NASA SLS/Orion/Payloads

[Canopus]

While Zubrins mission architectures would probably work from a technical standpoint, they are far too risky and bare boned for them to be ever considered.

And @DAL59 can we please stay a little more on topic in the future? This is the SLS and payload thread after all, not the general mars mission thread. Every other page you bring up the BFR and we start to turn in cycles. 

[sevenperforce]

22 minutes ago, wumpus said:

How big are those "wet workshops"?  Skylab had a maximum stay of 88 days and would take roughly 9 Saturn Vs worth of fuel to haul it to Mars and back (no lander included).  Obviously something more Salyut sized would work better, but you still are venturing into unknown shielding territory.  NASA stuffed John Young and Micheal Collins into a Gemini capsule and left them in orbit for as long as it would take to go to the Moon and back.  Unless you are expecting to build and man a Salyut sized craft (preferably with the same crew) for the years it would take a Mars mission than this is going well beyond the Apollo program.

Granted, this might mean that such an extended mission might go up in the mid 70s and a full on Mars mission could be scheduled for 1980, but don't forget the relentless small steps that appear to be the hallmark of successful space programs.

Wet workshops planned by Von Braun were about 4x the volume of Skylab, IIRC.

The manned Venus flyby would have been a single Saturn V launch, no bigger than a moon mission. The third stage would have had solar panels and radiators on the outside and cylindrical floors built inside. In place of the lunar module would have been life support equipment and a bunch of supplies. The mission would have launched into LEO and then the CSM would have performed the same flip-and-dock as in moon missions, followed by eyeballs-out burn into a Venusian flyby trajectory.

After the burn, the third stage would be vented to vacuum, then sealed, and the life support equipment and supplies would have been pulled inside the empty stage on hydraulics. The stage would seal, pressurize, and then the crew could proceed through the lock into their new home for the next year.

[Ultimate Steve]

2 hours ago, Canopus said:

And @DAL59 can we please stay a little more on topic in the future? This is the SLS and payload thread after all, not the general mars mission thread. Every other page you bring up the BFR and we start to turn in cycles. 

Agreed. The whole "BFR everywhere" thing is getting a bit too far, although some mentions are necessary given that their potential uses overlap quite a bit, so at least some discussion is bound to happen. Not that I'm not a fan of the idea behind BFR.

[Hannu2]

13 hours ago, DAL59 said:

 

He has said that all of the entrepreneuring he has done his entire life has been for Mars.  Just like we save up for stuff, the ulterior goal for SpaceX is to send him to Mars.  

I do not care what blabbermouth Musk says. His merits are indisputable but unfortunately he ruin part of his credibility with crazy fantasy stories.

Problem is that Mars mission cost hundreds or thousands of billions of dollars. There may be couple of single billionaries who would like to make such trip, but unfortunately their money lacks orders of magnitude and they hit also legal barriers. It needs rich superpower state or huge company to fund Mars mission.

 

13 hours ago, DAL59 said:

If everyone was trying, it would be done in 6 years.  No new technology is needed.

No new technology? What the heck? Would you use Sojuz as manned craft? As far as I know it and Chinese craft much like Sojuz are currently only spacecrafts able to carry crews. Dragon and Boeing's craft will be new technology.

How about lander? You would take old Apollo LM from museum and polish it? As far as I know no space agencies or companies have any spacecrafts able to land on another bodies currently in production or even severe planning. And launcher? Falcon Heavy is far too small and it is largest currently available.

You probably mean that no new science is needed but Mars-mission would need huge amounts of insanely complicated and expensive technology to be planned, built, tested and certified. Practically all components of the mission would have to plan from plain paper. No currently operational spacecraft could be used in any way.

 

 

13 hours ago, DAL59 said:

I'm normally pessimistic about space, but this is just untrue.  Most people would love to send people to Mars.  Remember, the Shuttles weren't canceled after the disasters, but rather a decade later, due to economics.    There is no doubt whatsoever that a manned mars mission will be launched before 2030.

I think it is futile to argue this kind of things. Let's just wait until 2030 and see who is right.

 

 

On 4/17/2018 at 1:54 AM, DAL59 said:

The BFR is hardly a thought experiment. 

BFR is much closer to thought experiment than a functional spacecraft. Let alone all crazily overoptimistic cost predictions will be true. No-one knows will it ever fulfill expectations and when. Musk's schedules are nothing more than telltales for kids. It take probably 10 years to get first unmanned launch to orbit, if Musk have and want to put endless billions to development. After that they have to develop reusability and get development costs paid back. It take decades even with optimistic launch cadence. They have to certify it for manned use, get all fuel transfers to work, build and test life support equipment and so on. Musk can not fund it alone, it needs government's money and political decisions. There are infinite unpredictable factors and many of them are very mission critical.

[YNM]

8 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

... unfortunately he ruin part of his credibility with crazy fantasy stories.

Have you not seen the 60s ?

We need balls for that !

9 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

BFR is much closer to thought experiment

Tooling is in. Where's the tooling for SLS ?

[Canopus]

56 minutes ago, YNM said:

Tooling is in. Where's the tooling for SLS ?

You do know that the first SLS is practically built? ATK are already manufacturing boosters for the second flight.

Edited April 20, 2018 by Canopus

[Hannu2]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Have you not seen the 60s ?

We need balls for that !

Tooling is in. Where's the tooling for SLS ?

I have not seen, just heard stories, because I was not born then. That was fun time, but then money talked and repurposed bovine waste walked.

I could as well boast that I am going to build a plane, I already bought couple of screw drivers and cheap welding machine. It is long way from laminating mold to first commercial mission to orbit and many things can go wrong and ruin schedules or budgets.

[DAL59]

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

It take probably 10 years to get first unmanned launch to orbit,

This is not true.  Maybe a year ago saying that might make since, but it is currently being built and much of spacex's employees are being diverted to it.

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

Musk's schedules are nothing more than telltales for kid

 

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

17 hours ago, DAL59 said:

 

He has said that all of the entrepreneuring he has done his entire life has been for Mars.  Just like we save up for stuff, the ulterior goal for SpaceX is to send him to Mars.  

I do not care what blabbermouth Musk says. His merits are indisputable but unfortunately he ruin part of his credibility with crazy fantasy stories.

Problem is that Mars mission cost hundreds or thousands of billions of doll

[Citation needed]

The SLS costs 2 billion per launch.  Even at that rate, hundreds of billions is ridiculous.  MDRM, Mars One, Mars Direct, Mars Semidirect, BFR, Planetary Society, none of those studies come remotely close to 100 billion.  Remember, the cost of a moon base is 10 billion.

https://www.popsci.com/we-could-be-living-on-moon-in-10-years-or-less

 

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

with crazy fantasy stories.

Was landing on a droneship a crazy fantasy story?  What about making an economical electric self driving car?  What about Boring tunnels to create an automatic subway that takes your car with it?  

1 hour ago, Hannu2 said:

I could as well boast that I am going to build a plane, I already bought couple of screw drivers and cheap welding machine.

Bad analogy.  This is liking boasting you are going to build a plane, when you have enough money to build it 10 times over.

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

After that they have to develop reusability

They dont have to.  Part of the purpose of F9 landings is to provide data for BFR.

[tater]

The choice is not the two loony arguments on this last page---between a private company going to Mars 5 years from next Tuesday, or it costing trillions, and BFR is fantasy.

Musk isn't colonizing Mars in the near future, and BFR is already being actively worked on. Neither argument is about SLS, however.

PS--CST-100 and Dragon 2 are already built, not "new" in the sense of needing fundamental work.

 

[sevenperforce]

20 minutes ago, tater said:

PS--CST-100 and Dragon 2 are already built, not "new" in the sense of needing fundamental work.

 

Read this. So Mars is right out, then.

[tater]

^^^ We already knew that (anyone paying attention for the last XX years, lol). NASA has been given the money for SLS/Orion, but given the way they do things, these huge sums are nothing like enough for Mars.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, Canopus said:

You do know that the first SLS is practically built?

Pictures ?

[tater]

Just now, YNM said:

Pictures ?

Look up the thread, many elements are now flight articles. I've been against SLS for ages, but it's a real launch vehicle.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

I could as well boast that I am going to build a plane, I already bought couple of screw drivers and cheap welding machine. It is long way from laminating mold to first commercial mission to orbit and many things can go wrong and ruin schedules or budgets.

Except they already have the workshop. With products in it.

It's more like when Lockheed Martin is in preparation to make the SR-71/YF-12/A-12.

3 minutes ago, tater said:

Look up the thread, many elements are now flight articles.

But no single complete SLS ?

[tater]

4 minutes ago, YNM said:

But no single complete SLS ?

SLS will be completely built in the VAB just prior to launch.

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

SLS will be completely built in the VAB just prior to launch.

Ah, yes, thanks to the rail-friendly boosters...

But like the main tank or something ? Attached to engines ?

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, YNM said:

Ah, yes, thanks to the rail-friendly boosters...

But like the main tank or something ? Attached to engines ?

Yeah, I wasn't aware that they had fabricated the core yet, let alone attached the SSMEs.

[NSEP]

Im not on the BFR is complete fantasy and Elon's timeframe will be 10 years off side of the discussion. So far, the development of the BFR is going quite well, and i don't see anything that could seriously hinder/slow down its development. SLS has budget cuts, and FH waited untill they landed a rocket. I don't expect Elon to cut the budget of the BFR, neither do i expect Elon to wait for the Crew Dragon first, although they might.

But im also not on the BFR will take humans to Mars before 2025 side. There is nothing in the way of building and flying the BFR into LEO, but just like how strapping a few extra cores around a rocket to make it more powerfull, is easier said than done, travelling to deep space and landing on other worlds is also quite hard. Then we also have to train and choose the Astronauts, build and test cargo, choose where they should go land, and how they will survive, without resupplies.

Im on the lets talk about the BFR somewhere else, this is an SLS thread side of this.

[NSEP]

19 minutes ago, YNM said:

Pictures ?

Fuel tanks:

 

Payload:

 

 

First stage rocket engine:

 

Second Stage

(The Delta-V second stage and SLS's seconds stage aren't too far off from eachother)

 

Boosters:

 

I know, most of the components in the pics aren't going to be used for an actual SLS flight, but this is just to show that SLS is a project that is alive, and not dead, or waiting to be born.

[YNM]

@NSEP Thanks !

[Canopus]

From this March https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nac_march_2018_hill_-_smith_3-23-2018_final.pdf

Contains the status for both EM-1 and 2 ( Keep in mind that SLS may fly a second time before Em-2)

[Wjolcz]

Some of you guys are taking this BFR vs SLS discussion way too far and way too personal. I know it makes me a hypocrite but this thread simply doesn't need this kind of argument IMO. I'm excited for both rockets but for completely different reasons.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Some of you guys are taking this BFR vs SLS discussion way too far and way too personal. I know it makes me a hypocrite but this thread simply doesn't need this kind of argument IMO. I'm excited for both rockets but for completely different reasons.

The best solution is to try and post either some SLS news, or ideas for missions that NASA might actually do with SLS. That or use this thread to beat on SLS without overly resorting to other launch vehicles

 

[sevenperforce]

Yeah, really no need to bring up BFR.

Do we know which engines are selected for EM-1?

[tater]

12 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Do we know which engines are selected for EM-1?

Which specific RS-25s? No idea.

A plus in the column for Bridenstine is that he's very pro commercial launch. Perhaps there is a way to leverage that into a better utilization of SLS.

Aside: I think the mass increase of Orion from the original designs (remember, CST-100 was bidding to be Orion) was specifically to force SLS as the launch vehicle. Nowadays, this is not strictly speaking true in the case of LVs that are actively being developed (yeah, I'm going to other LVs, but staying with Orion, so on topic!). NG could launch the Orion CSM with mass to spare in the cryo upper stage. Dunno if it could send it to DSG, though.