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Falcon isn't really comparable to the SLS, but yes the SLS is awful cost wise. Starship will almost surely be between one and two orders of magnitude cheaper pe
by cypress66 3y ago
Falcon isn't really comparable to the SLS, but yes the SLS is awful cost wise. Starship will almost surely be between one and two orders of magnitude cheaper per launch vs SLS.
- pfdietz 3y agoA rational return to the moon program that had to choose between Falcon and SLS would choose Falcon.
- stetrain 3y agoIf the primary goal is sustainable payloads to the moon. I think Congress considers this a secondary goal over funding and jobs being directed at their states.
- fooker 3y ago> funding and jobs being directed at their states. This is more important than it seems on the surface and is often a good thing. You want to train and preserve local expertise with heavy industries. That ensures generations of successful companies rejuvenating your economy as opposed to relying on federal handouts.
- pfdietz 3y agoIt completely fails as a justification for SLS, though. It's preserving nonsense that needs to die, instead of pushing the actually successful part of commercial space.
- fooker 3y agoHow do you recon Spacex has managed to recruit several thousand US citizens with the proper expertise? These people don’t grow on trees(/classrooms).
- avmich 3y agoSurprisingly NASA, or ULA, couldn't recruit those very same citizens.
- yazaddaruvala 3y agoI think you’re missing the point. NASA and ULA like programs trained and built expert training to create those citizens. Being able to recruit them is a non-goal.
- avmich 3y agoThe missing is all yours :) . The citizens aren't the goal, the space achievements are. And that's where NASA and ULA were left in the past.
- yazaddaruvala 3y agoThe only goal of any democratically elected government program is: improved citizens. It is in the definition: “for the people”.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIt's a good thing during down times. But now is not down times. Experienced, qualified space & rocket engineers are in high demand. Employing them to do useless make-work means they aren't available to work on rockets and space systems that will actually be useful in the future.
- fooker 3y agoIf you could predict good times and downtimes accurately, you’d be a multi-billionaire. These people enjoy a cushy revolving door between several private and public sector aerospace jobs.
- Dylan16807 3y agoWho said anything about predicting? Reacting would be just fine.
- oivey 3y agoYou’d probably have to figure out on orbit manufacturing, then, so I don’t think that is at all clear.
- pfdietz 3y agoOn-orbit assembly, the demonstration of which was the single actual real accomplishment of the Space Station program. And yet NASA just threw that in the garbage. If we can't do something as simple as assemble modules in space, exactly what sort of future do you imagine is waiting for us in space?
- oivey 3y agoMaybe they used that experience decide that it would be cheaper to just build a huge rocket? The ISS also had the benefit of the shuttle, while US flights to LEO were in turmoil when the SLS was funded. It also wasn’t clear in hindsight how completely and utterly inept Boeing was and how effective SpaceX was going to be.
- pfdietz 3y agoIt's grossly more expensive the way they are doing it. They were originally going to use smaller commercial launchers until Senator Shelby and others held a political knife to their throats. SLS has absolutely no redeeming features. You're sunk deep in Stockholm Syndrome if you're still defending it.
- vyodaiken 3y agoIt's ironic that Musks two big successes were funded by the Obama administration against vehement Republican objections. Shelby repeatedly tried to kill Space-X and without the $400million DOE loan Tesla would never have been able to start production - and without the electric car tax credit - it never would have been able to sell.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoFalcon rockets can't get to the moon. You need a lot more fuel to do that. That's why SLS and Starship are both being developed.
- pfdietz 3y agoSLS is needed only because they were not allowed to adopt on-orbit propellant transfer. With rockets like the Falcons, propellant (which is most of the mass needed to get something to the moon) is launched in smaller quantities and accumulated. What sort of future in space do those advocating SLS imagine for us if moving a liquid from one tank to another is too challenging?
- pclmulqdq 3y agoOne where we just launch one rocket instead of building a giant orbital bomb slowly (accumulating fuel) and transferring all those explosives through a complex series of difficult rendezvous maneuvers? One rocket is risky enough. There's a huge amount of extra risk involved in that sort of idea, which is why NASA isn't doing it, which can just be avoided with SLS and Starship.
- pfdietz 3y agoIt's actually less risky. Most of the launches are of propellant, which is completely replaceable. Reliability of a launcher is achieved by using it many many times, exposing all the gotchas. SLS will launch so infrequently it will be extremely risky. And you didn't answer my question, so I will answer it for you. If simply transferring a liquid from one tank to another is too risky, then there is no future in space. No activities of any significance could ever be done there. With that established, we can shut down the human space program and lose nothing of value.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThere is plenty of future in space by limiting propellant transfers to times when they are absolutely necessary. We can do them today, and have been able to for 30 years, and yet we rarely do, and never for the volumes of fuel you are proposing.
- mrguyorama 3y agoAnd NASA will probably be very happy to use such a cheap system once they are convinced it meets their reliability standards. The point of SLS IMO is to keep a backup option if SpaceX has some horrific, unpredicted setback or design problem. Surely people understand redundancy in aerospace right?
- grimwall 3y agoThe point of SLS is pork, full stop.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoAnd yet only one of SLS and Starship has reached orbit.
- lamontcg 3y agoSLS is about maintaining the ability of the US to build rocket engines like the RS-25 and those massive SRBs. The Government is worried about waking up some morning and China has leapfrogged us to the Moon and it'll take 20 years for us to institutionally remember how to get back there. And SpaceX has not yet demonstrated the ability to land humans on the Moon while NASA has. They're making sure that we can definitely still use big dumb stupid expensive technology to get there. If Starship works they may wind up pivoting away from SLS in the future, but then SpaceX will also get to take its pick up the remains of that program and their engineers (if they aren't already benefiting from a lot of cross-pollination).