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NASA should consider commercial alternatives to SLS, inspector general says

8 points by kristianp 3y ago

kristianp 3y ago
> four engines is $582.7 million, or $146 million per engine. This means that a single engine on NASA's rocket costs roughly the same amount that the space agency paid for an entire mission on the Falcon Heavy rocket—$178 million for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
borissk 3y ago
The price of an SLS launch is crazy, but I'm not sure the problem is in NASA. The Congressmen, who decide what NASA budget is, have pervert priorities - both because they want to have federally funded jobs in their states and because they depend on private funding for their re-election campaigns. Starship may be able to lunch a heavier payload at 2% of the price of an SLS launch.
avmich 3y ago
Generally speaking, we have two technological revolutions this decade bearing fruit - one in space and another with AI. To get significant benefits from space revolutions, some reasonable alternative to SpaceX would be useful. Launch services are a small percent of the space market, but their role is such that the company which slashes costs there gains a significant leverage in many space-related markets. NASA definitely has its significant role in space exploration, surely this decade. But which one, how effectively it can work? For today it looks like NASA has to change a lot to be comparable to SpaceX - and other relatively young space companies. In addition to launch services - there are some companies working in that area - there are less obvious market goals which may soon become achievable - space stations, space manufacturing, Moon resource utilization. For example, just recently Elon Musk talked about estimated 5 million tons on low Earth orbit in order to put 1 million tons on Mars to get to a self-sustaining colony. Putting aside the estimation itself - of those 5 millions tons on LEO more than 3 million tons should be (liquid) oxygen, which could be cheaper to deliver to LEO from the Moon than from Earth. Companies which extract oxygen from the Moon materials could suddenly become quite interesting rather soon.

8 points by kristianp 3y ago

> four engines is $582.7 million, or $146 million per engine. This means that a single engine on NASA's rocket costs roughly the same amount that the space agency paid for an entire mission on the Falcon Heavy rocket—$178 million for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

borissk 3y ago

The price of an SLS launch is crazy, but I'm not sure the problem is in NASA. The Congressmen, who decide what NASA budget is, have pervert priorities - both because they want to have federally funded jobs in their states and because they depend on private funding for their re-election campaigns. Starship may be able to lunch a heavier payload at 2% of the price of an SLS launch.

avmich 3y ago

Generally speaking, we have two technological revolutions this decade bearing fruit - one in space and another with AI. To get significant benefits from space revolutions, some reasonable alternative to SpaceX would be useful. Launch services are a small percent of the space market, but their role is such that the company which slashes costs there gains a significant leverage in many space-related markets. NASA definitely has its significant role in space exploration, surely this decade. But which one, how effectively it can work? For today it looks like NASA has to change a lot to be comparable to SpaceX - and other relatively young space companies. In addition to launch services - there are some companies working in that area - there are less obvious market goals which may soon become achievable - space stations, space manufacturing, Moon resource utilization. For example, just recently Elon Musk talked about estimated 5 million tons on low Earth orbit in order to put 1 million tons on Mars to get to a self-sustaining colony. Putting aside the estimation itself - of those 5 millions tons on LEO more than 3 million tons should be (liquid) oxygen, which could be cheaper to deliver to LEO from the Moon than from Earth. Companies which extract oxygen from the Moon materials could suddenly become quite interesting rather soon.