[New] Space Launch System / Orion Discussion Thread

[Shpaget]

On 5/9/2020 at 8:11 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

IMHO, SLS still has it's place until Starship demonstrates that it properly works, and even then until it demonstrates that it is safe enough for crew.

I wouldn't be surprised if SS started proving that before SLS kicks off properly.

And let's not forget the New Glenn sleeper.

[tater]

BTW, now "late 2021" is likely to be the planned launch date. We'll see what they mean by late. If it's December 2021, then literally any delay moves it to 2022.

[RCgothic]

Just because we don't hear much about New Glenn doesn't mean it isn't being worked on. You hear nothing and you hear nothing and then suddenly *bam!* Payload fairing.

I do wish Blue Origin were a little less Graditim with their press releases, but that doesn't mean they're not being Ferociter behind the scenes.

[RealKerbal3x]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

BTW, now "late 2021" is likely to be the planned launch date. We'll see what they mean by late. If it's December 2021, then literally any delay moves it to 2022.

To be honest, even if Artemis I is not delayed any further, and the commercial landers are ready on time, I highly doubt we'll see anyone on the Moon in 2024. As much as I want to see people return to the Moon as soon as possible, 2024 just seems like an unrealistic goal.

Edited May 14, 2020 by RealKerbal3x

[Space Nerd]

22 hours ago, RCgothic said:

I genuinely don't understand why anyone wouldn't care about their tax dollars being spent efficiently.

I genuinely don't understand why any space enthusiast wouldn't prefer, say, ten Falcon Heavy or New Glenn launches (payloads included) to a single SLS launch (payload not included).

 

Yes, ok, every rocket launch is cool. But ten launches acheiving ten times as much is ten times as cool.

I'm not an American.

And I just like big expansive rockets.

And I started to feel depressed again.

Also you made me started to question my own opinion, great.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Space Nerd

[Space Nerd]

This thread is for SLS lovers to talk about the big orange rocket, if you don't like SLS, please post in the other thread.

Mods, please don't merge this with the other SLS thread, because everytime I posted my opinion in that thread, I got too much criticism for me to deal with.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Space Nerd

[RCgothic]

1 hour ago, Space Nerd said:

Also you made me started to question my own opinion

What's wrong with that?

 

If you like large rockets, there are a lot of goodies coming up.

USSF-44 is coming up this year, using Falcon Heavy to insert two satellites into GEO - it's a screamingly high performance objective for 2.5 stage Kerolox rocket and will feature twin barge landings.

ULA's Vulcan is launching in July next year. It's somewhat between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in performance.

New Glenn is going to appear as if from nowhere one of these days, with similar performance to partially expendable Falcon Heavy.

Starship is probably test-firing today. Starship has a larger diameter than SLS and by itself is as large as the SLS core stage. It will fall to earth like a skydiver, pirouette to a landing, and be ready to do the same the next day. That's super-cool!

Super-Heavy will probably be in testing by this time next year (before SLS). It's bigger than SLS. It has *twice* the thrust of SLS. It will take off on a column of fire the like of which this planet has never seen! Expendable it can put ~300t in orbit. For reference that's the entire Apollo CSM/LM stack *AND* a fully fuelled Saturn S-IVB with enough payload mass left over to co-manifest the entire Mir space station, all in a single flight!

 

Believe me, there is plenty to be excited about when it comes to large rockets in the near future. There's no need to be depressed. Human spaceflight is finally getting serious again. It just doesn't require SLS.

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by RCgothic

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

SLS! SLS!!! S... L... S...

SLS..

_{(This just was merged from the SLS lovers' thread)}

Edited May 15, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Space Nerd]

I am depressed from no one agrees with me.

Also I like every rocket.

[sh1pman]

20 minutes ago, Space Nerd said:

I am depressed from no one agrees with me.

There is no reason to be depressed. People disagreeing with you on an Internet forum is such a minor thing in comparison to real life issues. And people here are very polite and respectful (unlike e.g. Reddit), nobody is going to insult you for your opinions!

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

Mods, please don't merge this with the other SLS thread, because everytime I posted my opinion in that thread, I got too much criticism for me to deal with.

Sorry, but we can't allow people to start a new thread if they don't like the way a conversation is going.

Overlapping threads have been merged. 

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

I am depressed from no one agrees with me.

Also I like every rocket.

SLS is nice to see flying.

And as far as the money, I'm not an American, too, so its cost means nothing for me.

[tater]

We're in a bit of a flat spot for real SLS news, hence the discussion always goes into the "why" and "what's it good for" realm. SpaceX thread goes sideways during launch or new rocket news dry spells as well, it's the nature of us all being bored.

7 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

I am depressed from no one agrees with me.

Also I like every rocket.

Hey, rockets are cool, we're all with you there. Those of us unhappy with the expense to utility ratio of SLS/Orion will still watch it when it flies.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And as far as the money, I'm not an American, too, so its cost means nothing for me.

Yeah, most of us paying taxes care not so much because a few billion matters (it's noise), but because we see it as an opportunity cost. Ie: what could have been done that was more interesting with the same resources allocated.

For those of us who lived through the entire Shuttle era, we already saw our hopes for increased human space exploration slowly crushed. I see SLS as being more of the same.

Kudos to Bridenstine, though, he's created something that might actually move forward.

[ZooNamedGames]

On 5/15/2020 at 8:19 AM, sh1pman said:

There is no reason to be depressed. People disagreeing with you on an Internet forum is such a minor thing in comparison to real life issues. And people here are very polite and respectful (unlike e.g. Reddit), nobody is going to insult you for your opinions!

No, the real danger is the unified opinion would support cancelling SLS & funding the equally slow & delayed SpaceX. It’s been just short of a decade of funding SpaceX as part of the CCP to build a capsule (& it isn’t even reusable!). Falcon Heavy? 2013? Delayed to 2018 & has launched as often as SLS will.

Yes SLS is costly & slow- but it’s a surefire better option than throwing more money at SpaceX who’s spent their hard earned cash blowing up tubes in Texas rather than build actual rockets (not to mention they’re struggling with the smaller starship fuel tanks, I can imagine it’ll take them years and dozens of prototypes to stop super heavy from exploding!).

Any option short of SLS will be slower; development alone will cost as much if not more, & ultimately not meet NASA’s mission. Despite its costs or its delays, SLS is the most powerful rocket that will fly crew by 2025, which is great since no other vehicle can fill its role within the next decade. Falcon Heavy even when fully expendable, is not able to send orion to TLI. SLS can send nearly an additional 10t of payload to TLI over FHe. Tater has gone on about the idea of EOR assembly with FHe, but that would cost more $$$, time & add additional risks & mission limitations that Bridenstine, nor any NASA administrator can seriously accept.

And if I hear another quip about how Boeing is entirely to blame, I swear to kraken. 

[sh1pman]

15 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

No, the real danger is the unified opinion would support cancelling SLS & funding the equally slow & delayed SpaceX.

Still not a reason to be depressed.

15 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

(& it isn’t even reusable!)

It's not reusable in CCP, but SpaceX can use it for whatever it wants afterwards.

15 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Falcon Heavy? 2013? Delayed to 2018

How much money have US taxpayers spent on Falcon Heavy?

15 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Any option short of SLS will be slower

Now that SLS is almost complete, probably true.

15 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

& ultimately not meet NASA’s mission

*mission built specifically around the capabilities of SLS. Doesn't mean they couldn't come up with another mission utilizing commercial rockets and EOR.

Edited May 18, 2020 by sh1pman

[sh1pman]

31 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Tater has gone on about the idea of EOR assembly with FHe, but that would cost more $$$, time & add additional risks & mission limitations that Bridenstine, nor any NASA administrator can seriously accept.

EOR and docking is done routinely at ISS by Soyuz, previously by Shuttle, and will soon be done by SpaceX. What’s so crazy about it? More $$$ - than what, SLS? For two FH launches? (Orion and naked S2). Sorry, can’t agree. Additional risks - perhaps. I didn’t participate much in the discussions about EOR instead of SLS for Artemis missions, so can’t comment about additional risks and if they were acceptable or not. 

[tater]

41 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

No, the real danger is the unified opinion would support cancelling SLS & funding the equally slow & delayed SpaceX. It’s been just short of a decade of funding SpaceX as part of the CCP to build a capsule (& it isn’t even reusable!). Falcon Heavy? 2013? Delayed to 2018 & has launched as often as SLS will.

Cost to the taxpayers?

COTS dev was 360 M$ from NASA.

Commercial Crew was 2.something billion. Crew vehicle has already flown all-up to ISS, crew actually flies to station in 9 days.

FH cost taxpayers zero dollars, and the cost of a flight is 20X cheaper than SLS (giving SLS the benefit of the doubt on cost, too).

 

41 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Yes SLS is costly & slow- but it’s a surefire better option than throwing more money at SpaceX who’s spent their hard earned cash blowing up tubes in Texas rather than build actual rockets (not to mention they’re struggling with the smaller starship fuel tanks, I can imagine it’ll take them years and dozens of prototypes to stop super heavy from exploding!).

This is where you go completely off the rails. You can argue relative cost, you can argue more predictable success with flight for SLS, etc., fine.

Suggesting SS isn't real, or they can't make it is loony. NASA apparently disagrees with you. And literally, while you typed that, SS SN4 was on the pad being loaded with props for a static test in anticipation of a hop later this week. SN5 is stacked nearby, and they are going to put a nose on it, it has RCS, and will start doing landing testing (20km hop). SN6, also under construction. They are building something a decent % of the size of SLS for testing every month at this point.

41 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Any option short of SLS will be slower; development alone will cost as much if not more, & ultimately not meet NASA’s mission.

Dev can't possibly cost as much, they simply don't have that kind of money. I'm beginning to think you're actually a SpaceX fanboi throwing out Straw Man arguments for SLS, because the arguments are so poor. Jeff Bezos could spend as much as has been spent on SLS/Orion, but he'd consider their value for expense a really poor use of his money. He will have spent less to get NG flying, and I would wager by the time BO has New Armstrong as a thing, they will have spent a small fraction of SLS dev cost on their total work up to that point.

41 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Despite its costs or its delays, SLS is the most powerful rocket that will fly crew by 2025, which is great since no other vehicle can fill its role within the next decade.

LOL. Love how the dates keep moving out. Crew? To where? Orion is literally the only payload for SLS, and it can't even do a real lunar mission unless they make EUS with IVF and don't comanifest a payload (EUS could do LOI, and Orion could then come home from being in a good lunar orbit).

 

41 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Falcon Heavy even when fully expendable, is not able to send orion to TLI. SLS can send nearly an additional 10t of payload to TLI over FHe. Tater has gone on about the idea of EOR assembly with FHe, but that would cost more $$$, time & add additional risks & mission limitations that Bridenstine, nor any NASA administrator can seriously accept.

Forget SpaceX. NG will be flying in the same timeframe as the first SLS flight (now set at late 2021, BTW). NG can lift Orion to LEO. NG is man rated, just as Vulcan is. It's part of BO's "gradatim" that they dot all Is, and cross all Ts before hand. they have stated every single rocket they build will be crew rated. A NG architecture could obviate SLS. EOR is a thing for Orion, since Orion is a Constellation vehicle, and designed for that architecture (which is why SLS is a fail).

41 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

And if I hear another quip about how Boeing is entirely to blame, I swear to kraken. 

 

[Barzon]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

NASA apparently disagrees with you.

All of the NASA people I've talked to, all of whom work on Artemis, including directly on HLS itself, disagree with you. None of them believe the idiotic timelines SpaceX provide.

 

5 minutes ago, tater said:

the cost of a flight is 20X cheaper than SLS

How on Earth (or Kerbin ) do you get that? SLS is ~900 million per launch, and FHe is ~200m, meaning you can only get  4 and a half FHe flights for the cost of 1 SLS. A far cry from your 20X cheaper.

[RCgothic]

6 minutes ago, Barzon said:

SLS is ~900 million per launch, and FHe is ~200m

Falcon Heavy is $95m reusable to $150m expendable.

SLS, if it flies 10 times by 2030, will have cost $3.5B to $3.9B each. There is no way it will ever cost as little as $900m.

All up appropriations for SaturnV was $2.7B each in similar dollars btw.

Edited May 18, 2020 by RCgothic

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Barzon said:

All of the NASA people I've talked to, all of whom work on Artemis, including directly on HLS itself, disagree with you. None of them believe the idiotic timelines SpaceX provide.

They think it has enough chance to work they are spending 153 M$ on it. Chump change, but >$0 (which is what they think the Boeing lander is worth spending on).

None of the rest of us believe the idiotic timelines of Artemis in general, so we're even

 

Quote

How on Earth (or Kerbin ) do you get that? SLS is ~900 million per launch, and FHe is ~200m, meaning you can only get  4 and a half FHe flights for the cost of 1 SLS. A far cry from your 20X cheaper.

SLS fixed annual costs are over 2 billion. If SLS launch costs are within that, a launch is ~2 billion. If the marginal costs are in addition to that, it's more like 3 B$.

SLS has $584,000,000 worth of RS-25s on the bottom ALONE. ICPS costs ~200M. So we're ~800M without the core stage, or side boosters. SRBs are what, 50M each? That's 900M without the core stage, or any other costs included. Core stage must be getting Boeing some amount of money, right? A few hundred million?

Edited May 18, 2020 by tater

[ZooNamedGames]

7 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Still not a reason to be depressed.

It's not reusable in CCP, but SpaceX can use it for whatever it wants afterwards.

How much money have US taxpayers spent on Falcon Heavy?

Now that SLS is almost complete, probably true.

*mission built specifically around the capabilities of SLS. Doesn't mean they couldn't come up with another mission utilizing commercial rockets and EOR.

EOR was found to be even more expensive & more dangerous- not to mention requiring many technologies that still don’t exist. Problems that SpaceX will soon have to develop themselves while NASA goes with proven technologies ahead of time.

6 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Falcon Heavy is $95m reusable to $150m expendable.

SLS, if it flies 10 times by 2030, will have cost $3.5B to $3.9B each. There is no way it will ever cost as little as $900m.

Boeing was quoted at specifically 800mil per core.

6 hours ago, tater said:

Cost to the taxpayers?

COTS dev was 360 M$ from NASA.

Commercial Crew was 2.something billion. Crew vehicle has already flown all-up to ISS, crew actually flies to station in 9 days.

FH cost taxpayers zero dollars, and the cost of a flight is 20X cheaper than SLS (giving SLS the benefit of the doubt on cost, too).

 

This is where you go completely off the rails. You can argue relative cost, you can argue more predictable success with flight for SLS, etc., fine.

Suggesting SS isn't real, or they can't make it is loony. NASA apparently disagrees with you. And literally, while you typed that, SS SN4 was on the pad being loaded with props for a static test in anticipation of a hop later this week. SN5 is stacked nearby, and they are going to put a nose on it, it has RCS, and will start doing landing testing (20km hop). SN6, also under construction. They are building something a decent % of the size of SLS for testing every month at this point.

Dev can't possibly cost as much, they simply don't have that kind of money. I'm beginning to think you're actually a SpaceX fanboi throwing out Straw Man arguments for SLS, because the arguments are so poor. Jeff Bezos could spend as much as has been spent on SLS/Orion, but he'd consider their value for expense a really poor use of his money. He will have spent less to get NG flying, and I would wager by the time BO has New Armstrong as a thing, they will have spent a small fraction of SLS dev cost on their total work up to that point.

LOL. Love how the dates keep moving out. Crew? To where? Orion is literally the only payload for SLS, and it can't even do a real lunar mission unless they make EUS with IVF and don't comanifest a payload (EUS could do LOI, and Orion could then come home from being in a good lunar orbit).

 

Forget SpaceX. NG will be flying in the same timeframe as the first SLS flight (now set at late 2021, BTW). NG can lift Orion to LEO. NG is man rated, just as Vulcan is. It's part of BO's "gradatim" that they dot all Is, and cross all Ts before hand. they have stated every single rocket they build will be crew rated. A NG architecture could obviate SLS. EOR is a thing for Orion, since Orion is a Constellation vehicle, and designed for that architecture (which is why SLS is a fail).

 

[snip]

Edited May 18, 2020 by Vanamonde

[tater]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

EOR was found to be even more expensive & more dangerous- not to mention requiring many technologies that still don’t exist. Problems that SpaceX will soon have to develop themselves while NASA goes with proven technologies ahead of time.

EOR is more dangerous and expensive than LOR. Because magic.

EOR is literally done several times a year by NASA, every single time they go to ISS.

Flying multiple separate vehicles to lunar orbit to rendezvous there is literally 100% untested. The only LOR done was Apollo, and LOR in that case was vastly more risky than the same thing in LEO.

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

Boeing was quoted at specifically 800mil per core.

800M for the core, plus the engine costs? The RS-25 engines are almost 600M alone.

[ZooNamedGames]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

They think it has enough chance to work they are spending 153 M$ on it. Chump change, but >$0 (which is what they think the Boeing lander is worth spending on).

None of the rest of us believe the idiotic timelines of Artemis in general, so we're even

 

SLS fixed costs are over 2 billion. If SLS launch costs are within that, a launch is 2 billion. If the marginal costs are in addition to that, it's more like 3 B$.

SLS has $584,000,000 worth of RS-25s on the bottom ALONE. ICPS costs ~200M. So we're ~800M without the core stage, or side boosters. SRBs are what, 50M each? That's 900M without the core stage, or any other costs included. Core stage must be getting Boeing some amount of money, right? A few hundred million?

Apparently NASA doesn’t agree since they’ve already purchased 10 cores from Boeing & I don’t see a budget request for 30 billion worth of booster cores.

Just now, tater said:

EOR is more dangerous and expensive than LOR. Because magic.

EOR is literally done several times a year by NASA, every single time they go to ISS.

Flying multiple separate vehicles to lunar orbit to rendezvous there is literally 100% untested. The only LOR done was Apollo, and LOR in that case was vastly more risky than the same thing in LEO.

800M for the core, plus the engine costs? The RS-25 engines are almost 600M alone.

Moving a few gallons of stable hypergolic fuels is a far far far far far far far far far far far far cry from moving tens of thousands worth of gallons worth of cryogenic fuels that in hours will boil off, much less days or weeks it takes for launches to finish.

[tater]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

Apparently NASA doesn’t agree since they’ve already purchased 10 cores from Boeing & I don’t see a budget request for 30 billion worth of booster cores.

You're acting like the 2 are mutually exclusive. Why?

What is "30 billion of booster cores" from?

The cost of an SLS launch is the cost of the annual SLS program, plus any marginal costs, divided by the number of launches that year. Adding Orion of course adds quite a bit, as Orion alone is like a billion or more a flight.

We know the annual SLS costs. We know the flight rate won't exceed 1/year for a long time.

3 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Moving a few gallons of stable hypergolic fuels is a far far far far far far far far far far far far cry from moving tens of thousands worth of gallons worth of cryogenic fuels that in hours will boil off, much less days or weeks it takes for launches to finish.

What does that have to do with Artemis and crew?

There is no need for that at all. Artemis could dispense with SLS with just NG. No propellant transfer at all.

NASA wants prop depots, specifically for cryos, BTW (Shelby doesn't for some reason). The entire Artemis program is in fact predicated on cryo propellant transfer in the long term, that's the point of "sustainable" or did you miss all the Artemis stuuf relating to that. First launch can avoid it, but later landers are supposed to be reusable. This requires prop transfer.

Also, CH4 isn't the boiloff problem that Hydrogen is by a long shot.

[RCgothic]

17 minutes ago, tater said:

The cost of an SLS launch is the cost of the annual SLS program, plus any marginal costs, divided by the number of launches that year. 

For publically funded missions I'd take total appropriations divided by number of missions (inc cancellations not transferred). Doesn't exclude any R&D costs, years with no flights, or unused hardware.

Saturn V? $42Bn in 2019$ for 16 missions. $2.7B each.

Crew rating Falcon 9 and dragon R&D? $3.4Bn over 9 missions. $378m each.

Commercial Resupply Services? $1.6B for 12 flights. $133m each.

 

This way there can be no argument over who got what.

Edited May 18, 2020 by RCgothic