[New] Space Launch System / Orion Discussion Thread

[StrandedonEarth]

Four, maybe three years. I hope they’re at least building several concurrently once they get started? How long does it take after the materials arrive? Do the suppliers have to mine the ore once the material orders arrive?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

34 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Four, maybe three years. I hope they’re at least building several concurrently once they get started? How long does it take after the materials arrive? Do the suppliers have to mine the ore once the material orders arrive?

Maybe Amazon won't deliver? 

[tater]

58 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Four, maybe three years. I hope they’re at least building several concurrently once they get started? How long does it take after the materials arrive? Do the suppliers have to mine the ore once the material orders arrive?

I'm sure that's not for each, obviously, it's gotta be the required lead time. It's still absurd.

Bruno said a while ago that engines were the long lead time item (and he wasn't even talking about delayed engines) at ~36 months. This was around the same time Musk was saying that they were down to a little over 48 hours per Raptor, working their way down to 1/day.

Literally 48 hours right now, vs >48 months for RS-25 right now.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

How in the? 

I can build a house in a matter of months.  Strip and rebuild an engine... Never mind you get the picture... 

How does it take 4 YEARS to build... Anything?!? 

When I was reading the NASA forum to understand, what's the Boeing proposal of a docking adaptor, they explained (to each other) why everything is so long and so expensive.

Every change in design or a part replacement requires to repeat a whole sequence of examinations and expertises for safety and coordination.
A whole lot of people redo their calculations and reports to collect all required signs.

This takes time.
The worktime.
The worktime is payed.
The payment needs money.
The money comes from funding.
The funding is scheduled.
The schedule means everyone's time. 
The worktime.
The worktime is payed. The whole personnel worktime.
The payment needs money...

So, while in 1930s two engineers would just unmount passive hooks from a docking port to make it lighter, and nobody cared,
now this change takes a lot of worktime and money for the collateral administrative work.

And this makes everything long and expensive.

Just the human life was cheaper, because humans were reproducing like rabbits.

And now they don't, so the life costs much.

M4 replaced M1 because now a soldier costs more than his rifle.

Edited August 26, 2021 by kerbiloid

[RCgothic]

22 hours ago, tater said:

I'm sure that's not for each, obviously, it's gotta be the required lead time. It's still absurd.

Bruno said a while ago that engines were the long lead time item (and he wasn't even talking about delayed engines) at ~36 months. This was around the same time Musk was saying that they were down to a little over 48 hours per Raptor, working their way down to 1/day.

Literally 48 hours right now, vs >48 months for RS-25 right now.

To be fair, a raptor didn't spend just 48h in the factory. I'd guess it's more like 3-4 months and they have multiple on the go at once.

Still, 3-4 years is "nuclear power plant" or "hydroelectric dam" timescales. No way a single engine should take that long to make.

[tater]

5 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

To be fair, a raptor didn't spend just 48h in the factory. I'd guess it's more like 3-4 months and they have multiple on the go at once.

Still, 3-4 years is "nuclear power plant" or "hydroelectric dam" timescales. No way a single engine should take that long to make.

Yeah, it's a production line, so the how many whatever come out per day is not an indication of the actual time. That said, it has to be abysmally slow for it to be 4 years.

[DDE]

On 8/26/2021 at 8:30 AM, kerbiloid said:

So, while in 1930s two engineers would just unmount passive hooks from a docking port to make it lighter, and nobody cared,
now this change takes a lot of worktime and money for the collateral administrative work.

And this makes everything long and expensive.

It's supposed to prevent silly goof-ups.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3525/1

I don't think it necessarily does.

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

It's supposed to prevent silly goof-ups.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3525/1

I don't think it necessarily does.

Great article, thanks!

[Beccab]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/nasas-sls-rocket-will-not-fly-until-next-spring-or-more-likely-summer/

[Lewie]

‘If we can’t do a rocket for 11.5 billion, we should close up shop’ 

‘The Space agency and its traditional contractors could do they job better then anyone, he said’

 

And this guy is Nasa’s administrator?

Well....how about that

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

1 hour ago, Beccab said:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/nasas-sls-rocket-will-not-fly-until-next-spring-or-more-likely-summer/

Burger article

id take it with a grain of salt. 
 

shrug

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Burger article

id take it with a grain of salt. 
 

shrug

He has been wrong exactly 1 time on SLS in his articles (about the launch tower), despite most SLS supporters hunting him with pitchforks every time he reported a delay. He likes spacex, but his articles on SLS are factual

[Spaceman.Spiff]

12 minutes ago, Lewie said:

‘If we can’t do a rocket for 11.5 billion, we should close up shop’ 

‘The Space agency and its traditional contractors could do they job better then anyone, he said’

 

And this guy is Nasa’s administrator?

Well....how about that

 

Most of the money wasn’t spent by his administration. He’s only been the administrator for just under a year. 

There’s no way they’re going to terminate SLS at this phase of development 

[cubinator]

46 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

There’s no way they’re going to terminate SLS at this phase of development 

Of course not. They'll fly the test flight, maybe get a couple of operational flights in if the rockets are almost already built, if we're lucky.

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Most of the money wasn’t spent by his administration. He’s only been the administrator for just under a year. 

There’s no way they’re going to terminate SLS at this phase of development 

But before he was administrator...

"One of the key legislators behind the rocket's creation was then-Florida-Senator Bill Nelson. He relentlessly fought against the Obama administration's effort to see if private companies, such as United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, could more efficiently build a large rocket for NASA."

(From article linked above)

Its not like Bill Nelson is just stepping into this. He's been telling NASA how to spend their money for a decade. Coincidentally the decade that SLS has been in development.

[Lewie]

2 hours ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Most of the money wasn’t spent by his administration. He’s only been the administrator for just under a year. 

There’s no way they’re going to terminate SLS at this phase of development 

I know

I’m not saying they should, SLS  does have importance as a jobs program. But is it a mess?

yeah...it is

47 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

But before he was administrator...

"One of the key legislators behind the rocket's creation was then-Florida-Senator Bill Nelson. He relentlessly fought against the Obama administration's effort to see if private companies, such as United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, could more efficiently build a large rocket for NASA."

(From article linked above)

Its not like Bill Nelson is just stepping into this. He's been telling NASA how to spend their money for a decade. Coincidentally the decade that SLS has been in development.

Spot on!

[tater]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/08/31/nasa-hopes-waning-for-sls-test-flight-this-year/

 

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, tater said:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/08/31/nasa-hopes-waning-for-sls-test-flight-this-year/

 

 
But this last sentence makes me laugh: 

Quote

But NASA plans to use the government-owned Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule for the round-trip flight between Earth and the vicinity of the moon, where astronauts will transfer into a lunar lander, such as the Starship, for descent to the surface.

It just seems so absurd.

[Beccab]

7 minutes ago, cubinator said:

 
But this last sentence makes me laugh: 

It just seems so absurd.

Eh, that's not much absurd compared to what we are used to. In 2013, when Lori Garver (former NASA deputy administrator) released an interview saying how SLS would likely slip a year or two from the 2017 launch date, a Boeing spokesman answered "I have not heard even rumors of slips on this SLS rocket. In fact, my schedule looks five months ahead of schedule." 

[tater]

Quote

NASA has awarded a contract to Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc. of Redmond, Washington, for the development of the Orion Main Engine (OME), which will be used on the Orion spacecraft as part of the agency’s Artemis program.

The contract includes certification of the OME design, production, and special studies and tasks. It is a single-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with firm-fixed-price orders. The period of performance is from Sept. 21, 2021, through April 23, 2032, with a maximum value of $600 million.

The OME will be integrated into Orion’s primary power and propulsion component, the European Service Module, and will replace the Orbital Maneuvering System Engine repurposed from the Space Shuttle Program for the service module on Artemis missions VII through XIV. The contract also will allow for the procurement of additional engines for other NASA exploration programs.

Engines for 8 missions for $600M. That's $75M per engine (1 per SM).

How is it that the "European" service module results in the US taxpayer buying the engines, exactly?

Then we buy them for way, way too much money.

The whole SM should cost $75M, not 1 engine.

[Ultimate Steve]

Does that figure include development work/restarting/modifying production of an existing design? It would be more understandable but 75m still seems high for such a small engine even including dev cost. 75m can get you a whole medium LV these days.

[tater]

49 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Does that figure include development work/restarting/modifying production of an existing design? It would be more understandable but 75m still seems high for such a small engine even including dev cost. 75m can get you a whole medium LV these days.

Pure insanity. The WHOLE POINT was to reuse Shuttle tech. This is the Shuttle OMS engine—which is the AJ-10, since Atlas and Thor. Apollo SM. This is INSANELY STUPID.

Sorry for yelling, but there is ZERO excuse for a single tiny engine from the 1960s to cost more than buying a F9 launch—a Vulcan launch is supposed to be ~$80M.

1 engine.

 

Edited September 22, 2021 by tater

[StrandedonEarth]

18 minutes ago, tater said:

Pure insanity. The WHOLE POINT was to reuse Shuttle tech. This is the Shuttle OMS engine—which is the AJ-10, since Atlas and Thor. Apollo SM. This is INSANELY STUPID.

Sorry for yelling, but there is ZERO excuse for a single tiny engine from the 1960s to cost more than buying a F9 launch.

 

I agree, it’s ludicrous. But the pork must flow!

[tater]

Be-4 engines are expensive and they are still <$7M.

Why are we trading the SM for rides for ESA again?

[tater]

The whole SLS debacle is just nuts. From the start, the entire point of ICPS was to get the thing tested quickly (end of 2016, lol) before launching the thing "all up" with EUS.

So they built the MLS for that single launch at a cost of ~$1B. All this for a program using Shuttle tech to "save money." Like the OMS engines... throw a few away (OK, those are paid for at least), then buy new ones for at least an order of magnitude higher cost than they should be.

They are more than 10X the cost of Be-4—very different, but also far more complex. I could compare to Raptor, but then it gets almost comical.

Edited September 22, 2021 by tater