[New] Space Launch System / Orion Discussion Thread

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, Scotius said:

SLS at half price? That explains that weird sound i heard several days ago. It was outraged screeching of Boeing and Aerojet execs who just heard about this idea

Honestly, good luck for NASA to find some company that would accept this agreement. I don't think there's many out there eagerly waiting for the opportunity of spending over a billion a year in ground equipment costs, but no clue if the fear of SLS ending too soon without this contract would be enough to push e.g. Boeing or Lockmart to accept this

[AtomicTech]

Funny how there's no price per module on their diagram...

[Beccab]

3 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

Funny how there's no price per module on their diagram...

 

[Scotius]

"40% more payload to the Moon! Only for 247% more money.

[RyanRising]

16 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

Funny how there's no price per module on their diagram...

I wonder how useful these numbers are - with crew, a good chunk of that 27 of 38 tons is taken up by Orion itself. My initial thought is that the important numbers for the crew variants are the comanifested payload, but maybe Orion's mass can vary substantially?

[RCgothic]

1 hour ago, RyanRising said:

I wonder how useful these numbers are - with crew, a good chunk of that 27 of 38 tons is taken up by Orion itself. My initial thought is that the important numbers for the crew variants are the comanifested payload, but maybe Orion's mass can vary substantially?

There's a limit to how much mass Orion can push into NRHO and still have enough fuel to return itself. I believe it was calculated up thread at about 16.9t with no margin.

So B1B can only manage fractionally more than a FH (~16t after deduction for spacecraft propulsion bus), and B2 can't manage any more than B1B. The idea that SLS will ever launch anything other than Orion is laughably hilarious. Its only dedicated payload, Europa Clipper, was taken off it, and SLS will never win a competitive tender against upcoming more capable launchers.

I'd seriously save the $10B EUS dev cost and launch ~65 Falcon Heavies instead. 200 starships? More?

$10B is stupid money for this "upgrade", frankly.

 

 

Edited October 29, 2021 by RCgothic

[tater]

7 hours ago, RyanRising said:

I wonder how useful these numbers are - with crew, a good chunk of that 27 of 38 tons is taken up by Orion itself. My initial thought is that the important numbers for the crew variants are the comanifested payload, but maybe Orion's mass can vary substantially?

The principal benefit of EUS is that it can do the TLI burn in 1 burn vs 4 (?) in an Oberth maneuver for ICPS. This is a much faster transfer, exposes the crew to fewer trips through the Van Allen belts, and doesn't require a burn from the Orion SM (ICPS is multiple ICPS burns, then the final burn is after ICPS is staged, using the SM).

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, tater said:

The principal benefit of EUS is that it can do the TLI burn in 1 burn vs 4 (?) in an Oberth maneuver for ICPS. This is a much faster transfer, exposes the crew to fewer trips through the Van Allen belts, and doesn't require a burn from the Orion SM (ICPS is multiple ICPS burns, then the final burn is after ICPS is staged, using the SM).

Less van Allen belt exposure would be worth quite a bit to me if I were riding it.

[tater]

20 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Less van Allen belt exposure would be worth quite a bit to me if I were riding it.

Except the whole point of Gateway is to expose astronauts to radiation. For reasons.

[RCgothic]

3 hours ago, tater said:

The principal benefit of EUS is that it can do the TLI burn in 1 burn vs 4 (?) in an Oberth maneuver for ICPS. This is a much faster transfer, exposes the crew to fewer trips through the Van Allen belts, and doesn't require a burn from the Orion SM (ICPS is multiple ICPS burns, then the final burn is after ICPS is staged, using the SM).

Is that really $10B worth of benefit (not Inc VAB alterations and ML2) considering the radiation environment is clearly not so bad they don't mind sending at least two crews through it? It'd be a stronger argument if they'd stuck with only Artemis 1 using ICPS.

Personally if I were determined to spend $10B extra on Artemis that looks *just* like the extra HLS funding NASA needed for that 2nd lander system that's apparently congressionally popular.

[tater]

I'm no fan of SLS, but ICPSS was never supposed to fly with people on top—precisely because it's such an awful flight profile.

[sevenperforce]

9 hours ago, cubinator said:

Less van Allen belt exposure would be worth quite a bit to me if I were riding it.

Not for $1 billion price tag.

[tater]

Expendable SS/SH can put north of 200t in LEO. Send Orion up on literally anything crew rated that can get it to LEO (sadly you'd have to use the overheavy LES, since making a lighter one for a non-SRB rocket would probably cost a gazillion $), dock with whatever the expendable SS has with it (a lander, perhaps?), go to the Moon.

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Expendable SS/SH can put north of 200t in LEO. Send Orion up on literally anything crew rated that can get it to LEO (sadly you'd have to use the overheavy LES, since making a lighter one for a non-SRB rocket would probably cost a gazillion $), dock with whatever the expendable SS has with it (a lander, perhaps?), go to the Moon.

Put Orion literally INSIDE of the Starship and land the whole entire thing on the Moon.

Put a giant enough airlock in the Starship that Orion can float into the pressurized section and the astronauts can simply get out through the rescue hatch.

[.50calBMG]

Didn't see this posted yet,  C-bass does it again.

Even though I am an admittedly harsh critic of SLS, I must admit it is a bit awesome finally seeing it put together.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I sure hope they keep the sticker at 0:49 exactly as is.

 

[tater]

58 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I sure hope they keep the sticker at 0:49 exactly as is.

LOL

[tater]

Random tweet is random, but figured I'd put it here none the less.

 

 

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Random tweet is random, but figured I'd put it here none the less.

 

 

X doubt

[AtomicTech]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Random tweet is random, but figured I'd put it here none the less.

 

 

[tater]

13 minutes ago, Beccab said:

X doubt

I don't have a confirmation, but I hear that's a rumor in Houston.

[Beccab]

6 minutes ago, tater said:

I don't have a confirmation, but I hear that's a rumor in Houston.

Afaik orion is already certified and the only thing that happened since was the stacking, so I don't know of any test that could have made a valve explode. Idk, but I doubt it

[cubinator]

2 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Afaik orion is already certified and the only thing that happened since was the stacking, so I don't know of any test that could have made a valve explode. Idk, but I doubt it

One thing you learn from being around rockets: there is always time for something to go wrong, no matter how many tests you run nor how many papers you certify.

[tater]

36 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Afaik orion is already certified and the only thing that happened since was the stacking, so I don't know of any test that could have made a valve explode. Idk, but I doubt it

I saw the tweet, and asked about it to someone I know at NASA, and he said he had heard some rumors. Still, just rumors, could be nothing.

Remember, after stacking they do integrated testing—they want to find issues on the ground. Beats a problem in space.

[Beccab]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

I saw the tweet, and asked about it to someone I know at NASA, and he said he had heard some rumors. Still, just rumors, could be nothing.

Remember, after stacking they do integrated testing—they want to find issues on the ground. Beats a problem in space.

Eh, I still very much doubt it. If there was a critical failure in the moon rocket set to launch in three months and with a very large number of people assigned to it there should be more than some rumours. We'll see