What would you do with the SLS?

[Drunkrobot]

A while ago, I posted a thread on what you would do if you had access to upgraded Apollo-Saturn hardware:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/45825-If-Apollo-Saturn-was-a-beginning

I touched a little on Apollo-Saturn's (planned) replacement, Orion-SLS.

I AM VERY POWERFUL.

Love it or hate it, you have to admit, a 70 tonne payload capacity (future blocks boasting up to 130 tonnes) rocket is an enticing opportunity to...

I know that SLS is defiantly not guaranteed to survive budget cuts, but c'mon, you know you want it. ;^)

Let's say that NASA gets a big batch of SLS rockets, say 15. You have to make the call on what they're used for. To put it simply, if you could put 1050 tonnes into space, what would that 1050 tonnes be for?

Maybe a manned rendezvous with an asteroid, possibly some In-situ resource utilization experiments. That would be a big boost to the asteroid mining concept!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkhMKl3eWTM

Your move, SpaceX.

Maybe on-orbit assembly of an interplanetary craft, to take humans to Mars?

What noobs, not docking the two Orion's symmetrically.

Or how about some super-sized space station, either in LEO or at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points?

Ignore that big thing in the top-left, and you get the idea.

Note: Please don't bring politics into the thread. This is focus on what you would actually do with the thing. If you wish to discuss those topics, either share it on another thread, one more suited to it, or start your own. Thank you!

Edited September 24, 2013 by Drunkrobot

[jwenting]

I'd defund it and use the money saved to build Venturestar.

[Temstar]

1050 ton to LEO is a lot, but 70 ton a pop is actually a non-negligible limitation. The Saturn V could loft 100 tons to LEO in one shot, so this SLS Block 1 with its 70 ton limitation couldn't actually repeat the Apollo landings without the help of an EDS, the best it can do is a two man one landing type mission in the form of the Soviet N1-L3.

Still with 15 of those and judicious use of docking you could put together some pretty impressive missions. With 70 tons you could put into orbit:

• Orion + Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, with enough delta-V for a quick loop around the moon and back, but probably not enough to actually go into lunar orbit
  
• A nearly full Earth Departure Stage, or a half full EDS with an Orion and Altair on top with enough delta-V for TLI
  
• 1/3 of a Mars Transfer Vehicle like that picture Drunkrobot provided
  
• 1/2 of a small semi-permanent moon base
  
• 10-11 Dragon capsules
  

Personally, I think a good mission to aim for is something like First Lunar Outpost. First get some robotic rovers on the ground to get some better reading of the ice at the lunar poles and look for a good landing site to build a base (these can be done using weedy rockets like Delta, no need to spend a SLS).

Then if it looks like that ice is worth studying and there's a suitable landing site spend two SLS to put together the FLO in orbit, then send it to land on the moon at one of the poles near were we expect ice to be. Then send another SLS with an EDS to land something like the Apollo LM Truck:

With more supplies and a large rover down near the FLO. Then finally one more SLS with EDS to carry an Orion and Altair to send four people down to the FLO to conduct in-situ resource utilization experiments over a period of 45 days.

Then from this point onwards the FLO will be nearly continuously inhabited by rotations of additional crew sent by SLS launches, with alternating cargo launches in between. This gives a total of six 4 man crew rotation for a total of 1080 man days. The ISRU experiments may well be satisfactorily completed without needing that many man days, in which case the left over SLS would be used to deliver future permanent propellant producing base components / Skylab style station / Asteroid capture mission depending on how many SLS are left and if any more are forthcoming given the success of FLO.

[czokletmuss]

Well, firstly I would read this article about costs of the SLS/MPCV: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2330/1

And than I would assemble all the NASA employees together with the Senators and proceed to do this:

http://youtu.be/oEjVpgLkeFg

But seriously, I would probably try to use its heavy-lifting capacity to:

1) built ISS-2/Freedom Station (ISS replacement)

2) build infrastructure on Moon to try nuclear powered ISRU from the poles (water -> LOX and hydrogen, water to drink, oxygen to breath)

3) maybe send more probes to icy moons of Jupiter and to Titan but for this you don't really need SLS, so...

Edited September 24, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Starwaster]

Mars.

Definitely Mars.

Or bust.

[Nibb31]

Once the SLS is built, NASA will simply not have any money left to develop any payloads. I highly doubt it is ever going to fly.

However, in the extremely unlikely hypothesis where SLS isn't cancelled and Congress suddenly votes to triple NASA's budget, what I would do is design a Lunar shuttle infrastructure, something reusable capable of going from a LEO fuel depot to the lunar surface. Extend CCDev for servicing the depot and transferring crew to the Lunar Shuttle.

This would enable a scientific lunar base, something on the model of the Scott-Amundsen Antarctica base, which is vital if we ever want to go to Mars. This will teach us how to live in partial gravity, cosmic radiation, and to develop closed-loop life support and ISRU.

[SargeRho]

Wait for the 130 ton version and go to Mars.

[Temstar]

Hang on, since we're discussing SLS Block 1, does that mean the Earth Departure Stage is not available?

That kind of puts a big limit on what can be done, since no other upper stage currently available is really sized to do the kind of deep space work that you would want a SLS for. You can't get Orion and Altair to lunar orbit with a DCSS upper stage.

[NGTOne]

Assuming the whole issue of cost could be sidestepped, I'd lease them out for commercial users. National space programs have little-to-no place in the world ahead, and are remnants of a bygone era. Private industry and scientific institutions will be the ones paying for rides to space.

[Vaebn]

Use them as liquid boosters for an even bigger rocket.

[Drunkrobot]

Assuming the whole issue of cost could be sidestepped, I'd lease them out for commercial users. National space programs have little-to-no place in the world ahead, and are remnants of a bygone era. Private industry and scientific institutions will be the ones paying for rides to space.

I will have to respectfully disagree with you. In my unprofessional opinion, national space agency's are the only ones with the resources to perform "unpractical" space missions, as well as having the drive to actually do it. Nobody in the private industry wants a rocket with a 130 tonne payload, since anything you do with it isn't immediately profitable. Yes, in the near future, private industry is going to get a much larger piece of the LEO launcher market pie, and scientific institutions will get their experiments into space with those new services (I am very much in favor of running the launcher industry like an airliner). But you can't get a billion dollars in hard cash from a few samples of asteroid. The initial exploration must be done from somebody willing to pay for it, and that has always been national projects.

National exploration programs at work. Maybe this time, we don't destroy the natives.

[fatfluffycat]

Make a Moon base/outpost thing?

[Klingon Admiral]

I would use the SLS to research the reaction of supervolcanoes to seismic shocks produced by large-scale nuclear explosions. Because science demands that this scenario has to be researched.