NASA SLS/Orion/Payloads

[Cassel]

2 hours ago, Canopus said:

@Cassel seems nobody believes in BFR. Anyway i think the 3 stage lander makes a lot of sense. Especially when it comes to establishing a surface base. The transfer stage would be the perfect job for ACES. and the lander seperated from the ascent stage allowing you to actually put some hardware on the ground. 

I think 1 stage lander would be better, just send it to LEO  and to Gateway dry and refuel at the Gateway.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, Kerbal7 said:

The most reliable estimates I've seen on a human trip to Mars is around a trillion dollars.

Are those the same estimates that basically assume an expendable ISS per every mission?

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-misdirection-on-mars/

40 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

What about reusability? And also, why on Earth, are you so gosh darn negative about Starship/Super Heavy, yes they may fail, but we will learn some very important lessons about becoming a truly spacefaring civilisation?

Potentially, it could lead to widespread public backlash against manned spaceflight, and the dreaded Inwards Turn.

[Barzon]

11 minutes ago, DDE said:

it could lead to widespread public backlash

True, but I like to hope people won't act like idiots when people die in space.

[MaverickSawyer]

Honestly, SLS is a pork project they're scrambling to find missions for, just to justify the existence of the SLS. There's NOTHING it can do that other rockets can't do for cheaper and faster, even if it does take them multiple launches and some docking/orbital assembly to perform it. I mean, how fast can you turn around a couple of Falcon 9 first stages? About as fast as it takes to build a single SLS core stage tank section, right? And that's not even counting flight rates... just out of Florida alone, SpaceX can run, what, 8 or 9 missions a year? Versus 1 for SLS if you're lucky. Plus, SLS is completely disposable, which doesn't help matters any.

I'll lay my predictions down now: SLS will never reach Block II, or even IB. It'll fly exactly ONE mission, and then it'll be scrapped and replaced with some new shuttle-derived booster that will then also make one flight... in another decade.

[Barzon]

4 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

SpaceX can run, what, 8 or 9 missions a year

SpaceX has done 18 missions this year, and will do more in December.

[DDE]

24 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

but I like to hope people won't act like idiots

Ha

Ha

Ha...

[Canopus]

1 hour ago, Barzon Kerman said:

What about reusability? And also, why on Earth, are you so gosh darn negative about Starship/Super Heavy, yes they may fail, but we will learn some very important lessons about becoming a truly spacefaring civilisation?

„Spacefaring civilization“ is one of the terms that annoy me to no end when it comes to bfr. only Mars colony is worse. 

[Barzon]

Well @Canopus , eventually, humanity will be spacefaring, it could be soon, like many people hope, such as me, but it could also be hundreds or thousands of years away.

[sh1pman]

2 minutes ago, Canopus said:

„Spacefaring civilization“ is one of the terms that annoy me to no end when it comes to bfr. only Mars colony is worse. 

Space civilization is bad, Mars colony is worse... Is there anything about space that you do like? 

[Canopus]

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

I think 1 stage lander would be better, just send it to LEO  and to Gateway dry and refuel at the Gateway.

A big monolithic lander would require just as many launches to be refueled as a multistage lander to be launched and assembled. and in the end be far less flexible. the Lockheed lander for example has only 1 ton of cargo capacity. It would only be good for small excursions, you aren‘t going to assemble a base or bring a pressurized rover with you.

7 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Space civilization is bad, Mars colony is worse... Is there anything about space that you do like? 

I just don’t like these big words thrown around creating expectations that can‘t be realised in centuries. 

Do i believe we‘ll go to Mars? Eventually of course. 

Edited November 20, 2018 by Canopus

[Barzon]

On 4/28/2017 at 6:47 PM, _Augustus_ said:

  On 12/6/2017 at 6:30 PM, Canopus said:

[SLS thread is filled] with general resentment

 

It seems you are keeping this thread true to what you're quote on the first page of this.

[Kerbal7]

1 hour ago, Barzon Kerman said:

What about reusability?

Makes no difference. As I said, and it seems astronaut Chris Hadfield agrees with me from this conversation with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Humans to Mars is a pipedream without some technology breakthroughs.

 

 

[Barzon]

Just an 'interesting' article for @Kerbal7 and @Canopus to read:

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-misdirection-on-mars/ 

Edited November 20, 2018 by Barzon Kerman

[sh1pman]

8 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Humans to Mars is a pipedream without some technology breakthroughs.

Technology breakthroughs don’t happen spontaneously and on their own. People have to work on ambitious projects that require new technology, like sending humans to another planets. And if you dismiss this work, call it a pipedream and generally discourage people from believing that it’s possible, then the breakthrough won’t be very likely to happen.

[Canopus]

34 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

It seems you are keeping this thread true to what you're quote on the first page of this.

It is how i said. People are extremely critical of NASA and SLS when they can only operate in a given frame but at the same time are too confident in SpaceX. There has to be an incentive for commercial companies to go out there, no one will finance a Moonbase or „Mars Colony“ out of there own pocket. 

Now when you want to talk about a space fairing civilization @Barzon Kerman you aren‘t going to create one by pushing for a barebones Mars mission Zubrin style. That would just recreate Apollo on Mars and not contribute to a permanent Settlement (a term i personally much prefer over colonization) of Space. A slow but steady development of Cislunar Space is far more helpful to that cause and a station like the gateway, that acts as a target for commercial companys to supply is a first small step. 

Also i think it is ridiculous how opposed Zubrin is to the idea of returning to the Moon. Flags and Footprints seem to be the only thing that guy thinks planets are good for.

Edited November 20, 2018 by Canopus

[RCgothic]

Exactly sh1pman. Dream big. You may not get where you intended to go, but chances are you'll get *somewhere*.

SLS is just not ambitious enough - it doesn't acheive anything another booster couldn't manage, nor learn anything new because of its reliance on established tech.

Edited November 20, 2018 by RCgothic

[tater]

1 hour ago, Kerbal7 said:

Makes no difference. As I said, and it seems astronaut Chris Hadfield agrees with me from this conversation with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Humans to Mars is a pipedream without some technology breakthroughs.

He said we don't have any vehicles that can go to Mars right now. Literally no one on Earth disagrees with this.

His statement about not having the propulsion tech is flat out nonsense. I'd be happy to see NTRs fly on spacecraft, but it's not a prerequisite (VASIMR is nonsense, too, NTRs are a very short pole in comparison).

Note that I'm not a Mars person. I'd like to see expeditions there, just because it's cool, but I don't think it's worth even considering colonization (even if we had fusion drives off the shelf) until we demonstrate lifetime 0.38g is safe to reproduce humans.

Reusability is everything if we want space exploration to accelerate beyond a few cool robot probes a decade, and some new, incremental human spaceflight milestone every 100 years or so. NASA will never be getting a bigger slice of the pie, and it cannot afford ISS+Gateway+lunar surface at the same time, realistically it can only really support 1 of those at a time, and even then at a cadence that makes the Moon stuff look silly.

Anyone hitching their human spaceflight dreams to SLS is gonna be disappointed. Once a year we might get to see people too far from the Moon for it to be interesting, for all of 3 weeks (a heckuva way to spend over 100M$ a day (not counting dev costs, add those in and it's closer to 300M$ a day for the first 10 years).

1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

SLS is just not ambitious enough - it doesn't acheive anything another booster couldn't manage, nor learn anything new because of its reliance on established tech.

The problem with SLS is that it's a broad capability that was set without any particular goal in mind. Even block 2 is not enough to get Orion and a small sortie lander to the lunar surface. Given the highest possible launch cadence, SLS can never field a crew Mars mission. Such a mission, even sending a MAV ahead, requires multiple SLS launches in the span of some weeks or months (if if we specify it's sending NTRs as Mars transfer propulsion). 4 launches? 5? More? Quite impossible.

The same is true for lunar missions minus commercial space. Minus SpaceX and ULA, they can't hope to get even a 3-stage lander in pieces to Gateway. I'd add that some of the tech required for that lander concept obviates Orion. use commercial crew vehicles, with ACES as a tug or ferry a la the original STS concept:

Edited November 20, 2018 by tater

[Canopus]

To effectively ferry crew with an ACES out of LEO and maybe back, you‘d need some serious propellant supplies though. Much less than moving around the Moon. 

[tater]

14 minutes ago, Canopus said:

To effectively ferry crew with an ACES out of LEO and maybe back, you‘d need some serious propellant supplies though. Much less than moving around the Moon.  

Depends on the size of the stage. Right now ACES is a 5 m stage.

Use SLS, instead. Make it an 8.4m stage. It's envisioned with refilling, anyway, so you perhaps send propellants ahead (frozen lunar orbit), maybe even with ion propulsion (it's a trade off between travel time and boiloff). Ferry crew vehicle to lunar orbit (perhaps the front of the ACES has a small orbital module to make the trip more comfortable). Transfer to lander, land, return, ACES takes them back to Earth orbit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/6zj2ln/aces_in_the_cislunar_economy_a_performance/

A 130t ACES (SLS block 2 launch) could go to LLO and back pushing a 10 ton hab module (ISS Columbus is that mass).

 

Edited November 20, 2018 by tater

[Canopus]

I‘m sure an infrastructure like this will replace SLS eventually once ACES and the potential Blue Origin tug have proven themselves. And they will have the chance through supplying the gateway. 

[Cassel]

12 hours ago, Canopus said:

A big monolithic lander would require just as many launches to be refueled as a multistage lander to be launched and assembled. and in the end be far less flexible. the Lockheed lander for example has only 1 ton of cargo capacity. It would only be good for small excursions, you aren‘t going to assemble a base or bring a pressurized rover with you.

 

But it is reusable, right? So you can land with it few times only after refuelling.

They could send 1-stage lander dry 22 tons with SLS? And later send fuel with Falcon Heavy as many times as they want to?

[Canopus]

36 minutes ago, Cassel said:

But it is reusable, right? So you can land with it few times only after refuelling.

They could send 1-stage lander dry 22 tons with SLS? And later send fuel with Falcon Heavy as many times as they want to?

 

12 hours ago, Canopus said:

A big monolithic lander would require just as many launches to be refueled as a multistage lander to be launched and assembled. and in the end be far less flexible.

 

[Cassel]

55 minutes ago, Canopus said:

A big monolithic lander would require just as many launches to be refueled as a multistage lander to be launched and assembled. and in the end be far less flexible.

 

Maybe yes, but cost of fuel should be lower than cost of 2-stage that is going to be single-use-only module. Having 3-stage solution would force you to deliver new 2-stage after every landing + fuel for orbital tug and ascend module, right? While with single stage large lander all you have to do is to refuel one large lander. Gateway could hold additional fuel and you can send fuel to Gateway with many different rockets, it doesn't have to be super expensive SLS.

[Canopus]

@Cassel the three stage design consists of a tug, descent stage and an ascent stage. Of these three they want two to be reusable,  tug and ascender. So you launch fuel for the tug and the ascent stage and a new landing stage. Can‘t be much worse than refueling the behemoth that the Lockheed lander would be.

Cargo only missions could be much simpler thanks to the multi stage design and you could put some serious payload to the surface.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Canopus

[Xd the great]

8 minutes ago, Canopus said:

@Cassel the three stage design consists of a tug, descent stage and an ascent stage. Of these three they want two to be reusable,  tug and ascender. So you launch fuel for the tug and the ascent stage and a new landing stage. Can‘t be much worse than refueling the behemoth that the Lockheed lander would be.

 

"SpaceX swoops in with its BFR."