Barzon

The annual program costs do not equate launch costs. Launch costs are not paying the rent, mowing the lawn, painting facilities, employing workers. Read this blog post by Wayne Hale, and you'll understand why annual program costs do not equate launch costs. https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2019/11/09/what-figure-did-you-have-in-mind/

Why would Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator himself lie about the cost, and say SLS is 800-900 million per launch. If he says that's the cost, you can sure as hell trust him.

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. 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.

https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Partnerships/Kerbal_includes_Ariane_5_and_real_ESA_missions_for_gamers "Shared Horizons features all the stages, engines and systems of Europe’s Ariane 5 launch vehicle" "dress their Kerbal astronauts in an ESA-themed spacesuit"

It would be reduced yes, but not significantly. If you want stuff that works in space, it is going to be expensive.

It doesn't matter how cheap the $/kg to LEO gets. Space hardware is expensive. A simple cubesat costs ~50k minimum, and proper satellites will cost far more than that, for the foreseeable future.

I've heard from reliable sources that Starship needs 11 refueling flights to get 100t to TLI.

why would it be launching that often? what would it be launching? the space market cannot support even 3 or 4 M/HLVs, so why would it have enough demand to enable Starship to fly hundreds of times a year? It won't be flying hundreds of starlink batchs, because I've heard that it takes about a month to make a batch of 60 sats, which limits it to 12 Starlink launches a year and I don't think SpaceX would want to launch each sat one at a time, no matter how cheap Starship launch costs are. And no matter how reliable Starship gets, NASA will never accept the risk of not having a LAS on crewed spacecraft.

the B1 SLS Core stage can enter orbit with ICPS and Orion attached, but it is purposely put into a flight path with a perigee below 0. This will not occur with Block 1b and 1b+ because the core stage will stage at a lower speed, due to the weight of the EUS.

Principles that prevent nations dumping giant uncontrollable stages in orbit.

Delving a bit off topic, but what mod are those engines from?

From what I've heard from a HLS guy, I believe the drop tanks are launched individually, for a total of 3 launches.

Veeeery noice. These will come in handy for my Lunar Gateway replica. What diameter are the PCM parts, and does this work in 1.8?

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

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.

From what I've heard, I believe this is Dynetic's plan, and I'm 80% sure the lander is Methalox.

iirc STS used glue to attach the tiles, and, well, we all know how that turned out.

IIRC Pad turnaround in STS was only a few weeks, so pad turnaround for 2 SLS would probably only be a month or so.

Which is easily possible. We already have 2 MLs - one finished and one under construction. All that's needed is the relatively easy upgrade of High Bay 1 to support SLS stacking.

Black solar panels, Tundra worm, and I think a new logo for Gigan?

I've heard rumours of rumours that due to Gateway being pushed off the critical path for 2024, NASA might launch an integrated PPE+HALO, so the Cygnus SM might be removed for the actual HALO module.

Also @Drakenex where did you get those MMSEVs from?

The EFT-1 Orion, launched on a DIVH in 2014, was indeed covered in black tiles. However, production Orions will have a shiny outer coating on the capsule, similar to Apollo, but those black tiles are still present, and will probably be visible after reentry.