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Given that SLS is the part of Artemis that has actually shown it works, and Starship is the part that is nowhere near schedule, and doesn't work, it's very funn

• 0xffff2 8mo ago
  It's not like SLS is on schedule either, and it is absurdly more expensive than Starship. It's very likely that Starship will eventually be operational with lower total costs by any accounting measure. (And I say this as a current NASA contractor and current anti-fan of Musk)
  • tsimionescu 8mo ago
    I agree that SLS is not an efficient project by any stretch of the imagination, and they have their own problems. I don't really see a reason to believe that Starship will ever achieve the goals that were declared for it. In particular, their plan for how to achieve the Moon mission, requiring an unclear number of missions to fuel a single flight in orbit.
    • brandonagr2 8mo ago
      You don't have long to wait to see an obvious reason, the first v3 starship is in preflight testing right now.
      • tsimionescu 8mo ago
        And do you think the this next launch will deploy actual satellites in orbit around the Moon? If not, I still don't see why you'd compare it to SLS's current success. Or do you think this will deploy 100 tons to orbit for less than $10/ton, or fly to Mars, since these are the stated goals for Starship?
        • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
          Do you think perhaps you should give SpaceX as much time as NASA has had for SLS to fail at its goals before complaining that SpaceX’s system in testing isn’t accomplishing all of its goals?
          • tsimionescu 8mo ago
            Sure, that's fair. My comment above was just about the poster claiming that v3 will prove that Starship can succeed on all of its goals.
            • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
              Your comment was a strawman about launching satellites around the moon which is literally no one’s goal.
    • pfdietz 8mo ago
      Even if Starship completely fails, SLS is a pointless and ludicrously expensive dead end. Terminating it is the only logical thing to do.
      • kunai 8mo ago
        Might as well get some ROI out of it though. IMO the Blue Origin hate was overhyped. They're clearly the only ones who know what they're doing. NASA and SpaceX both are way in over their heads.
        • pennomi 8mo ago
          The Blue Origin hate is mostly how opaque the program is compared to SpaceX.
        • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
          The Blue Origin skepticism is based in how many decades they spent in making buildings instead of rockets and how long it has taken them to get anything to orbit.
      • luke5441 8mo ago
        The whole moon thing is a pointless and ludicrously expensive dead end. But if one wants to do it, one should choose between the working approaches.
        • lukeschlather 8mo ago
          Orion is actually pointless, I don't understand why the mission goals are valuable. Partial success would be meaningless. Success is meaningless. Starship in contrast has a variety of meaningful objectives. Even if Starship only achieves proving that cryogenic fuel transfer in LEO is possible that's a valuable mission goal in and of itself. If you really think "the whole moon thing is pointless" NASA is pointless.
          • pfdietz 8mo ago
    • avmich 8mo ago
      > I don't really see a reason to believe that Starship will ever achieve the goals that were declared for it. If you consider declared goals for Starship to be too hard (I assume not impossible), what aspect makes them that hard? And since we talk about the Moon here, not stated goals of using Starships for Mars flights - what part of the Starship design makes it hard to believe that Starships may in next few years be regularly used for flights to the Moon? I'm curious what it is which makes it so hard to believe.
      • cjtrowbridge 8mo ago
        All of SapaceX rockets waste close to half their payload capacity on extra fuel for landing, extra equipment for landing, and they still have a 100% failure rate on every super-heavy launch they've ever attempted. SpaceX has blown up more rockets in the last year than NASA has in its entire history. NASA's super heavy rockets have been working successfully since 1967. NASA did build the first single-stage-to-orbit rockets that also successfully landed, but it immediately realized that was a huge waste of resources. Instead, they put parachutes on rockets and then refurbished them instead. So NASA gets double the payload capacity for free. The boosters currently strapped to the SLS that's about to go to the Moon are the same ones that previously took space shuttles to orbit in the 90s. NASA has been to the Moon and Mars; SpaceX has never made it to either, and just last week Elon said they've officially given up on going to Mars, and they're hoping to make it to Moon in another decade instead. NASA is going next month. SpaceX is just vaporware being run by a drug addict whose only goal is to sell it to the public markets before the house of cards comes down.
        • platybubsy 8mo ago
          It would be great to have some actual numbers. How did reuse work out for Falcon 9? How much does the reused boosters for SLS cost? What's the cost and performance of an expendable Starship vs SLS?
          • cjtrowbridge 8mo ago
            It's not possible to compare, because while the SLS just got back from the Moon and is about to go back; SpaceX has never had a single successful super-heavy launch. Now that Elon has officially given up on Mars and decided to spend the next decade trying to figure out how to get to the moon, we may see some progress. All he has to do is put down the drugs and catch up to the NASA of the 1960s.
    • panick21 8mo ago
      Starship is irrelevant. SLS was dumb already in 2011 when Starship doesn't exist. Its a dumb system and was never the right system. NASA own analysis showed that. People who defend SLS on the bases that Starship isn't good don't get it. It doesn't matter if Starship exists. SLS should have been canceled even if you assume the state of the rocket industry in 2015. Anybody with half a brain and 3h time to do analysis on the topic could figure this out.
      • georgeecollins 8mo ago
        It's a total jobs program. I don't know what Starship will be, but at least Starship is trying to do something new and potentially very valuable. Maybe it is too ambitious but SLS is not that ambitious and not that successful :(
      • ACCount37 8mo ago
        The only reason NOT to cancel SLS outright is "we can't get anything better". "Sure, it's pretty dumb, but it can be built, and good luck getting anything better built." Starship is important because the closer Starship gets to coming online the more obviously wrong that line of thought is. As is, Starship, with its first stage being online and reusable already says "we could have done something like SLS much cheaper if we were smart about it". When the second stage comes fully online, the argument for SLS will diminish further.
        • panick21 8mo ago
          This not actually a good reason. First of all, of course you can't get anything better if you never ask for anything better or consider alternatives or put any money into anything better. If you never invested in anything else, then the M4 Sherman tank would still be the best tank. And then you could say 'we can't get anything better' and continue to use it while refusing to ever even put 1$ into developing anything else. And actually there are plenty of ways, even without Starship to do these things differently. I remember when SLS fans in 2016 told me that SLS is real and Falcon Heavy is fake. Even when Falcon Heavy and now New Gleen can do most things SLS can. One NASA Administer was almost fired for exploring if Orion could launch on Falcon Heavy. The thing is NASA is not looking for alternatives, and it doesn't matter if Starship is fully proven and operational. People will still say its not the same, because Starship will need refuel and isn't direct. You can always find a reason to justify one solution if you only ever consider that solution and refuse to even look at any other possibility.
    • itishappy 8mo ago
      Is it clear how many SLS launches would be needed to subsume Starship's part of the mission?
      • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
        It doesn’t matter because SLS can’t launch but once a year if lucky. And so far they have never even approached that.
  • bparsons 8mo ago
    We have no idea what starship has cost. It's a private company.
    • 0xffff2 8mo ago
      I don't think "no idea" is fair. We don't have exact numbers, but there are various statements out there that give clues. Even the highest estimates I can put together put Starship far cheaper than SLS.
      • tsimionescu 8mo ago
        You have to consider that Starship has not reached anywhere near the operational goals for Artemis, and there is no realistic time line for when it might. So we really do have no idea how much it might cost by the time it reaches the milestone SLS has already cleared (successful flight in lunar orbit, with a full payload that it successfully deploys).
        • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
          You also have to consider that SpaceX has the fastest, most reliable, most cost efficient launch service in operation ever, and are using the same methodology to develop the most advanced launch system ever attempted.
          • biaachmonkie 8mo ago
            We also have to consider the other major Musk lead company Telsa had the best selling car in the world and string of successful cars leading up to that before completely shitting the bed on the Cyber Truck. I want Starship to be a success and reduce the cost to orbit and beyond, but past success does not in any way guarantee future success.
            • Schiendelman 8mo ago
              Life has no guarantees. Past success is the best predictor of future success regardless.
• cheschire 8mo ago
  Isn’t SLS still costing like $4 b’s per launch?
  • PearlRiver 8mo ago
    This is why I do not believe in America setting up a permanent lunar base. The Chinese are basically going to launch a few astronauts up there with a modern Saturn 5. But for them that would be a success because it is their first time. You only get to land on the moon once before people stop giving a shit.
    • dylan604 8mo ago
      > You only get to land on the moon once before people stop giving a shit. Depends on what happens once on the moon. If all you do is send 2 people at a time to collect rocks, then it does get boring to the general public. If each landing assembles the next section of a moon habitat, then I think the interest sticks around longer.
      • linehedonist 8mo ago
        That’s just the ISS on the moon instead of space, which is also uninteresting.
        • dylan604 8mo ago
          Well, luckily for me and at least a couple of other people, we seem to have better imaginations than you. Must be boring at your place if you think taking a walk on the moon or going for a drive to see the sights is uninteresting. It's the next step of progress. Did you suddenly become bored because you learned to walk after crawling? Sounds kind of like you did to me.
          • linehedonist 8mo ago
            No but I’m serious. I don’t think most people found it interesting to monitor the slow assembly of the ISS. Do you think the moon setting would be more interesting or appealing?
• margalabargala 8mo ago
  I think it's actually a reasonable comparison. To OP's point, Artemis has cost $92 billion over 14 years. This has produced exactly one launch. It's hard to put an exact timeline on Starship since a lot of its development overlaps with Falcon 9 using the same components, but it's inarguable that it has cost one tenth Artemis so far. I agree that Starship has been plagued by delays and the capabilities are so far mostly just talk. However, it has flown a number of times, and I would be willing to make a strong bet that it will orbit the moon with real payload long before it catches up to Artemis in budget.
  • tsimionescu 8mo ago
    Starship has not yet flown even a fraction of what SLS has, so I think the comparison is premature. If it takes another ten years to get to a point that it can successfully achieve its Artemis objectives, I doubt it will remain cheaper than SLS. And given that it has already been delayed way beyond the first estimates for when it might be ready (it was supposed to have flown to Mars with astronauts on board by 2022, I believe), I don't see why another 10 years is any worse an estimate than others.
    • margalabargala 8mo ago
      SLS has flown once. What are you talking about?
      • tsimionescu 8mo ago
        SLS has had one fully functional operational flight, where it deployed satellites in lunar orbit. Starship has had 0 operational flights, and a bunch of dummy test flights without payload and without even attempting to reach LEO.
        • margalabargala 8mo ago
          Sure, but it's a bit disingenuous to one one hand have one successful flight, and on the other hand 11 test flights of varying success (reaching space but not orbit) and dismiss the latter because the former has technically flown infinitely many times more successful real flights. The absolute value is so low, 1 vs zero.
• panick21 8mo ago
  Difference is SLS has received 2 billion $ a year for 15 years in a row, while SpaceX get that much once and has to actually cover any extra cost themselves. Why do people just totally ignore money when it comes to SLS. Not to mention that SpaceX got funding in like 2021, and SLS in 2011. And SLS works, then why can it only launch every couple of years. I mean what good is a rocket that is so hard to produce that the whole politics and everything around it changes between launches. They basically have to teach a whole new group of people about SLS for each launch. > while SLS did an orbit of the Moon, with real payload satellites. If you want things launched to the moon, SpaceX, BlueOrigin or ULA could have done that many times every year for the last 15 years just as well. Starship isn't just another 'look we can launch some stuff to the moon', its much more, and therefore much more difficult. You are praising SLS for doing the very, very, very minimum that it should have been doing since 2017. And it will do it at most 3 times until 2027.
  • hparadiz 8mo ago
    The biggest problem right now with Starship is the heatshield problem. If it's a one and done flight it's actually still worth it but full re-use without solving the heat shield problem is not actually possible (right now). It turns out slamming into Earth's atmosphere at orbital velocity or higher is one of those things that pretty much every material we've thrown at the problem has had problems being used forever. We need to do experimental flights in order to provide more data to materials folks working on this. Honestly I respect the hell out of anyone working on this problem because it's the next big tech hurdle we need besides landing a booster. And this one is still not solved.
    • panick21 8mo ago
      I would agree. The heatshield is tricky. But they have shown they can survive without parts of the heatshield. But its a problem for rapid re-usability. That said, I think Starship architecture can be useful even if this issue is not fully solved. Starship can be much, much cheaper then SLS even if they throw away the upper stage.
• stinkbeetle 8mo ago
  Artemis is nowhere near schedule, had vast cost blowouts, and it's a commercial dead end though. It's incredibly expensive boutique warmed-over 50 year old technology. NASA absolutely should learn from SpaceX, they were the company that liberated US astronaut's access to space from Russian rockets after NASA had lost that capability. And they have brought down the cost of payload to orbit enormously, and they have been finding viable commercial non-government markets for space. They've been launching around 90% of global mass to orbit. An order of magnitude more than all other corporations and governments in the world combined. All other serious commercial space companies have taken lessons from SpaceX, so has the Chinese space program. To suggest NASA should not learn from SpaceX is just astounding. That's the kind of think you'd only hear from western government bureaucrats.
• hvb2 8mo ago
  Do you want to put a dollar amount per kg to orbit on that? Because if you're spending orders of magnitude more, the expectations also go up, no? And mind you, SLS isn't a new system. It's old space shuttle engines. It's old solid rocket boosters that were extended by a segment. So, it should be cheap and fast? I think the point here is really that SLS should be a walk in the park. Mostly old tech, reused with not a lot of innovation. Starship might not have put a real payload into orbit yet but it has already delivered vastly superior engine technology (full flow staged combustion), a new way to land rocket boosters to allow for reuse and many more smaller things. If you're going to innovate, things will not be smooth because you're learning things. You should be celebrating those achievements, especially as it didn't cost you a dime
• mpweiher 8mo ago
  They are not trying to accomplish the same thing or on the same schedule, so your comparison is per-se invalid. One could also ask "how many times has the SLS booster landed and been reused?". This would be a silly question to ask, because SLS is not trying to reuse the booster.