4 ms·

>I did not mention Starship, because I'm not comparing the SLS against future tech, but against tech that was finished 7 years ago and is commercially available

by ginko 1y ago

>I did not mention Starship, because I'm not comparing the SLS against future tech, but against tech that was finished 7 years ago and is commercially available at this very moment. You mentioned Falcon Heavy but that has less than half the payload of SLS.

deleted 1y ago
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adastra22 1y ago
It is enough payload.
- ginko 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - adastra22 1y ago
    Source: I worked at NASA when these decisions were made. The Artemis architecture was artificially engineered to require SLS mass margins and exclude FH. This is not an accident. Alternative architectures would work just fine with FH. Orion, for example, was designed as two pieces that couple be launched separately and joined in orbit.
- mastermage 1y ago
  According to whom?
somenameforme 1y ago
In partial reuse mode, you get 57k kg from Falcon Heavy vs 95k kg from SLS, with the catch that you can launch 25 Falcon Heavies for the same cost as 1 SLS. And that's exclusively the recurring (and likely greatly low-balled) per-launch costs, ignoring the tens of billions of dollars that have (and are) being dumped into its development. In reality those also need to be aggregated into its cost per launch.
- ginko 1y ago
  Orion's mass far exceeds Heavy's payload to TLI. It simply can't be used for the Artemis manned lunar program unless you want to completely reengineer the entire thing.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    This is incorrect. NASA even carried out an internal study on this exact topic. [1] Everything NASA does is trying to shoehorn in Boeing one way or another because they have tremendous political influence, but there's really no reason for them to be involved at all from a technical point of view. And in fact if they weren't, then we indeed probably would have long since already put boots on the Moon again. But because they are involved, I suspect an appropriate timeline for success is: never, with a whole lot of money spent getting there. [1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-chief-says-a-falcon-heavy-rocket-could-fly-humans-to-the-moon/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-chief-says-a-fa...

by ginko 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

adastra22 1y ago

It is enough payload.

ginko 1y ago
[flagged]
- adastra22 1y ago
  Source: I worked at NASA when these decisions were made. The Artemis architecture was artificially engineered to require SLS mass margins and exclude FH. This is not an accident. Alternative architectures would work just fine with FH. Orion, for example, was designed as two pieces that couple be launched separately and joined in orbit.
mastermage 1y ago
According to whom?

somenameforme 1y ago

In partial reuse mode, you get 57k kg from Falcon Heavy vs 95k kg from SLS, with the catch that you can launch 25 Falcon Heavies for the same cost as 1 SLS. And that's exclusively the recurring (and likely greatly low-balled) per-launch costs, ignoring the tens of billions of dollars that have (and are) being dumped into its development. In reality those also need to be aggregated into its cost per launch.

ginko 1y ago
Orion's mass far exceeds Heavy's payload to TLI. It simply can't be used for the Artemis manned lunar program unless you want to completely reengineer the entire thing.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  This is incorrect. NASA even carried out an internal study on this exact topic. [1] Everything NASA does is trying to shoehorn in Boeing one way or another because they have tremendous political influence, but there's really no reason for them to be involved at all from a technical point of view. And in fact if they weren't, then we indeed probably would have long since already put boots on the Moon again. But because they are involved, I suspect an appropriate timeline for success is: never, with a whole lot of money spent getting there. [1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-chief-says-a-falcon-heavy-rocket-could-fly-humans-to-the-moon/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-chief-says-a-fa...