[New] Space Launch System / Orion Discussion Thread

[Wjolcz]

It looks like a scam at this point.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Wjolcz

[Scotius]

And we are still years away from the flying article on a launchpad. I have no doubt price will only rise.

[kerbiloid]

As unlikely these 146 megabux per engine will be turned into golden coins buried in the manufacturer's garden, but will be put in a bank and get reinvested, or at least will be paid in a diner or a barbershop, they are not really "spent" but just "alternatively reinvested".

If they had sent the SLS/Orion to the Moon, these money would be just burnt and lost in space (literally).

So, to make everybody happy, they should just appoint the SLS project to the status of official financial redistribution tool _{(can't think out a spelling for the SLS abbreviature, sorry)} and forget that stupid Moon _{(who really needs it? a bunch of nerds? they have KSP and are happy)}.

Edited May 3, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Nightside]

All that money is well spent to keep aerospace engineers out of trouble. If this program didn't keep their hands busy with polishing up old engines, they'd be roaming the streets in prototype flying cars and personal drones, and generally menacing everyone. 

[Barzon]

The contract is not purely for the engines. It includes tooling and development costs. From what I've personally heard, the actual cost for an RS-25E is around 30 million.

[tater]

13 minutes ago, Barzon said:

The contract is not purely for the engines. It includes tooling and development costs. From what I've personally heard, the actual cost for an RS-25E is around 30 million.

This is not true.

They got 127 million each to refurb and improve the existing engines, including presumably dev (since the new engines will include the improvements).

They then got over a billion to retool, and produce 6 brand new engines. These are the first NEW engines.

You're saying they are getting paid again to retool?

If I buy a part for my car, what matters is how much I pay them at the parts desk. Doesn't matter what it cost the mfg to come up with the design, all that matters is what I paid.

It wouldn't matter, anyway, dev and tooling costs count. If the taxpayer writes a check, it's part of the cost.

The real cost of an SLS launch when the program is over will be: (total money spent on SLS)/launches

That's the standard I will always use. Use it for Vulcan, use it for F9, use it for SS, NG, whatever. That is the real cost.

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by tater

[Flavio hc16]

2 hours ago, tater said:

This is not true.

They got 127 million each to refurb and improve the existing engines, including presumably dev (since the new engines will include the improvements).

They then got over a billion to retool, and produce 6 brand new engines. These are the first NEW engines.

You're saying they are getting paid again to retool?

If I buy a part for my car, what matters is how much I pay them at the parts desk. Doesn't matter what it cost the mfg to come up with the design, all that matters is what I paid.

It wouldn't matter, anyway, dev and tooling costs count. If the taxpayer writes a check, it's part of the cost.

The real cost of an SLS launch when the program is over will be: (total money spent on SLS)/launches

That's the standard I will always use. Use it for Vulcan, use it for F9, use it for SS, NG, whatever. That is the real cost.

 

man, if we include orion we might go at 10 billions/launch, with 5 launches

[kerbiloid]

Just a hint for them: "planned obsolescence".

[tater]

So a quarter of the price of the total launch service is the booster (SLS). Engines are 2/3 of that.

0.165X = (146M*4)

X=584/0.165

X=3.5 B$.

Industry rules of thumb. +- by company, so the sort of company to always do things for minimal cost like Boeing might be substantially cheaper.

LOL

 

^Hat tip Eric Berger.

[mikegarrison]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

so the sort of company to always do things for minimal cost like

Remind me again of which companies like to do things for maximal cost?

[EchoLima]

I get that SLS has unique capabilities as a HLV, but this is ridiculous.

Money burner go brrr

[tater]

21 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Remind me again of which companies like to do things for maximal cost?

ALL.

They have a duty to, actually. It wasn't meant so much as a slam, but as a reaction to Bruno's claim that the norms would vary by company. I'd expect that the SLS contractors at the very least meet Bruno's rule of thumb, it was more nailing down that SLS is likely not coming in below that value.

The only thing that would result in reduced cost would be competition/bidding, and fixed price.

[RCgothic]

5 hours ago, tater said:

So a quarter of the price of the total launch service is the booster (SLS). Engines are 2/3 of that.

0.165X = (146M*4)

X=584/0.165

X=3.5 B$.

Industry rules of thumb. +- by company, so the sort of company to always do things for minimal cost like Boeing might be substantially cheaper.

LOL

 

^Hat tip Eric Berger.

You left off the cost of the SRBs. 

[sh1pman]

 

[RCgothic]

SLS Orion really is frighteningly expensive.

If NASA cancelled SLS tomorrow and then went to NewSpace and said "Here's SLS Orion's budget, get us to the moon by end of 2024." I'd bet on them to succeed.

Vulcan, New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, SuperHeavy, all boosters you can build a moon mission around that are more likely to be flying on a regular schedule by 2024 with a billion dollars dumped into them than SLS.

Whereas if you found twice SLS Orion's budget to give to Boeing I'd still be 50:50 on them cocking it up.

Edited May 4, 2020 by RCgothic
Emphasis

[tater]

On 5/4/2020 at 1:12 AM, RCgothic said:

You left off the cost of the SRBs. 

Yeah, I was trying to make SLS seem more reasonable.

SRBs have got to be what, 50M$ each?

ICPS is ~175M$ I think.

584+100+175= 859 M$. Minus the core stage itself. Assuming the RL-10 on ICPS is only 10M, the stage tank alone then costs 165M$. Fair guess that SLS core must cost at least 2X that. We'll even round down to 300M$. So total costs not counting any program costs whatsoever (which all count, divided by launches) is 1.159 B$. That's B1b. EUS has to be substantially more than ICPS.

That is also not counting Orion, which is north of a billion all by itself, and is currently literally the only payload for SLS. It is entirely fair to lump Orion in and treat this like Shuttle. Fixed program costs, plus marginal costs, divided by launches (per year). Program costs look to be similar, but flight rate looks to be 4X lower.

[Barzon]

https://www.sierralobo.com/sierra-lobo-inc-announces-nasas-artemis-human-landing-system-hls-award-on-dynetics-inc-team/

[RCgothic]

[RCgothic]

WooOOww. Eric really giving SLS both barrels here:

And yeah. Hard to disagree with a word.

Edited May 6, 2020 by RCgothic

[Nightside]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

In some bored moment a while back I calculated that if you stacked all the money spent on SLS in $100 bills, the top of the stack would be several times closer to the moon than the top of the planned rocket.

Bonus points for anyone who confirms my calcs...

Edited May 6, 2020 by Nightside

[RCgothic]

So much opportunity cost to this boondoggle.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

5 hours ago, Nightside said:

In some bored moment a while back I calculated that if you stacked all the money spent on SLS in $100 bills, the top of the stack would be several times closer to the moon than the top of the planned rocket.

Bonus points for anyone who confirms my calcs...

A US federal reserve note is 0.11 mm thick.

At the end of the 2020 fiscal year, the SLS program will have cost $17 billion dollars-ish.

With no change in thickness via weight, the stack of benjamins would be 0.11 x 170,000,000 = 18.7 km

The height of the initial SLS launch vehicle is 0.09784 km.

The surface of the earth is 360,548 km from the moon.

 

360,548 / 18.7 = 19,280.6

360,548 / 0.09784 = 3,685,077.7

3,685,077.7 / 19,280.6 = 191.1

So, the stack of benjamins would be ~191.1x closer to the moon than the top of the SLS launch vehicle.

[Space Nerd]

13 hours ago, RCgothic said:

WooOOww. Eric really giving SLS both barrels here:

And yeah. Hard to disagree with a word.

I don't care about cost, I care about the KERBAL factor!

Besides, it can get us to the moon.

(With some help from the infrastructure of course.)

Edited May 7, 2020 by Space Nerd

[RCgothic]

1 hour ago, Space Nerd said:

I don't care about cost, I care about the KERBAL factor!

Besides, it can get us to the moon.

Not by itself it can't. And you could buy SIX FH partial reusable flights just for the cost of the *engines* (RS25, SRBs, RL10s) of SLS. Probably more than FIFTEEN FH flights for the cost of one SLS.

There's also Arianne, Atlas, Vulcan, H-IIB, Proton and Soyuz, all with respectable throw to TLI.

With some imaginative EOR and optionally international cooperation you can absolutely conduct a moon landing without SLS.

And Orion's just a capsule with extended life support and a beefy heat shield. There are plenty of other capsules a few upgrades away from handling trans lunar flight. It wouldn't take four years.

 

We're completely spoiled at the moment for new hardware being developed rapidly. I consider the myth that it takes forever to get anything certified in space tech completely busted. Turns out it's just Boeing that doesn't have its act together.

Edited May 7, 2020 by RCgothic

[Wjolcz]

10 hours ago, RCgothic said:

And you could buy SIX FH partial reusable flights just for the cost of the *engines* (RS25, SRBs, RL10s) of SLS. Probably more than FIFTEEN FH flights for the cost of one SLS.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Wjolcz