NASA SLS/Orion/Payloads

[DerekL1963]

30 minutes ago, tater said:

They don't have 2 SLS-worthy payloads per year to fly. I want to say that they said the marginal launch cost was like 500 M$. The program costs are approaching 3 B$/year. Assuming that 1 launch is folded into the program costs, then at 2 launches/yr, it's about 1.5 B$/launch. With 1 it's 3 B$. Generally with satellites, the payload is the high ticket item, so where are they going to get the $ for two payloads that cost several billions each?

Ultimately, that's the real problem with SLS - it is useful, even if for a niche...  But that niche is something NASA rarely if ever does anymore, big, expensive, battlestar class planetary probes.

[tater]

If planetary science within NASA had to build even 1 such payload a year (the other SLS launch being Orion), it would gut planetary science, they’d have no other money, even to operate what they have.

[Brotoro]

Then they obviously need twice as much money. As one of the people who would have to pay for it, that would be fine with me.

[tater]

9 hours ago, Brotoro said:

Then they obviously need twice as much money. As one of the people who would have to pay for it, that would be fine with me.

That's not going to happen. Nor should it. We don't need multi-billion dollar probes every single year, to launch on ridiculously overpriced rockets.

The total cost of SLS/Orion at the time of EM-2 will be multiple tens of billions, so that 3 B$/launch doesn't even count dev cost.

 

And it's not even very useful.

Edited November 16, 2017 by tater

[Brotoro]

I would like multi-billion dollar probes every year. But I would like to launch them on cheaper rockets.

[DDE]

On 11/10/2017 at 4:50 PM, Canopus said:

I don‘t think the original service module had much more Delta V as in the constellation Lunar landings the Lander would have done the Lunar orbit insertion. If Nasa had asked Airbus to build a large Apollo style monster  service module they would have build one. It just was never a part of the whole Orion design.

Dumb question, was it not possible to design Orion with a range of SMs with different propellant capacities?

On 11/11/2017 at 6:44 PM, Canopus said:

but still built the DSG with multiple launches per module?

They wouldn’t have to comanifest with a manned ship, so they probably *could* send each module up in one go.

On 11/12/2017 at 6:03 PM, NSEP said:

You mean Delta IV right?

No, he means Delta IX.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Delta_IX_rocket

That one definitely has better main(s).

17 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Instead of building N-1, etc, the USSR should just declare with a bored face: "We are not interested in the Moon. We have enough work here on the Earth, why fly to the lifeless piece of rock?"

No, it actually declared, “How uncivilized, flying is for droids!”

Edited November 16, 2017 by DDE

[tater]

6 hours ago, Brotoro said:

I would like multi-billion dollar probes every year. But I would like to launch them on cheaper rockets.

With more reasonable launch costs, you don't need multi-billion dollar probes.

If you are a PI for a probe project, your expectation is that yu propose the thing, work to get it funded, work to build it, sweat the launch, wait for years for it to arrive, reduce the data, then retire and die. That's what happens when probes are expensive, everything has to be perfect because you are spending so much of other people's money. Timelines spread out, and if you're lucky, you'll get to see data before you retire. 

I'd rather they switch to spamming more, and cheaper missions. The stakes are lower, and they can be more adventurous about use. 100 M$, for example seems like plenty of money to make a single vehicle that masses less than a car. Send 30 of those instead of 1 @ 3B$.

[Nibb31]

8 hours ago, DDE said:

Dumb question, was it not possible to design Orion with a range of SMs with different propellant capacities?

So instead of spending billions to develop a SM, you multiply the development cost by the number of different SMs.

Surprisingly, that might be what ends up happening. The deal with ESA for the ESM covers a grand total of 2 service modules. After EM-1 and EM-2 have flown, either NASA extends the deal with ESA, or they go back to the Lockheed Martin design.

 

[Brotoro]

6 hours ago, tater said:

With more reasonable launch costs, you don't need multi-billion dollar probes.

If you are a PI for a probe project, your expectation is that yu propose the thing, work to get it funded, work to build it, sweat the launch, wait for years for it to arrive, reduce the data, then retire and die. That's what happens when probes are expensive, everything has to be perfect because you are spending so much of other people's money. Timelines spread out, and if you're lucky, you'll get to see data before you retire. 

I'd rather they switch to spamming more, and cheaper missions. The stakes are lower, and they can be more adventurous about use. 100 M$, for example seems like plenty of money to make a single vehicle that masses less than a car. Send 30 of those instead of 1 @ 3B$.

My probes would be to be multi-billion dollar devices because they have lots of redundancy and capabilities. You don't want to send the Neptune exploration probe all the way out there to have its Triton lander fail (it takes a long time to get to Neptune). You aren't going to be able to build a Europa Ocean Submarine Explorer for multi-millions of dollars. My Asteroid Mining Demonstrator is not going to be cheap. You don't want your Super Wide Baseline Observatory sitting out in the Kuiper Belt without massive redundancy. The probes I want would be expensive.  

[tater]

If you are not spending 2 billion to launch it, but 100 million, then send 2 cheaper probes. There’s no reason why any probe should cost billions other than the real reason (pork).

[sh1pman]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

If you are not spending 2 billion to launch it, but 100 million, then send 2 cheaper probes. There’s no reason why any probe should cost billions other than the real reason (pork).

More like 20. At least one of them will get the job done.

[Ultimate Steve]

5 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

More like 20. At least one of them will get the job done.

I got bored once and was daydreaming about venus glider/lander probes launched in batches of 10. It took several launches before one of them successfully landed.

Yeah, I was really bored that day.

[DDE]

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

So instead of spending billions to develop a SM, you multiply the development cost by the number of different SMs.

Unless you try to get about 75% technological overlap.

[tater]

 

[_Augustus_]

Just now, tater said:

 

It's ridiculous that we're going to have waited 9 years since the SLS program started, and for 16 years since they started developing Orion, for an unmanned test flight that isn't even the full version of the rocket.

[tater]

And probably 40 Billion dollars will have been spent up to that point. 

[DAL59]

If NASA can't get this launched before Spacex does its lunar tourism flyby, its hardly a space agency anymore.  I mean, SpaceX has had delays, but they've usually been minor and the result of improvements(Falcon Heavy was supposed to be in 2013, but it wouldn't have been reusable).  16 years to get an unmanned lunar flyby is excessive, given that adjusted for inflation, they still have the same budget as during the apollo program.  

[_Augustus_]

49 minutes ago, tater said:

And probably 40 Billion dollars will have been spent up to that point. 

I don't get why Congress didn't just reboot Constellation, or at least Ares V and Orion (then fly Orion on DIVH). The Shuttle contractors could still all have gotten their jobs, but all of the tooling, development work, and the Mobile Launcher Platforms could've still been used.

23 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

If NASA can't get this launched before Spacex does its lunar tourism flyby, its hardly a space agency anymore.  I mean, SpaceX has had delays, but they've usually been minor and the result of improvements(Falcon Heavy was supposed to be in 2013, but it wouldn't have been reusable).  16 years to get an unmanned lunar flyby is excessive, given that adjusted for inflation, they still have the same budget as during the apollo program.  

EM-1 will not launch before the SpaceX moon flyby, and I'd give it a 50/50 chance that BFR will fly before EM-2.

NASA doesn't have the same budget as during the Apollo program (they have about half), and they a) do other things (during Apollo the entire rest of NASA's expenses amounted to something like <1/10 of their budget) and b) their money is spent far more wisely thanks to Congress-critters and their political pork.

Edited November 29, 2017 by _Augustus_

[tater]

19 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

If NASA can't get this launched before Spacex does its lunar tourism flyby, its hardly a space agency anymore. 

It's a space agency as long as it continues to get a budget from Congress. Manned spaceflight is the least important thing NASA does, or ever has done.

 

Quote

I mean, SpaceX has had delays, but they've usually been minor and the result of improvements(Falcon Heavy was supposed to be in 2013, but it wouldn't have been reusable). 

What's your point? They have entirely different goals.

 

Quote

16 years to get an unmanned lunar flyby is excessive, given that adjusted for inflation, they still have the same budget as during the apollo program.  

Do you bother to do any research at all before typing nonsense like this?

NASA funding fell off the Apollo cliff long ago.

Note that at the 1966 peak, they had a budget of over 43 billion $ in constant dollars to today (so the real dollars graph looks the same).

This is wiki level stuff, you don't have to read dozens of scanned budget reports from the 60s and make a spreadsheet.

Edited November 29, 2017 by tater

[DAL59]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

It's a space agency as long as it continues to get a budget from Congress. Manned spaceflight is the least important thing NASA does, or ever has done.

 

What's your point? They have entirely different goals.

 

Do you bother to do any research at all before typing nonsense like this?

NASA funding fell off the Apollo cliff long ago.

Note that at the 1966 peak, they had a budget of over 43 billion $ in constant dollars to today (so the real dollars graph looks the same).

This is wiki level stuff, you don't have to read dozens of scanned budget reports from the 60s and make a spreadsheet.

That graph shows the percentage of the federal budget, not the actual amount.  While the percentage has gone done a lot, that is mostly due to the increase of the federal budget.  

[tater]

1 minute ago, DAL59 said:

That graph shows the percentage of the federal budget, not the actual amount.  While the percentage has gone done a lot, that is mostly due to the increase of the federal budget.  

Did you read what I WROTE under that?

Their budget in constant dollars was twice what it is now in 1966. You know what constant dollars are, right?

 

[DAL59]

I guess Robert Zubrin was wrong then.  

[tater]

Just now, DAL59 said:

I guess Robert Zubrin was wrong then.  

He's wrong about a lot of stuff.

[DAL59]

Still, SpaceX is currently doing more than NASA, with 75% of its budget.  

1 minute ago, tater said:

He's wrong about a lot of stuff.

I don't think he is wrong about the lack of radiation danger though.  In the study that keeps popping up in the news every few months, the mice were given a Mars equivalent dose all at once instead of over the period a mission would last.  There is a huge difference between being exposed to extremely high radiation for an hour and modestly high radiation for 2 years.    

[_Augustus_]

3 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Still, SpaceX is currently doing more than NASA, with 75% of its budget.  

SpaceX doesn't have half a dozen spacecraft operating on or around Mars, a dozen space telescopes, a lunar orbiter, or a spacecraft on its way to a KBO.