What do you think of the SLS?

[Comrade Jenkens]

I'm not quite sure why everyone seems to think that the LES won't work. I swear you're all finding ways that the SLS will fail just for the sake of it.

[Skyrunner27]

Because, debris is flying at faster velocities with even more force in almost all directions.

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And if that emergency happens before it reacts? It's quick, I'll give it that, but 10 milliseconds isn't that great.

Did you even watch the video I posted. It has debris coming a the capsule from all directions. Also remember that along with upward force there is side thrust pulling the capsule out of the debris cloud.

[rkman]

And if that emergency happens before it reacts?

What do you mean? It's not like it can react before the emergency happens...

10 milliseconds isn't that great.

Does SpaceX's escape tower react faster?

[MrZayas1]

The question is not whether the rocket is reliable for this reason: Science does not indicate to us that a reaction is 100% controllable. Even the most expensive and powerful manufacturing computers have flaws sometimes, and rockets are the same way. When you create a reaction in a tube, with tons of pressure, tons of explosive, tons of payload. To be perfect, you have to calculate massive amounts of probabilities, before you even launch the thing. So if all we are going to do as a nation, as a space program, or as people, is worry about that 1% mortality rate, or the risk of explosions, well why is there even a space program? Do you realize, that in WWII millions of people were killed. In afghanistan, over 1,000 people have been killed. So really, I would have a better mortality rate, by tying myself to the side of a trash can filled with tnt with a redneck motor on it, and firing myself upwards, than war. So if we are soo worried about a 5%, 10%, or 15% mortality rate, ask our president why there are still soldiers in afghanistan which definitely has a higher mortality rate than NASA ever has.

[Dkmdlb]

Has this conversation really come to a disagreement over the effectiveness of the LES? Is that really the problem here? The rocket isn't safe because the LES can't possibly work? That's what the last three pages have been about. And why can't the LES work? Because the SLS would make too big an explosion? That's what the argument is? Get a grip people. I've been enjoying the discussion but now I'm pretty much done.

[Wahgineer]

I get it, you like manned exploration. That's understandable, it's romantic and inspires all sorts of warm fuzzy feelings. But that's not how priorities in space exploration are set. Maximum science out to money in ratio is the hard-nosed reality of it. Which is why SLS will struggle, it costs a lot and doesn't have much to do. They either need to find some payloads for it or cancel it now before too much more money is spent.

A plethora of old/broken rovers/probes around a planet isn't going to save mankind if a cataclysm threatens the Earth. We've sent up four rovers to Mars, with a fifth one on the drawing board. Meanwhile, advances in propulsion will allow us to travel faster with more efficiency. Manned flight doesn't just make you feel good, it isn't just romantic, it isn't just a priority on a list: it's necessary to our survival. We've been using the same rockets for 40-50 years, and it's starting to show: The Soyuz is only good for carrying crews to the ISS, which will fall out of the sky in roughly 5-10 years. The shuttle (finally) retired, the Saturn V's are museum pieces. Sure, there is some risk in developing the SLS, but it's a risk we have to take. Nothing, not even the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, will be capable of carrying the hardware necessary for a Mars mission into orbit. As far as I know, the concepts for the Manned Mars Mission hardware are already here, easily adaptable to the SLS. It's just a case of testing, refining, and building them. A voyage of this proportion has never been tried before. There will be risks, there will be uncertainties. The SLS is just one on the rode to Mars, just like its ancestor, the Saturn V, was on the road to the moon.

To shelve the SLS (and our chance to go to Mars with it) just because it's 'too risky' is an idiotic mistake to make.

Edited April 28, 2014 by awsumindyman
forgot Sojourner (thanks SargeRho)

[SargeRho]

Four, we've sent four rovers to Mars. Don't forget about Sojourner

Otherwise I agree. By now we know enough about Space, the Human Body and Mars to begin actively working on a manned mission there.

Note for Nibb31: "Working on" includes "Come up with a closed loop life support system".

[cantab]

I like the Falcon Heavy better. If SpaceX can really make it reusable then, it might actually get somewhere.

The Falcon Heavy could be great, but it's not in the same league as the SLS. Maybe it rivals the low end of SLS Block I, but the higher figures mooted for Block I or the Block II payloads are up around twice, nearly three times what Falcon Heavy will do.

[Jon144]

I Have been seeing a lot of hatred for the shuttle program shifting over to doubts about the SLS.

The shuttle itself, besides being fairly limited in operation was not inherently bad or dangerous. What ended up killing the 2 crews were simple lapses of judgement at NASA that carried over to make disastrous consequences. For instance, Challenger disintegrated due to weather constraints, it was too cold and brittle that day to be launching on contained explosions. Icicles could be seen on the spacecraft beforehand and many people expressed concerns but nobody listened. Every reliable prop-driven plane just cannot operate well under weather constraints for example, and the same principle carries over to rockets. As for Columbia's reentry failure the loss of heat-shielding had been documented in many other cases back to the start of the program but the administration did little to address it, not to mention that in each case the spacecraft returned in one piece, that would have lead NASA to believe that it was not too great of a concern.

If you want to hear a great tragedy then we should talk about Apollo I, 3 of the greatest Americans lost their lives because some engineers failed to remember about what can happen in a 100% Oxygen environment from their intro to chemistry class. If you in all simplicity fill a capsule with Oxidizer the end result should have been expected to be the same as if you put in through a rocket engine.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/images/smilies/k_undecided.gif

The success or failure of the SLS and Orion in my opinion are all determined by the current leadership at NASA. Hopefully the administration has learned from their mistakes.

[KASASpace]

Even if it can pull the crew away, you still have a disaster. Political support will be immediately withdrawn. Public support will wane. And funding will evaporate quickly, and won't precipitate back.

[rkman]

KASASpace, i have zero confidence in your ability to predict such things.

[Tiberion]

Even if it can pull the crew away, you still have a disaster. Political support will be immediately withdrawn. Public support will wane. And funding will evaporate quickly, and won't precipitate back.

That is the reality of space exploration. Always has been, always will be. Those men and women who strap onto the top of a rocket and go to space are BRAVE. There is always a chance that failure can happen, and LES aren't intended to REMOVE the risk, only REDUCE it. The same goes with heat shields for Re-entry (which will be extra-important to Orion since it will be returning much faster/sharper than any LEO craft)

But history shows that support won't evaporate, that we won't stop exploring. We might pause and explore what happened and try to make changes to prevent it, but I think that desire to explore is inherent to humans, and no government can stop it.

None of that suggests that the SLS should be cancelled. The ONLY reason it should be cancelled is because its not going to do the job correctly, if it has technical flaws which might make it too failure prone. And until you have a physics degree and some experience in the aerospace industry, you can't tell those engineers how to do their jobs.

It is going to be expensive, and it'll need even more money in the the form of payloads and missions to truly be successful, but that doesn't mean we should cancel it either. If we keep cancelling and starting over, we're just wasting more money and not making progress.

It might be cooler to go to the moon than to go to an asteroid before going to Mars. You might not be excited for what is planned so far. You might not like the politics behind the government's funding of the rocket. But those are not reasons to cancel the rocket. NASA is in a fight to get funding for exploration, and you need to be on their side fighting with them, not naysaying or second guessing them.

Would it be awesome if we were building a mar mission package now? yes it would. It would also be expensive and likely rejected if NASA asked for everything it needed at once. But if NASA develops a powerful launch system and demonstrates that it works on their demonstration flights, then they'll have the platform to to bigger and better things. It's probably the best we can hope for right now. If you're secretly Batman or Tony Stark and have a spare trillion dollars, let us know.

Maybe SpaceX will eventually have a launcher capable of going to Mars. Right now they can't launch people at all. They don't have ANY experience in manned flight yet. I don't doubt they'll do it, what they have done so far is awesome and they seem to have a first class organization that does things right. But their heavy launcher is still being planned. SLS is being BUILT. Right now, today, people are working on SLS and Orion's 1st and 2nd iterations. It's not a thing on paper. NASA is not looking to SpaceX to build an exploration rocket. Maybe SpaceX will explore on their own, but they're probably a decade away from doing what SLS will do in 2 or 3 years. It's not really a competition at this point.

So the question might be "What do you think of the SLS?" but the best, right answer is: It doesn't matter, because its what we have, and if you support the manned exploration of space, you should support the SLS because you're not going to get anything better any time soon.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Tiberion

[KASASpace]

Well, the fact that they have spent billions over the past few years and have gotten NOWHERE, or at least almost nowhere in terms of hardware, and that NASA is losing money. IE they had 20 billion a few years back, now 16 billion. So, somehow people expect them to actually launch. Personally, I think it's going to be cancelled before anything even gets built (save Orion).

What we should be focusing on is Modular Launch Vehicles, or MLVs. And the only way to seriously develop an MLV system is to have NASA work with ESA, the RSA, and even the ISA. Plus the CSA. (Wow, there is a lot of "A"s)

Maybe SpaceX will eventually have a launcher capable of going to Mars.

It will. Heck, even the Atlas V can send payload to Mars. And the Falcon 9 can't send people to Mars, but it can send SOMETHING to Mars.

I support Manned Exploration (heck, one of my favorite quotes of all time is from von Braun about man being the best computer) but the SLS is more of a pipe dream. Look at Space Station Freedom, sure it came to life in the form of the ISS, but that was only accomplished via international cooperation.

Now, if NASA was doing more to have international participation in construction of the SLS, then I wouldn't be so negative. And NASA may have a good safety record, but remember, they lost a lot of rockets from problems in the early days.

[Comrade Jenkens]

So far the argument seems to have boiled down to: The SLS will fail because it may explode...

[KASASpace]

So far the argument seems to have boiled down to: The SLS will fail because it may explode...

And it may get cancelled, and it may just succeed. But once flights are routine, people get cocky (see, CHALLENGER).

[Tiberion]

What are you even talking about? They haven't gotten "NOWHERE" - they're building and flying Orion this year, and building the first SLS to launch in 2017. SLS was only announced in Sept. 2011. So it will fly 6 years after it was announced.

SpaceX started working on Falcon9 in 2006 when they received their COTS money (their previous rocket was privately funded) and flew in 2010, so it took 4 years and it had ZERO manned requirements.

Things do not happen overnight, you're going to have to be patient. If the 1st manned mission to an asteroid is 10 years away now (deadline is 2025) then it would be 20 years away if you cancelled it and started over. Maybe longer if you have to work past international quagmires.

Orion is already an International project, and I don't see what expertise any other program could bring to the heavy launcher design, the only other nation to build a large launcher is Russia, and their last one was Energia. It flew twice.. 20 years ago.

Other nations might put up money. Not very much, and it would be contingent on their receiving some benefits from it such as getting to build part X.

If you think the funding and politics behind SLS are complex now, try having 4 or 5 nations involved.

No thank you. International cooperation will be great... on the payloads that will use SLS.

[Halsfury]

As the SLS is being put into a glass case at some museum, SKYLON will be carrying stuff into space for just as much as a plane ticket.

Seems like SLS is really going to be the last heavy lifter of them all with SKYLON and private spaceflight coming into being

That being said it will not only be the last, but also be the best

[mdatspace]

As the SLS is being put into a glass case at some museum, SKYLON will be carrying stuff into space for just as much as a plane ticket.

Seems like SLS is really going to be the last heavy lifter of them all with SKYLON and private spaceflight coming into being

That being said it will not only be the last, but also be the best

I doubt Skylon will ever fly.

[Tiberion]

And if it does, it's a small craft - 11 to 15 tons of payload. That's close to 10 times less than the advanced versions of SLS. It will not be able to launch an extra-planetary craft.

[mdatspace]

And if it does, it's a small craft - 11 to 15 tons of payload. That's close to 10 times less than the advanced versions of SLS. It will not be able to launch an extra-planetary craft.

Exactly.It is going to be used for LEO-GEO. Not a good comparison to the SLS.

[Dodgey]

Still, the same principle applies. There is considerable evidence that new kinds of rockets often fail catastrophically. As long as there is no significant evidence on the reliability of refurbished rockets, it's best to assume that they are less reliable than new rockets of the same kind.

What other reusable rockets can you point to that compares to the Falcon. The only other reusable system I can think of is the STS. Which had an amazing safety record, and the two incidents which did occur were against the advice of the engineers.

KASASpace, what evidence can you show me to demonstrate your claim is true. All you have done as of yet is throw unfounded assertions around which mostly have been refuted and you are starting to sound as I'd you have a very biased view of the SLS.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Dodgey

[R0cketC0der]

And if it does, it's a small craft - 11 to 15 tons of payload. That's close to 10 times less than the advanced versions of SLS. It will not be able to launch an extra-planetary craft.

Actually there is a proposal for a manned mars mission with skylon.

However I don't think that skylon will ever fly because it will require a ton of innovations to be made with very little margin - history has been teaching us that that kind of project will most likely fail.

[SargeRho]

All the innovations needed to make Skylon *have already been made*. Namely, the SABRE engine's cooler. That is the only major innovation needed for the thing. What's left to do is basically build and test SABRE, then the Skylon craft itself. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that, but that's basically it.

[KASASpace]

Orion is already an International project, and I don't see what expertise any other program could bring to the heavy launcher design, the only other nation to build a large launcher is Russia, and their last one was Energia. It flew twice.. 20 years ago.

And when did the USA's last heavy launcher fly? I'm talking cargo to orbit. The shuttle only needed an unmanned modification to deliver at least 50 tons to orbit.

Let's say that what dictates if it is a heavy launcher is the cargo it provides.

That means, that the Saturn V was the last of the USA's heavy lifters.

And it flew more than 20 years ago.

If it is so international than why is it getting nowhere? Sure, Orion *might* fly this year, if they're lucky.

Plus, with the rate at which they are losing money, how can they possibly even purchase a single LV?

[Red Fang]

An afterthought. I said much earlier that SLS is to late, and was referring to Constellation.

I was wrong.

The time to develop SLS block 1, was after DOD left the STS program. Remember Energia?

Making one ET with SSMEs stacked to it, to prove the concept, might have sprung development of heavier payloads and reduced the cost of ISS substantially. Heck. That would have opened the doors for a new fleet of deep space probes, cheaper orbiters, SS Freedom instead of ISS...

It would have been an avalanche.

Right now, SLS is keeping engineering potential of US aerospace industry alive. Having met dozens of engineers from an industry that suffered a total collapse in previous 15-20 years, they all concur that there is no way to restart an aircraft factory, after all the people have been fired 10 years ago and tools sold for scrap.