon Heavy is not designed for crew. [..] On the other hand, this launched today. The Orion capsule launched today did not include the ECLSS system.
- mlindner 4y agoFalcon Heavy was not needed to be designed for crew, and the base rocket IS designed for crew. The only thing AFAIK that would make it "designed for crew" is a whole lot of NASA paperwork, and some throttling profiles to reduce peak accelerations.
- bumby 4y agoThere’s a lot more for consideration. All that “NASA paperwork” covers things to ensure the design meets specific risk thresholds. For example, human-rated system usually are a no-go with a single point of failure that can cause a loss of crew. If that does exist, they either need to redesign or get everyone to agree to the new risk assessment.
- bandyaboot 4y agoThat’s not really a fair comparison. That 3 billion bought us a launch that lasted from July to November. With Falcon Heavy you typically only get the one day.
- sidlls 4y agoJust a little reminder: Space X is leveraging decades of research and billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars put into this industry already. It didn’t start from scratch as some scrappy upstart that is now showing some sloppy, bloated government boondoggle up. Not to mention you’re comparing apples to oranges. I suppose a decade from now after NASA has done all the work to lay the foundation when Musk comes in and brags about how much cheaper his version is we’ll see a similar narrative.
- rob74 4y agoTrue, but SpaceX is at least advancing the "state of the art" with reusable rockets, whereas Artemis is just recreating a single-use moon rocket, which was already done with Saturn 5 more than 50 years ago.
- kunai 4y agoThe 'state of the art' that SpaceX is pushing is nearly entirely a software thing aided by Falcon's unique engine arrangement. Hardware-wise Falcons are no more advanced than an SLS core stage, and are likely even ore technically primitive than most LVs. If SLS' mission criteria included an emphasis on reusability, NASA would have a fully reusable booster + core stage by now. This decision was entirely due to doctrine. STS was designed as a mostly reusable product and failed costs-wise, so the government basically forced NASA to go with something expendable instead. It is genuinely impressive that SpaceX proved that reusable launch vehicles can be made cost-effective, but it's nowhere near the kind of massive quantum leap that SpaceX's legion of hardcore followers seems to be convinced it is. Everything on a Falcon or a Dragon is public domain 60s technology besides the code and guidance hardware (based on COTS components). The same is likely be true of Starship, which explains a lot of the significant teething issues it has suffered over the past several flight tests.
- georgeg23 4y agoThe Falcon 9 booster landing also borrowed a lot from DC-X development. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
- sgt 4y agoYet - they did it. It's actually done now. Amazing feat. NASA should be granted more funding, and in my opinion it should come out of the military budget. That's going to be a controversial opinion, I know.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoHow would this solve the massive issue of politicians deciding on the technology based on what will maintain industry and funding for their electorate? Throwing money around isn't actually necessarily the right thing to do, no matter how noble you think a cause is (although in this case obviously that applies to a lot of military projects too).
- ackbar03 4y agoMaybe it should come out of the politicians budget then
- bigDinosaur 4y agoMore realistically funding for NASA probably needs to be decoupled from political will in the specifics and it should be allocated a yearly budget that it can spend however it wants with no pork barreling.
- georgeg23 4y agoIndeed, let's take the money earmarked for Space Development Agency / orbital weapons, and instead give it to NASA and the Artemis missions.
- albertopv 4y agoWith that amount of money they should have had develop a warp drive. Sarcasm, but not too much.
- GolfPopper 4y agoIt's not just recycled Space Shuttle materials, though - the program (if it ever gets far enough) will run out of recycled Space Shuttle launch hardware after 3 or 4 flights... at which point the plan for additional launches is to use new hardware (theoretically with improved performance) that is still in the process of being designed and built. To me, that seems to be the worst of both worlds: all the cost and headaches of developing an effectively new launch system, but doing so shackled to a launch vehicle design that's dominated by ideas from the late 60s.
- jlmorton 4y agoAnd in the case of the engines, once those existing engines are used, Aerojet Rocketdyne has to spin up a new assembly line, and they are essentially a sole source contractor, so they can charge nearly whatever they want. So what started out as a grand idea to reuse old Shuttle hardware ends up with Aerojet Rocketdyne charging $146 million per engine. Each. And there are four of them.
- Reason077 4y agoThose engines were designed to be re-usable and each were used on multiple Space Shuttle flights. Besides the huge cost, it seems super wasteful to be strapping them on to an expendable rocket!
- LeonM 4y agoJust a little reminder: These taxpayer dollars aren't gone, they flow back into the economy. It makes tens of thousands of jobs possible. People reacted the same over the price of the Perseverance (2.75bn) project, as if somehow all that money was now on the surface of Mars.
- silviot 4y agoThe point is that there are multiple ways to spend that money in a way that makes "thousands of jobs possible". You could fund healthcare, and spend the money for doctors, nurses and infrastructure. Or you could spend it on education. Or research. It's good in my opinion to have the conversation. As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal. Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
- DocTomoe 4y agoIf we start having that conversation, we should start with big-item parts of the budget, e.g. the military.
- silviot 4y agoCouldn't agree more. I was not aware of how the NASA budget compares to US military spending, so I just looked it up. In Fiscal year 2022 the DoD had $1.94 Trillion allocated to it. Or $1,940 billions. NASA's budget in FY 2022 is $30.62 Billion. So reducing military spending by 1/64th will free up as many resources as closing NASA altogether.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoGreat you looked it up, and thanks for posting fresh numbers! In such conversation, it's also important to look at the return of investment, note the diminishing returns of large endeavors, and consider the exploration-exploitation dilemma[0]. The way I see it: 1. Americans would definitely want to cut down the military spending a bit, because of diminishing returns/waste and how it perverts the US politics (once you have all that combat hardware and trained warriors, you feel the itch to use them). But, despite popular opinion, I think it's important to remember that this military spending is buying relative calm and peace for the entire Western world, so it's not all wasted. Unfortunate reality of human condition is that, until we invent some new, surprising technologies (including social technologies), militaries will be needed to maintain peace. 2. Healthcare and education in the US arguably has more than enough money. The problem isn't the funds, it's their allocation, and the corruption. 3. NASA is, for the most part, your most high-tech part of the "exploration" arm of the exploration/exploitation tradeoff (whereas education, healthcare, and anything you could describe related to maintaining a standard of life, is on the "exploitation" side). US is already (IMO) spending too much on the exploitation side relative to exploration, compared to optimum, so if you want to rebalance the budget, I'd focus on cutting some exploitation spending (but, for your own self-preservation, add some more money to infrastructure maintenance). -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit
- Axsuul 4y agoHmm making the comparison to the Falcon Heavy is unfair. It's meant to launch stuff into orbit while the SLS is meant to carry humans to Mars.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HWR_14 4y agoIf you want to compare SLS and Starship, just recall that the SLS started development after the Falcon 1 flew and at that time SpaceX had been talking about a SuperHeavy for 6 years. Work on the Raptor engines started around the same time. If you hold them to the original launch date, in terms of "time since deal signing", we already would have seen the return of the 9 people who paid for a flight around the moon on a Starship. In the grand scheme of things, I don't care about 11 billion as much as I care that it's done and moving. Also, I cannot find a wikipedia citation for $3 billion/launch. I found one for $2.3 billion/year for SLS launches.
- Gwypaas 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V
- rrss 4y agothe Wikipedia page for SLS references https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf > We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch at a cadence of approximately one mission per year. > The cost per launch was calculated as follows: $1 billion for the Orion based on information provided by ESD officials and NASA OIG analysis; $300 million for the ESA’s Service Module based on the value of a barter agreement between ESA and the United States in which ESA provides the service modules in exchange for offsetting its ISS responsibilities; $2.2 billion for the SLS based on program budget submissions and analysis of contracts; and $568 million for EGS costs related to the SLS/Orion launch as provided by ESD officials.
- HWR_14 4y agoOh, if you go beyond the SLS itself to include all the ancillary costs, then yeah. But adding those same ancillary costs to Starship (assuming it costs SpaceX $150MM to launch it) brings the total to over $2 billion/launch. The payload, people on the ground working for months during the mission, etc. are all included.
- 4y ago
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y agoFalcon heavy has been under development at spaceX since 2006 and has cost them about $37B :)
- rrss 4y agoWhere did you get this $37 billion number? I don’t think SpaceX has had $37B of investment or revenue. The only figure for the development cost i can find online is “more than $500 million.” From https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-one-year-later-business-case.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-o...
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y agoIt's obviously inflated, as I took the whole lifecycle of the company and technically they still haven't completed it yet (Because that and starship is what the whole company has been working towards since inception) They've received around $10B[0] in funding. About 3.2B [1] in fed payment, with about $13B, in appropriated funding. I would say they've launched a number of private missions as well that made them a profit. [0]https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... [1]https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?q=spacex+UEI_NAME%3A%22SPACE+EXPLORATION+TECHNOLOGIES+CORP.%22&s=FPDS.GOV&templateName=1.5.3&indexName=awardfull https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?q=spacex+UEI_NAME%3A...
- rrss 4y agoNow do the cost for SLS based on the total cost to date for NASA and all contractors since inception, including the costs for Apollo and the shuttle. This is not just inflated, it’s 100% bogus - this is not a reasonable way to estimate development costs for a launch vehicle.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y agowell NASA does alot more than launches. They have telescopes, a portion of the ISS, and generally conducts advanced research on exploration. >Now do the cost for SLS based on the total cost to date for NASA and all contractors since inception, including the costs for Apollo and the shuttle. But I would agree with that sentiment if you only included rocket development. It's not just the cost of that vehicle but also the total cost of the institutional knowledge to get there. Starship might cost _X_, but it's because you already developed reusability and the ability to land the boosters. Also, the biggest difference between spaceX and nasa is spaceX is verticly integrated where NASA avoids the development of alot of manufacturing capability.