Will the SLS ever fly?

[montyben101]

NASAs new rocket seems a little... Rushed to be honest. There isn't a specific payload or anything at all that it is designed to do? What do you think?

[BadRocketsCo.]

I think, that it will fly. I think, that they are too far into building the rocket, to get cancelled. But god knows...

[cantab]

I expect it will fly, as BadRockets says I think it's pretty well along its development now, much further than the cancelled Ares was. But of course who knows what Congress might do.

I don't, however, expect it will fly very OFTEN. Like monty says, there aren't really the payloads for it. Unless the military, or maybe commercial interests, decide they want to put something huge in orbit then it could well be a one-launch wonder.

[astropapi1]

There's been a lot of proposed payloads for it, like a Constellation style lunar mission, a EML-2 space station, an Europa lander/orbiter combo, and a sample return mission to Mars.

All they need is money.

Edited June 25, 2014 by astropapi1

[razark]

All they need is money.

So, that's a no, then.

[Aethon]

The space ship to nowhere!

IMHO NASA needs to leave guys like Elon Musk and Richard Branson to build their rockets for them ( much cheaper than our gov'mint could ever do it ), and go back to doing what NASA does best. Cutting edge, outside the box, revolutionary tech, Jeb-like Exploration.

Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation is the engine that drives economic growth. NASA has been there done that when it comes to building rockets, but can no longer compete with private industry.

Besides, if you were an astronaut all strapped in the chair, waiting for someone to light the candle underneath you, do you want to look around and think to yourself....everything in this spacecraft was built by the lowest bidder?

It'll fly even though it's crippling NASA. ( That and JWST )

Edited June 18, 2014 by Aethon

[StrandedonEarth]

If you build it, they will come.

Engineers don't build the massive payloads because there is nothing available to lift it. When a lifter is available, scientists and unconstrained engineers will build payloads to take advantage of it. Once there are payloads to lift, there will be competition to lift it for less. Then SLS will be undercut and underutilized, but will hopefully still be available as an independent option. No more missions requiring triple gravity assists to get where it actually wants to go 10 years later.

[Seret]

Looking at the current programme it looks like the most it'll achieve is a few flights, but not enough to make it worthwhile developing. It needs to be either scrapped or rethought.

[CalculusWarrior]

I believe that spacecraft like the Falcon Heavy will be more successful than SLS in the long run. However, NASA does have a plan to go to Mars by the 2030's (though there's no telling if that plan will come to fruition or not), so perhaps SLS will stick around for some time?

[Javster]

You know what worries me? That they actually made news out of "We're transporting the heatshield" and "look we've got two parts of the rocket stuck together".

Also, unless they get more funding after the launch, we're gonna have to wait the same long time again (if not longer) for a manned flight...

[deadshot462]

It will fly a couple of flight tests. By the time the first or second manned missions are planned to launch, I speculate that companies like SpaceX will make heavy payload launches much cheaper and the SLS obsolete.

The SLS is mostly a jobs program to keep the former Shuttle contractors from going out of business because they couldn't diversify their products.

Even the Orion ship had to be partially outsourced to ESA for the service module. I can't see how any major payloads could ever be designed for the SLS that couldn't be carried by conventional commercial rockets.

Even NASA's former No. 2 thinks the SLS is a bad idea:

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2014/01/lori-garver-says-nasa-should-not-build-the-sls-where-is-it-going-to-go/

[Red Iron Crown]

The lack of a specified payload is part of NASA's focus on capabilities rather than missions. If they tied SLS to a particular mission it would get cancelled if the mission fell out of favor. Getting big payloads to orbit is a useful capability and one that is not as easily privatized like smaller payloads.

[Seret]

The SLS is mostly a jobs program to keep the former Shuttle contractors from going out of business because they couldn't diversify their products.

This. It's a politically motivated programme for which they're having to retroactively shoehorn objectives in. That's about the worst way to run a project I could imagine.

[[email protected]]

The lack of a specified payload is part of NASA's focus on capabilities rather than missions. If they tied SLS to a particular mission it would get cancelled if the mission fell out of favor. Getting big payloads to orbit is a useful capability and one that is not as easily privatized like smaller payloads.

Except that the SLS is only going to be lifting marginally more than the Falcon XX, but at 40 times the cost.

The SLS is doomed to be a giant politically motivated bureaucratic failure. We have the worlds largest, most expensive, and quite possibly least effective government...unfortunately thats been slowly poisoning NASA over the years.

[Red Iron Crown]

Except that the SLS is only going to be lifting marginally more than the Falcon XX, but at 40 times the cost.

Hard to say, Falcon XX is little more than paper at this point. It would be great if SpaceX could deliver at those rates.

[[email protected]]

Hard to say, Falcon XX is little more than paper at this point. It would be great if SpaceX could deliver at those rates.

I'm much more likely to trust the projections of private industry than those of government, given the fact they have the incentive to be accurate or they could go belly up, but I understand your reservation...although unfortunately the SLS isn't much more at this point itself. I do hope SpaceX succeeds in delivering at close to those number though, would radically change spaceflight.

[rdfox]

Note that the Senate Launch System is not actually *required* to fly an Orion mission; the Orion can easily be put into LEO by a Delta IV Heavy, and, in fact, a prototype one is going to be flown on just that either late this year or sometime next year in a first unmanned test flight.

I suspect that the SLS will end up not being much more than a footnote in history, a "wow, that's one hell of a record capability" thing that never actually gets used for anything but Congressionally-mandated missions. Simply put, even if the engineers knew the lift capability was there, there's just not really any market for putting locomotives into LEO. For missions that require a vehicle of that mass, it's going to be less expensive to launch them as smaller components and mate them in orbit, like the ISS was (albeit with significantly larger components, since expendable boosters have a better payload capacity than the Shuttle did) and like von Braun's original preferred Earth Orbit Rendezvous method of flying the Apollo program. (For those unfamiliar, it would have involved three to four launches of Saturn IB-sized rockets, one carrying the Apollo CSM, one carrying a transfer/lander stage that would dock onto the rear of the Service Module, and one or two as tankers to top off the propellants in the spacecraft before the transfer burn, docking them in Earth orbit.)

Honestly, I suspect that Falcon Heavy, Atlas V Heavy, and Delta IV Heavy will end up being the sort of size range that you see the bulk of heavy-lift operations being done with in the foreseeable future; SLS is just too big for most missions, unless you want to send up an ISS replacement in just two to three launches.

[Kryten]

Note that the Senate Launch System is not actually *required* to fly an Orion mission; the Orion can easily be put into LEO by a Delta IV Heavy.

Only with a massively cut-down SM.

[Red Iron Crown]

Honestly, I suspect that Falcon Heavy, Atlas V Heavy, and Delta IV Heavy will end up being the sort of size range that you see the bulk of heavy-lift operations being done with in the foreseeable future; SLS is just too big for most missions, unless you want to send up an ISS replacement in just two to three launches.

You are assuming that we are never going to want anything bigger than ISS in orbit. The whole point of bigger launchers is to allow us to get bigger things in space. If larger launchers are as useless as you say, why is SpaceX planning Falcon XX?

[rhoark]

The SLS will fly in 2017. Established milestones are being met without budget overrun and with ample slack in the schedule to handle contingencies. It has a payload, which is the Orion capsule and service module. It has mission objectives, which are manned flybys of the moon and mars, as well as rendezvous with an asteroid.

Further potential missions, including manned landings and outer planet probes, exist in concept phase. They would require additional separate hardware development, which would frankly be premature to conduct in parallel with SLS peak funding. These mission profiles depend on delta-V potential that no single existing launch vehicle can provide. Trade studies, from the Apollo era and present, show reduced payload development cost, technical risk, and human risk from using a single launch when possible. The most ambitious missions, such as a manned mars landing, would require on-orbit assembly using multiple Block II SLS launches. This would translate to a completely infeasible number of smaller launches.

There is not an alternative rocket that will be ready to fly in a similar time frame. SpaceX has yet to even fly the Falcon 9 heavy configuration. The conceptual Falcon XX would be an evolution of the conceptual Falcon X, which is proposed to employ Merlin 2 and/or Raptor engines. Raptor has yet to begin component testing. Merlin 2 seems to be in limbo regarding even what kind of cycle or fuel it uses. There's no indication SpaceX is developing infrastructure to construct the proposed 6m or 10m diameter tanks. Falcon XX is an imaginary rocket.

In contrast, the SLS engines are proven RS-25 SSMEs. New engine instrumentation developed for J2-X will be tested with the RS-25s this year. The boosters are done. Acoustic modeling of the RS-25 placement relative to the boosters is producing positive results. The avionics ring has been built and put through hardware-in-the-loop testing. Tankage is beginning to be constructed and will undergo stress testing this year. SLS is a real rocket.

[DaRocketCat]

Except that the SLS is only going to be lifting marginally more than the Falcon XX, but at 40 times the cost.

The SLS is doomed to be a giant politically motivated bureaucratic failure. We have the worlds largest, most expensive, and quite possibly least effective government...unfortunately thats been slowly poisoning NASA over the years.

Falcon Heavy: 53,000 kg to LEO

SLS: 70,000 - 130,000 kg to LEO

That isn't marginal at all.

The federal gov't isn't the USSR for christ's sake, you're exaggerating big time.

[Kryten]

Falcon XX isn't falcon heavy, it's a super-heavy powerpoint rocket (or 'preliminary unfunded design concept' in spacex's words). Of course spacex haven't actually revealed any cost estimates for developing or producing it, so where the '40 times the cost figure' is supposed to come form is anybody's guess.

[[email protected]]

Falcon XX isn't falcon heavy, it's a super-heavy powerpoint rocket (or 'preliminary unfunded design concept' in spacex's words). Of course spacex haven't actually revealed any cost estimates for developing or producing it, so where the '40 times the cost figure' is supposed to come form is anybody's guess.

The cost figure was my mistake. I looked at the development costs for the Falcon heavy and not the estimated cost of the Falcon XX.

[[email protected]]

The federal gov't isn't the USSR for christ's sake, you're exaggerating big time.

Unfortunately, not really. We have the worlds most expensive and largest government, and for the cost effectiveness, one of the worst in the world; comparing dollar for dollar on what we get on everything from education to healthcare, highways, social programs, and just about everything in between. Its not an exaggeration, our government has an endemic problem with overspending and underdelivering.

Edited June 19, 2014 by [email protected]

[Cosmos3110]

Unfortunately, yes I think it will.