Duxwing

Run the model for more turns, and the price drops--1.5, 1.25, 1.125, ...--to some price wherebelow the last company standing no longer finds making rockets for NASA worthwhile and whereabove NASA is not willing to pay that company. In general, this price movement is called the Invisible Hand and moves almost any price to equilibrium. Also, even if 2 million were the equilibrium price, it's 2 million less than the original 4 million dollar price. -Duxwing

A forced example of Cool Guys (and Girls) Don't Look At Explosions. -Duxwing

I would go in a heartbeat. -Duxwing

Oh. Play your mental model for more turns and you'll see I'm right. If Company A makes an SLS for $1 million and offers it for $4 million, and if Company B therefore makes an SLS for $1 million and offers it for $3 million, then Company A can make $1 million by offering its SLS for $2 million. The market will reach equilibrium with space parts just like it does for apples. -Duxwing

The bigger the fuel tank, the bigger the LES. This danger is trivial. Would you please elaborate? The inflatables are for space travel. Corporations can arbitrarily raise prices only in a monopoly; whereas in such competitive markets as NASA launch vehicles, only the cheapest satisfactory seller gets any money and all sellers therefore seek to lower their prices just enough to win. In case you were wondering, the same principle applies elsewhere; e.g., Alice wants some apples and has some money. Bob, Charlotte, and Dan have some apples and want some money. Bob offers Alice a price of 1 dollar per apple. Charlotte offers Alice a price of 2 dollars per apple. Dan offers Alice a price of 3 dollars per apple. Alice rationally chooses to buy her apples from Bob, whose apples are cheapest. Replace Alice with NASA, Bob, Charlotte, and Dan with some LV companies, and you get the aforementioned LV market. Its companies wage something called a price war, which in the analogous apple market would be: Charlotte and Dan get nothing and therefore reconsider their pricing. In real time, Charlotte reprices her apples at 99 cents. Alice rationally switches from Bob to Charlotte. Dan, noticing Charlotte's price change, reprices his apples at 98 cents Bob, noticing Dan's price change, reprices his apples at 97 cents ... Charlotte cannot sell her apples for less than 90 cents and therefore bankrupts. ... Dan cannot sell his apples for less than 80 cents and therefore bankrupts. ... Finally, Bob cannot sell his apples for less than 70 cents, and the apple market reaches equilibrium because Bob is its only seller. Obviously, Bob could raise his price because he lacks competition, causing Alice to want cheaper apples; fortunately for Alice, if Bob raises it enough, then whatever barrier to entering the apple market will not stop someone else from seizing the opportunity to sell Alice cheaper apples, and the price war will resume.

Why? If the sand hits the fan, then the LES will pull you off the SLS, which will be Man-Rated, just as well as off the Falcon. We are building inflatables for Mars and the Moon. It is cheaper and spurs commercial development. -Duxwing

If you're so worried about an explosion that you would rather the SLS not fly, then you should be willing to back away from the rocket. -Duxwing

If you can write more stories like this one, then you could become a professional writer. If I ever needed a job, then I would ask to be your editor. -Duxwing

The payloads are already being developed. -Duxwing

We can speculate forever on what Congress' motivation might be, and payload manufacturers might be nervously standing around, pointing at and whispering about the guy with the blue patch on his shirt and the model of a huge rocket on his desk, wondering whether he can build it and whether they therefore can sleep at night after building payloads for it; the patch-and-rocket guy likely has already asked the huddled crowd whether they would if he succeeded. Less allegorically, NASA likely has done market research that indicates demand for the SLS. The SLS is for Beyond Earth Orbit payloads that lesser rockets cannot lift. *snickers* Playing a little Kerbal Space Program, I see... That estimate seems extreme. The Martian technology (I feel giddy saying that phrase) would be developed within some mass limit, enabling the transfer vehicles' simultaneous development. It need not, and how would interim mission hardware push back a mission that would have, by definition, already begun? Those payloads are already being developed. -Duxwing

AAR: I landed a probe on Eve, finding it ESCAWWEEE! I could not watch the probe descend into the night side: hurtling into endless black deeply unsettles me. The probe's main batteries unforunately burned up, making it unable to open its panels. I further found that my previously-crashed probe already provided the data this one provided. What a fiasco! What should I do now? -Duxwing

That risk might change once SLS lifts off: perhaps Congress worries about putting the payload before the lifter. -Duxwing

Cover your walls with lead. Quit whining! High gravity make you big and strong! -Duxwing

What Dodgey said, and the same could be said for cars. You're also ignoring that the Shuttle flew 135 times: spaceflight is so dangerous that, however safe your ship, you will lose a hull or two. If you want me to state it directly: Ceteris paribus, simpler is safer. SLS is simpler. Therefore, ceteris paribus, SLS is safer. There's plenty of missions; e.g., lunar exploration, heavy lifting. Where is your evidence for these claims? Especially considering that you necessarily doubt speculation, which would include such claims as "too unreliable by design". No, they couldn't. SLS is bigger than both Falcon Heavy and Atlas V, and retrofitting those designs with extra boosters would incur huge maintenance or parts costs and be so Kerbal as to be dangerous. Where is your evidence? Your outlook seems all sad, all the time. You OK? -Duxwing

It's Per Aspera ad Astra, and thanks. It's a life lesson I should have learned when I was seven and frustrated that I could not simply play the piano and make the right sounds come out. I may have asked too much of myself by piling on those realism and role-play requirements, both counterfactual to Kerbal environment. I feel such sadness and frustration because I thus damaged many months of KSP play that I'm tearing up. Waaaah! :_( *hugs* I kinda miss sitting in orbit around Kerbin in the days before maneuver nodes, deep in a zen state of guessing where I should send my Mun-shot, I felt like a great star captain when using an unexpected Kerbolar slingshot to venture Laythe with my failed Eelooian probe, and that glimpse of Laythe's thick clouds and vast oceans motivated me to play KSP today. Perhaps I should consider not only performance on the pad but enjoyment in building and flight, and maybe I think so much that I habitually assume things will instantly effect my will like my thoughts do, and when the non-thought things don't, I feel deep frustration and want to regain my sense of omnipotence and therefore attempt Manley-esque feats to feel great like him again. *gag* I have noticed that I do the above elsewhere. Frack me, I'm unhealthy. Space is not dark: it has stars and Kerbol. The night-side of Eve is dark: I could barely see my descending probe! o_o The probes failed boringly. In no order: Sent to wrong planet. Not enough dV because dV chart was wrong. Not enough dV because transfer maneuver was reckless and negligent. Not enough dV because transfer maneuver was reckless and negligent. Not enough dV because transfer maneuver was reckless and negligent. Instantly vaporized by Space Kraken. Crashed because transfer stage was kept on by high Eveian drag. Scuttled in LKO because wrong set of solar panels deployed (the un-shielded ones cannot be retracted due to a mod). Crashed because all EC was recklessly used to transmit in-flight data. I'm not saying that all Kerbals are mass-hystericizers and budget cutters, but that enough of them are to cause any failure, like in real life, to ruin careers and defund agencies. Wait, do we tolerate failure sometimes? *looks hopeful* My sleepless creations are not bizarre: my piloting mistakes are. -Duxwing

I did the same thing in Kerbal Space Program, and I am happy with my results. My similarly-developed universal interplanetary tug system can put 6 Kerbals or ten tons anywhere in the Kerbolar system. Why were the papers not kept? O_O The same could be said of Delta-IV. The funding of exploding craft does not necessarily evaporate: Apollo 1 killed its crew, and Apollo 11 walked on the Moon. -Duxwing

What mission goals did it fail? The Shuttle also lifted more people than all other crew launch systems, making its two failures of normal proportion; moreover, at such low failure rates as 1.5%, noise becomes indistinguishable from signal. -Duxwing

When I play Career mode, I pretend the mission is 'real' and therefore let all my emotional and mental guards down. Barring some such bizarre error as venturing the wrong planet, each flight is 'for the history books' and therefore to be remembered. I pretend the Kerbals of Kerbin--especially the program heads, mass-hystericizers, and budget-cutters--watch. After my last multi-probe fiasco, wherein no interplanetary probe safely reached its target, I prepared and analyzed in Sandbox Mode for months! I have already lost three probes to poor planning, and a fourth loss will end my program's funding. I also get only one try per mission beyond Kerbin's SOI because I try not to look at what I have not explored lest the wonder of first seeing it in Career Mode should be lessened. The mission I just launched is my second to Eve, and I'm about to try again. I also play with permadeath and without quicksave to raise the stakes: just aerobraking from Mun is thrilling and required dozens of Sandbox tests. Hence some of my fear. I also generally fear darkness and bumps therein and experience the greatest fear when playing Kerbal Space Program when I should be in REM sleep. Perhaps I have misunderstood the purpose of KSP. :/ -- Thanks for all the help: keep it coming! -Duxwing

Awww, thanks. -Duxwing

How can I cope with the deep, primal fear when I aerocapture? I start unwillingly imagining that some such horrible creature as Pennywise the Dancing Clown or Pyramid Head is right behind me, and I often remove my headphones and switch to map view lest the fear should become unbearable. The following factors worsen the fear: -Directly descending to the surface from interplanetary transfer orbit -Lacking crew, whose smiling faces comfort me -The size of the body -The density of the atmosphere -Darkness -Lacking control -Duxwing

The shuttle, however expensive, did its job and killed only two crews during one-hundred-thirty-five flights. --- On topic, I regret my vote. NASA had few alternatives: aspargus-staging Common Booster Cores provides too many failure points, and rebuilding the Saturn V is impossible. Whereas a single-core, two-and-a-half stage lifter is sufficient and simple, and its SRBs are not inherently dangerous. In my limited KSP experience, SLS parts have made lifting enormous payloads almost trivial and could greatly accelerate my LKO development. This rocket is to nowhere but the future. -Duxwing

I got the following idea from a science magazine: pile still-hot nuclear waste into a steel bathysphere and lower it into a subduction zone, where the waste's heat will melt the rock, which will eventually bury the fuel. -Duxwing

Hanging from a balloon in Jupiter, which is so big and thick that finding you would be impractical. -Duxwing

Erm... are you serious or just sarcastically agreeing? -Duxwing

Oh my GAWRSH! I downloaded the mod and LOVE EHT! I aerobraked at Laythe today for the first time in Career mode: the clouds were so thick I could not see the ground and so wonderously beautiful I almost cared not. -Duxwing