No Falcon Way: NASA to stick with SLS, SpaceX more like space ex NASA has categorically stated it will not dump the troubled Space Launch System (SLS) in favor of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy any time soon. The SLS is competing with the James Webb Space Telescope for the mission most delayed and over-budget. Answering a question from Shuttle Mission Control veteran Wayne Hale, NASA’s Human …
There is that but also NASA's built in bureaucratic management and conservative (overly?) way of thinking. They don't like risks and like to go with those they have worked with a lot in the past. It's like an old manager I worked for.. PC's had, absolutely had to be IBM because IBM. He retired and suddenly the PC refresh budget dropped by using other companies with PC's just as reliable.
There is that but also the fact that zero-g engineering is much harder to do than the sort we do on the ground, which translates into longer times, unforeseen "drop-dead" (until the next launch) problems and much more expense.
"The first is that the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway is still very much on the drawing board, so there is no reason why it could not be designed to be launched in smaller pieces."
This can only be taken at face value in a 1940s-era Robert Heinlein story.
The Gateway modules will be 4.5 meters, well withinthe 5.2 meter width of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy fairing, and its Power and Propulsion Element (module) must by spec mass less than 7,500 kg. Falcon Heavy can toss at least twice that mass to the Moon.
Since Gateway will be launching in the mid-2020's SpaceX's BFR will also be an option, and it'll be even more capable than SLS of launching massive payloads to the Moon; 45 tonnes for SLS Block 2 (2028+) vs over 100 tonnes for BFR (2020-2022).
This post has been deleted by its author
@ ArrZarr
And arguably the large payload SLS is, although not quite "glint in the eye", but not necessarily a sure and sudden thing.
But on a more serious point, modular construction is good from repair / maintenance / replacement viewpoint.
And having multiple launch providers cannot hurt - remove single point of failure possibility, get them to compete on cost to reduce budgets (obv fantasy with cozy SLS funding scenario, but you can always hope..) etc
The BFR is a glint in spaceX's eye - not something that meaningful comparisons can be made to a rocket that already exists.And if the BFR timescale is within 3 years of what Musk has said, I will eat my own hair. I would be overjoyed, just pretty certain that it's not happening.
SpaceX are already constructing the first BFR prototype, so I think the glint in the eye comment might be a little out-of-date. Sure it's not here yet, but neither is SLS. Musk has talked of it being tested next year.
The first SLS to fly will (by current plans) be next year. But it will be the smallest size version, which only just beats Falcon Heavy. It will also be launched as a proof of concept, and not carry anything meaningful (there was some talk of putting crew on board the first launch, but that idea has sensibly been abandoned).
It will take them *at least* another year to build a second SLS, by which time the BFR prototype will have been doing test hops for months.
There are only enough engines stockpiled for them to build four SLS rockets. After that, they need to restart the production line if they want to launch any more. Aerojet have quoted them a billion to do that (not counting the cost of the actual engines that get built) and a build rate that will only allow one SLS launch every 18 months.
If they really want to build this Lunar Gateway station they're talking about, it will take multiple flights, even allowing for it to be built in large "monolithic" pieces, so given the maximum possible flight rate imposed by engine build constraints, it will take them a decade to build it.
Given all the above, BFR can be delayed for *years*, and it will *still* be a better platform and available soon than SLS for most of the missions planned for SLS.
" BFR may well be ready before before the SLS."
More true than not, when you compare government projects to private industry (in general).
Back in the 80's, when I was in the Navy, the San Diego submarine base had an ongoing project to construct barracks for single officers. They were living at the barracks at another base a few miles away, or in apartments in the city. So this had been under construction for the entire time (>3 years) when I was at the San Diego base.
In 1985, McDonalds got permission to construct one of their restaurants on base. It was up and running in about 3 months, from laying the foundation to flipping burgers. And, by comparison, the officer's barracks WAS NOT EVEN REMOTELY COMPLETED after 3 FORNICATING YEARS!
That kinda says it all, I think. Musk wants to make money, so HIS "BFR" rockets will be designed, tested, flown, and approved LONG before NASA gets even REMOTELY close to having SLS ready.
(without the 'urgency' of the space race, like it was in the 1960's, gummint projects will milk the funding for all it can, keeping people employed indefinitely regardless of how important or useful the jobs are, creating circular bureaucracies that justify one another's existence, and LOTS of spinning wheels without motion)
"The BFR is a glint in spaceX's eye"
Mmm... SpaceX started building BFR parts in 2017. The BFR is a lot more than just plans on a computer, and SpaceX - regardless of its over-optimistic boss - does get things done quicker than the usual suspects working on NASA contracts.
"if the BFR timescale is within 3 years of what Musk has said, I will eat my own hair"
Certainly Musk has form when it comes to being, shall we say, a little over-optimistic on development times. But then again, the SLS itself is already well behind the original schedule.
Both the SLS and BFR are currently supposed to have their first flight next year - SpaceX is apparently planning a suborbital hop next year for the first BFR launch, while the SLS is scheduled to launch "no earlier" than 19th December 2019.
I'd happily bet a small sum that neither rocket will fly until 2020.
I've no idea how to judge the odds of which big rocket's most likely to go into service first. Maybe someone could toddle down to the bookies and place a bet? William Hill goes for this sort of thing...
I've just had a look and found a curious thing here:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-lunar-outpost-will-extend-human-presence-in-deep-space
NASA says that the first element of the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway is due to be launched in 2022. The thing is, that NASA article also says:
"NASA plans to launch elements of the gateway on the agency’s Space Launch System or commercial rockets for assembly in space."
- so NASA's statement from the 13th February 2018 seems to contradict NASA’s Human Spaceflight head honcho Bill Gerstenmaier's insistence on the 26th March 2018 that only the SLS will do.
I think we're just going to have to wait and see what happens.
Assuming BFR will be many years off is very ridky.
BFS ship #1 is being assembled now in a temporary facility, and the full up San Pedro CA factory at Terminal Island should be ready in late 2019. Janicki Industries (B2, F-22, 787, B-21 Raider etc) does the large composite structure fabs (propellant tanks etc) near Seattle and ships them to SpaceX. One oversize (12 meters) LOX tank was tested to destruction, and passed.
The Raptor methane engines have been on the test stand for almost 18 months, with partial funding from the USAF. Reports are good, with videos of stable burns dating to Sept. 2016.
"Convenient of them to ignore BFR when comparing payloads."
Even if BFR doesn't come to fruition, Elon's made it clear that all the truss and core re-engineering they had to do to make FH work means that going from 2+1 to 4+1 is fairly trivial (and I suspect 6+1 is only slightly harder)
Having the landing spaces is probably more complex.
Due to obvious military applications, rocket technology used to be under government control. Musk and co. change the rules of the game, but it'll take a while until a new division of labor is established.
I don't see the parallel development of different rockets as a problem -- the bigger question is whether the NASA is still capable to properly plan and budget their projects. Falcon heavy was late and over budget -- but you could expect that for rocket science done by amateurs, starting from scratch. NASA supposedly has all the know-how already. Or did all the competent engineers move to private industry by now?
... but you could expect that for rocket science done by amateurs...
SpaceX's record on planning isn't very good. A long time ago their intention was to design a disposable booster that was so cheap to manufacture that it didn't matter that it was being thrown away every launch.
To this end they did do some quite clever things, including the original design of their rocket engine bells. These were made by forming two bells from sheet, pressing one of them to be crinkly, fitting one inside the other and welding / brazing them together. This made all the cooling channels for the bell in only a few operations; quick and a lot cheaper than brazing miles and miles of tubing into the shape of a bell.
Anyway, it turned out that they couldn't get the price down far enough that way. So disposability went, re-usability came in, hence their landing legs, etc.
And with Falcon Heavy, they seriously underestimated the cost and difficulty of strapping 3 boosters next to each other. Anyone with any knowledge at all of aerodynamics could see that the loadings were going to be horrible. The interference drag between the boosters must be epic.
There's also persistent talk of them not getting on top of a comprehensive quality control process. That led to their helium tank struts being rubbish (second stage explosion during first stage burn), and the helium tank failure on the launch pad (second stage explosion on the launch pad during static test; they'd not considered the full effect of super-cooled O2 on the carbon fibre tank). QC processes cost money, but no where near as much as losing a payload, or indeed a crew.
And when it comes to getting Falcon / Falcon Heavy man rated, meetings between NASA and SpaceX on this topic didn't go well; turns out you can't just claim it's reliable, you have to do all the paperwork to demonstrate that. NASA's manned flight loses were entirely down to things that were thought to be reliable or impossible turning out not to be so. So they're not willing to let anyone fly on a booster that just happens to have been reliable for a few launches in succession. That was some time ago, reported on El Reg somewhere, and perhaps SpaceX have been working towards getting their paperwork in order since, but it's extremely hard to do it retrospectively.
So yes, SpaceX's own history is no different to any other organisation trying to do things empirically. They've got caught out time and again.
Musk is, first and foremost, a showman, and on no account must his extravagances be permitted to hurt anyone. When it comes to manned flight, boring and expensive but done properly must override exciting / cult-ish and cheap but with doubtful paperwork.
NASA supposedly has all the know-how already. Or did all the competent engineers move to private industry by now?
The work being done on SLS is being done by private industry on behalf of NASA, and they do have the knowledge to make a man-rated booster. Re-using Shuttle engine and solid booster designs is an excellent way to achieve this.
NASA have never had large factories of their own for manufacturing rocket parts. They have the final assembly building, where it's all brought together.
You need SLS to launch Orion because you need Orion to justify SLS. You need SLS to launch LOPG because you need LOPG to justify SLS. You need the ALSTAR act (pdf) to make Marshall Space Centre "essential to sustaining and promoting US leadership in rocket propulsion" because Alabama needs to assure its supply of pork.
I thought that the first crewed SLS mission would be delayed while the mobile launch platform for SLS block 1 got upgraded for SLS block 1B crew. Senator Shelby demonstrated outstanding pork farming skills by getting money for a second mobile launch platform. It must give everyone hope that pork for SLS missions will be found on top of pork for the SLS no matter what else has to be cancelled to make it happen.
No mere showman could ever demonstrate pork farming skills like that even if he has taken half the launch market and saved NASA millions on commercial resupply.
You're right in that reusability isn't SpaceX's only way of saving cost - adding reinforcement by use of friction stir welding (instead of taking a thicker structure and milling away material) is another example.
However, I'm not sure you've made the case for NASA's procurement process being safer for crews clearly enough. The Challenger disaster was famously due to there being too many managers sitting in between engineers in different organisations. When SpaceX has lost craft and payloads they've been able to chase down faults fairly rapidly due to their all in-house nature.
SpaceX is no longer seeking to have the Falcon Heavy certified for manned missions, instead stating they're concentrating on doing so for the BFR once they've made it. The problem is that the market for BFR-scale payloads is smaller than for Falcon-scale payloads (modern electronics allow for smaller satellites). This means that it will take a longer time for the BFR rocket to accumulate the same number of successful unmanned launches as the Falcon has (approaching 50). One assumes that a large number of successful unmanned launches can only aid certification for crewed launches.
The problem is that the market for BFR-scale payloads is smaller than for Falcon-scale payloads (modern electronics allow for smaller satellites). This means that it will take a longer time for the BFR rocket to accumulate the same number of successful unmanned launches as the Falcon has (approaching 50).
If it costs less to fly the same weight on BFR than Falcon 9, as Musk has claimed it will, why wouldn't customers switch to using it, even if they're massively under-using the vehicle's capability?
And if that cost can be cut further by using some of that extra capacity with ride sharing, that would surely sweeten the deal even further. In other words, I don't see why most clients won't switch to BFR almost immediately.
There may be a few that want to stick with the F9 because it is known to be reliable, but that attitude won't last long; if you want proof, look how quickly SpaceX have been able to get people switching to re-used boosters.
Actually Musk's claim was that it will cost less to launch a BFR than a Falcon 1. The first time I heard that I thought "What the Falcon?", stepped the video back and listened to it again. Not lower launch cost per kilo to orbit, simply lower total launch cost. I did a quick web search for Falcon 1, chose the most expensive launch and added a bit for inflation. Musk is aiming for a BFR launch cost under $10M. Over the next few days I saw other comments showing people were just as shocked as I was. It was not a mistake. Elon did not forget to say "per kilo".
If things go according to plan, you can put your falcon 9 payload in a BFR, add a Tesla Semi full of batteries for ballast, save $50M on launch costs and you get the Tesla Semi (with cargo) back on Earth. BFR will not be short of missions.
Sure, NASA is scraping any 40-50 years old technology because it looks its engineers are utterly incapable of developing and delivering anything newer and better. They had to shelve the Shuttle as well because they were no longer able to fly it safely - for lack of competences.
NASA has to be fully rebooted. It was created when the military was trying to make rockets and made only disasters, but now NASA it's at that same point - because it has now exactly the same arrogant, stubborn bureaucratic and incompetent structure.
"NASA's manned flight loses were entirely down to things that were thought to be reliable or impossible turning out not to be so."
In both cases—Columbia and Challenger—engineers had warned management about potentially lethal problems. Some engineers were horrifed when Nasa management decided to go ahead with the Challenger launch in such cold weather because they had explicitly warned about the cold O-ring risk. Repeated attempts to get DoD assets to inspect Columbia for damage, while in orbit, after the foam impact on its wing, were actively blocked by Nasa management. And it was Nasa managers who wrongly insisted that nothing could be done for the ship's crew if there were serious damage, when in fact, most unusually, on this occasion there was another bird (Atlantis I believe) well advanced in the launch process that could have rescued Columbia's crew.
Two full crews died not because engineers said that the chances of failure were an utterly ridiculous one:billion (that was Nasa managers) but because politics had, as it always does, corrupted the process of honest and intelligent professionalism, and Nasa managers stopped listening to the people who actually knew best.
So your statement would be more correct as:
"NASA's manned flight loses were entirely down to things that were known to be dangerous but were ignored by management for squalid political reasons."
Where politics and politicians are involved—the very antithesis of good, rational, intellectually honest thinking—good people die for nothing. Shuttle's problems were at root designed in by incessant cost-cutting and political interference, as it shrank from a sensible two-lifting-body design to the absurdly compromised firework that ended up killing more than two dozen people.
Musk is far from perfect, but insofar as his outfit remains untainted by Nasa's politics and its woeful progress in manned spaceflight since Apollo, he deserves our support.
> Repeated attempts to get DoD assets to inspect Columbia for damage, while in orbit... ...on this occasion there was another bird (Atlantis I believe) well advanced in the launch process that could have rescued Columbia's crew.
Only just. Possibly. It would have meant eeking out the Columbia's life support resources to the limit, and completing the Atlantis refit in faster than record time.
Just out of interest, if we had had SpaceX then, would we have been able to get a suitable crew reentry vehicle to the Columbia?
And it was Nasa managers who wrongly insisted that nothing could be done for the ship's crew if there were serious damage, when in fact, most unusually, on this occasion there was another bird (Atlantis I believe) well advanced in the launch process that could have rescued Columbia's crew.
Atlantis was the closest to being ready, which wasn't that unusual - for much of the Shuttle's career there were launches a month or so apart (not that there were launches monthly, but you'd get a cluster of 2-3 in a 4 month period and then nothing for 6 months). Nonetheless it was several weeks away and Columbia's life support was good for maybe a couple of weeks. There would have been significant corner-cutting to the point that losing Atlantis was a significant risk.
Additionally, the EVA suits Columbia was carrying are not designed to be self-donned. They require help to get on. There is a major question as to whether at least two of the Columbia crew would have been physically able to get suited, into the airlock and across to Atlantis (even if it hadn't blown up on launch or suffered similar foam-strike damage).
Getting more data from DoD assets would only have confirmed their worst suspicions - there was no possibility of in-orbit repair. It is reasonable to suggest that at least one orbiter and two crew were already dead. The question was whether to risk another orbiter and 2-3 more crew to pick up the remaining 5 astronauts.
Shuttle's problems were at root designed in by incessant cost-cutting
Incessant cost-cutting? A shuttle launch cost over ten times the cost of the Soyuz family of rockets the Russians came up with. There were 131 shuttle launches, with 2 losses and 963 Soyuz's, with 24 losses, which actually gives a pretty similar failure rate.
And there, in a nutshell, is the reason why NASA will continue to fail, and others will eventually make it irrelevant except as a miniscule federal jobs program. The few spectacular successes in unmanned solar system exploration have a dwindling number of follow-on projects because the SLS continues to eat the budget. The US manned program is going to be stuck in low earth orbit for generations to come because of it.
You're dodging the fact that the ancillary research (such as RNA changes) done by NASA is what really matters at this point; commercial companies just won't invest in that.
In the end (through a foggy, fished lens) I see NASA evolving into a regulatory agency for safety and welfare and the fact is we'll need that.
The price of SpaceX rockets is far below previous generations: everything is cheaper, and they seem to be quite reliable.
As for SLS vs Falcon Heavy.. how can you claim the SLS is more reliable when it hasnt been used? I would say it is unknown.. designed to be safe for passangers (or as safe as these things are), yet untested.
If I had to sit on top of one of them, once the falcon heavy has been tested a few times, I would go on a falcon Heavy.
Going back to price.. it is not that SpaceX is a bit cheaper. It is several times as cheap.
SpaceX's record on planning isn't very good. A long time ago their intention was to design a disposable booster that was so cheap to manufacture that it didn't matter that it was being thrown away every launch.
To this end they did do some quite clever things, including the original design of their rocket engine bells. These were made by forming two bells from sheet, pressing one of them to be crinkly, fitting one inside the other and welding / brazing them together. This made all the cooling channels for the bell in only a few operations; quick and a lot cheaper than brazing miles and miles of tubing into the shape of a bell.
Anyway, it turned out that they couldn't get the price down far enough that way. So disposability went, re-usability came in, hence their landing legs, etc.
This is called iteration. It's why SpaceX are running a lucrative launch business and SLS isn't operational. They ran with something, realised it was sub-optimal but worked, so tweaked the design in-service whilst moving forward in incremental blocks validating the rest of the design as they went - instead of allowing the entire project to stall. This contrasts favourable with SLS which has spent over a decade trying to develop the perfect booster to replace a system we already developed in the 1960s despite having the head start of reusing major components from the Shuttle.
Re-using Shuttle engine and solid booster designs is an excellent way to achieve this.
Ah yes, the Shuttle. Unique amongst operational launch vehicles for having no useful launch abort that could separate astronauts from the single most complex part of the launch stack (and consequently most likely to fail - which it did, once).
And when it comes to getting Falcon / Falcon Heavy man rated, meetings between NASA and SpaceX on this topic didn't go well; turns out you can't just claim it's reliable, you have to do all the paperwork to demonstrate that.
And yet despite this, NASA intend to put meatbags on top of SLS on it's second launch.
Meanwhile SpaceX has 49/51 successful F9 launches to it's name, and both the failures would have been survivable had they been carrying a Crew Dragon capsule with a launch abort mechanism.
I know which rocket I'd strap myself on to.
"NASA's manned flight loses were entirely down to things that were thought to be reliable or impossible turning out not to be so."
You should read the Space Shuttle disaster reports. The only people who thought that the Space Shuttle was super-reliable and couldn't go catastrophically wrong in the ways that it did were some of the management at NASA.
Richard Feynman had one NASA manager tell him that the launch failure rate for the Space Shuttle was predicted to be 1 in 100,000. NASA engineers told him they expected a launch failure rate of closer to 1 in 100.
The engineers knew perfectly well what its vulnerabilities were, and had a pretty good idea what the real flight failure rate was likely to be.
That's not to say that you don't need proper quality control methods to ensure reliability, but it's simply wrong to state that, for example, no-one knew about the problems with the Space Shuttle's solid fuel booster o-ring seals before the Challenger disaster. Even NASA management knew the seals were dodgy, but spun words around the problem in the hope that would make it disappear.
And the idea that only NASA's traditional contractors can be trusted with manned space flight doesn't make sense. Engineering is engineering. If you've got good engineers working under good management, if you make reliability a prime concern, and if everyone does their job properly (including following suitable quality management procedures), you'll end up with good reliability.
It's how come, for example, the Saturn I and the Black Knight rockets managed a perfect reliability record despite their builders not having had a vast amount of experience in the business.
(Okay, okay, so Wernher von Braun bossed the Saturn I project and he did have a lot of experience and yes it used a lot of flight-proven hardware. But still, it was early in the space race and was trying out a new approach.)
"I don't see the parallel development of different rockets as a problem" Different teams independently developing different rockets and not sharing the info is why Soviets failed to send the man to the Moon before the US (although the fact that the furthest advanced project got scrapped in one of the purges didn't help either).
"Different teams independently developing different rockets and not sharing the info is why Soviets..."
I cant help but agree, I know commercial interests will never allow this to happen but I cant help but think that if we all got over the "US Space Programme", "European Space Programme".. Russia/India/China etc and just collaborated we'd be well on our way to colonising the outer planets by now (Maybe a touch optimistic!)
Payloads that were to originally fly on Falcon Heavy ended up flying on Falcon 9, because Falcon 9's design evolved so much.
It was also better to wait until Falcon 9 boosters could be vertically landed routinely, because Falcon Heavy has 3 of them and that is where most of its potential cost savings come from. Rapid reusability is also an issue: the Falcon Heavy maiden launch used Falcon 9 Block 4 boosters, but all subsequent ones will use Block 5, the "final" Falcon 9.
Falcon Heavy is a fun launcher but it will be made completely obsolete by BFR.
Comparing SLS, a super-heavy class, to Falcon Heavy, a heavy class, is disengenuous at best.
By not comparing SLS to BFR, which may well fly first and lifts more, Gerst shows that the congresscritters are pulling his strings.
BFR: 2020-2021, 150 metric tonnes to LEO
SLS Block 1: 2020-2021, 70-80 tonnes to LEO
SLS Block 2: 2029, 130 tonnes to LEO
A Holman orbit, is a Holman orbit, is a Holman orbit.
Absent the use of a continuous thrust engine, or a ruinous waste of payload mass, the time to Mars is a fixed quantity. Particularly if you plan on stopping. The whole point of a Holman orbit is to ballistically "kiss" the destination planet's orbit while travelling at very nearly the same velocity as the planet.
And that's the point of the multiple inner system flybys that a number of recent missions used. Each planetary pass is used steal momentum from that planet to expand smaller orbits into larger ones with a minimum expenditure of fuel, until eventually (if everyone did their sums right) the spacecraft creeps up on its destination slowly enough to chuck a u-turn around the planet and throw out the anchors.
It doesn't matter where you're going, if you're means of travel is primarily ballistic, ie. rocketry, then no shortcut will ever get you there any faster than a significant fraction of the orbital period of your destination. The only shenanigans practical or permissible with rockets is to increase total travel time in order to reduce fuel requirements to achievable levels.
Bigger will always let you send more to the destination, but the fuel requirements for faster travel increase exponentially. Only continuous thrust technology can break that impas.
That's a "Hohmann orbit" though.
Absent the use of a continuous thrust engine, or a ruinous waste of payload mass, the time to Mars is a fixed quantity.
Cranberry-shaped bollocks.
A Hohmann orbit is optimal for minimal delta-V. Time is unimportant. Who does that except space miners lobbing completely unimportant space rocks through the system?
Not mentioned in the article, but also quite important, is that the SLS is faster than Falcon Heavy. If you lob something towards the outer solar system with SLS, it'll get there a lot sooner. For manned flight to Mars, that matters a lot.
Payload is not the only spec that matters.
You're not going to be launching an inter-planetary craft in one shot anyway.
The cramped quarters of Apollo was okay for a couple of days to the Moon and back. Not for months to Mars. A Martian ship is invariably going to be BFR-scale. If it isn't BFR, then it'll be something assembled in-orbit that gives you that much volume (and then powered by Ion Engines or similar). For manned missions it doesn't matter because you're only going to LEO or a near-Earth orbit anyway for transfer into your interplanetary vehicle.
Every single one of the planned SLS launches is to the Moon, with the upcoming ones building the LOP-G space station. Not Mars or anything. There was a planned launch to send Europa Clipper to orbit Jupiter, but the Trump administration's NASA budget proposal has indicated that mission will likely be flown on a commercial launcher instead.
By the time SLS is ready to go anywhere beyond the Moon, SpaceX's BFR will be able to send more mass faster, and even more so with in-orbit refueling.
This seems logical to me. While SpaceX are doing awesome work, they still have a long way to go. When Elon sits $8bn on top of one of his rockets and launches it into space, he can argue NASA should. I don't think, sensibly, SpaceX should want this responsibility at this point.
If it blows, who pays to build another? How long will that take? What science are we missing in the mean time? And probably of most concern to SpaceX, what damage will it do to their rep?
ISTM whichever outfit (or government) can demonstrate a LEO rocket assembly capability will make the need to launch monolithic large payloads in a single shot, obsolete.
We have been told that LEO is half way to anywhere in the Solar System simply because the energy needed to get the first 200km is the same as that needed to get the next few billion. So why not use a "stepping stone" approach? Costs go up dramatically as distance increases. NASA refuted the LEO is halfway ... argument by considering $$$$ cost, rather than energy / weight requirements. By that measure the Moon is 10 times more expensive than LEO.
But if 2 LEO shots can get a Moon mission to the (energy) halfway point, then it makes the payload goals of the SLS obsolete. All they would need is a platform in low orbit to put all the parts together.
@Pete 2
This was my thought too; SpaceX could concentrate on making the regular Falcon a man-rated booster for putting a small capsule into LEO. There's already a market for this with ISS missions.
If you want to go further into space you can do an unmanned launch of your deep space vehicle on a heavy or ultra-heavy booster and then send the crew up on your Falcon capsule once you're happy that your Mars vehicle (or whatever) is up there and checked out.
The heavy and ultra-heavy boosters are never going to be as well tested as the regular Falcons, because the market won't support the number of launches needed, so it doesn't make sense to risk crews on them when the overall cost of a modular approach will be less anyway.
This was my thought too; SpaceX could concentrate on making the regular Falcon a man-rated booster for putting a small capsule into LEO. There's already a market for this with ISS missions.
Not "could" - are. For precisely that (Commercial Crew Contracts). Just last month they were out throwing a Crew Dragon test article in the ocean developing their recovery procedures.
Until BFR comes along, they'd use the Constellation two-launch architecture for for any longer jaunts. Crew goes up on F9, support module, etc on an unmanned F9 or FH (depending on what you're doing), dock in-orbit and go from there.
" NASA refuted the LEO is halfway ... argument by considering $$$$ cost, rather than energy / weight requirements. "
For the purposes of the Space Race, they were correct, particularly given the issues experienced with docking and navigation demonstrated during the Gemini missions, the limited computer power available and the extremely high risks of the time (remember they were pushing the bleeding edge of oblivion on the moon missions, with QC that was dubious at times - the teardown of Apollo 1 and another capsule after the fire demonstrated how sloppily they were put together and Apollo 13's service module blew apart due to carelessness during testing of its oxygen tank during testing 8 years earlier (the heaters were left on overnight resulting in cracked insulation, the tank was simply put back on the shelf without being properly inspected, nor was it inspected when assembled into the spacecraft.)
For other purposes (regular trips to the moon, other missions to LEO, trips to other destinations) then having a platform at LEO is a cost saver.
However the platform needs to be "large enough" _and_ you need to have enough missions to justify building it. How large is "large enough"? How many missions do you need?
Is there a market for GEO birds large enough to fill a FH or BFR payload bay? (I believe there will be)
If things can be built in say 10 tonne lumps and assembled in space then a number of "smaller" and cheaper launchers makes sense.
But are there things that might want to be put in orbit that can't be modular (because eg either the underlying structure is too big, or assembly in orbit isn't practical because of the complexity)?
What "they" failed to tell you is that all of the planned LOP-G (formerly Deep Space Gateway) components (there are 4 so far) have a mass of 10 tons or less (the first is 8-9 tons). The Falcon Heavy should be completely capable of flying these components to trans-Lunar injection orbit. What it won't be able to do is fly a manned crew capsule at the same time as the components, since SpaceX doesn't plan to human-rate Falcon Heavy, just Falcon 9 and BFR. Flying a Falcon 9 + Falcon Heavy is still about 5-15% of the cost of an SLS flight.
NASA's man managed to deceive some people with cheap justifications for the SLS. The components can fly on Falcon Heavy, and if the SLS program faces any more delays (maiden flight likely delayed to 2020, manned flight to 2022 if not later), it's possible that crew could fly on BFR.
> But are there things that might want to be put in orbit that can't be modular (because eg either the underlying structure is too big, or assembly in orbit isn't practical because of the complexity)?
I can't think of anything, but then I'm no expert. It's fun to think about though. In some ways joining two large structures might be easier in microgravity - no overhead gantry is required!
If SLS has never flown (and from what I've read here, looks like it's quite a way off from the first launch) then how can it be compared in a meaningful way to Falcon Heavy?
That would be like an aircraft manufacturer comparing a rival's in-service airliner to their own pie-in-the-sky, not even on the design boards yet, supersonic sub-orbital intercontinental wonderjet...
What I don't really understand is why, given how they managed to iron out most (if not all) of the problems with the Saturn 5/Apollo combination, they don't try building a new one with modern manufacturing techniques and materials rather than reinventing the wheel completely... it might not be exactly what they want/need but it would give them a current data to work with and it's better than PHBs wasting money in meetings arguing over how to waste the money quickest.
I look forward to any genuine rocket scientists who may have wandered in by mistake explaining why I'm wrong, and the rest of you giving me the giggles when you start quoting manufacturer's estimates as though they are accomplished results...
"That would be like an aircraft manufacturer comparing a rival's in-service airliner to their own pie-in-the-sky, not even on the design boards yet, supersonic sub-orbital intercontinental wonderjet..."
You missed the testing of the SLS booster and the engines. Some sections have already been built for structural testing? "Not on the design boards" is not something that can be levelled at SLS.
The "space" part of NASA is welfare program for smart people. It conceives, engineers, and manufactures horses designed by committee. Each horse is too big, too complicated, too expensive, and too late. It is also a huge employment program to fund House and Senate re-election campaigns. The NASA Moon program jump started nearly every aspect the technology and systems integration and systems management that make our lives better today. Yes, nearly all of it. But the jump start is over. We don't need it any more. Let the government fund the work of 2 or 3 enterprises, let them compete, and save us a huge pile of money to spend on health-care and education. We need the SLS and Orion like we need another real-estate developer in the White House.
" It conceives, engineers, and manufactures horses designed by committee. "
The sad part is that NASA does do some solid work. The inflatable heatshield concept is one which promises to be useful for a number of missions (it means the heatshield can be significantly larger than the spacecraft, which reduces reentry temperatures dramatically and allows much easier aero-steering
SLS is likely to be far more uncomfortable a ride than FH or BFR. I'll be very interested to see the shake force readings from all three (rocket launches are violent as hell and we have to engineer the hell out of payloads to ensure they can survive)
You can't dismiss the fact that NASA is primarily an R&D lab. SpaceX wouldn't exist without the government funded research and development that has happened and continues to happen there. SLS might be the last great NASA rocket but the BFR concept wouldn't exist without the work that's been done on SLS.
Until we have an assembly facility in orbit we will require ultra-heavy lift and we will continue to publicly invest via NASA in developing cutting edge technologies up until the free market enterprise companies actually and fully surpass the public effort. That time will come soon but it isn't here yet.
SpaceX thus far has shown some evolutionary parlor tricks but they still haven't done anything truly revolutionary or taken on any huge gambles like NASA has.
The argument that NASA is an R&D org and not a product org doesn't hold water when discussing SLS. There is very little new technology going into the SLS. In fact, the entire thing was written into law to re-use as much of the Space Shuttle technology and industrial base as possible. Same contractors and same jobs in the same Congressional districts. It's embarrassing that this organization is billions over budget and years behind schedule trying to deliver a new system out of technology established in the 1980s. All for a system that doesn't have any current purpose or concrete future mission. I highly recommend reading The Plundering of NASA by R.D. Boozer for more information on this topic.
SpaceX itself was a massive gamble from the very start.
To says that 'all' they have done is evolutionary is probably true. And yet they are the only people to have EVER done it (ie reusability of S1). So whilst what that have done is evolutionary, what they have done to the launch market is revolutionary.
SLS is the same - its an evolution. As are ALL other rocket projects.
BFR will be the real revolution. And will be REAL heavy lift. Heavier than SLS but at a fraction of the cost. If it works, and I see no reason to believe it won't.
The thing about the cost of rocket launches is that it's not necessarily all that important, depending on the context. For launching a bunch of relatively small satellites into low Earth orbit, launch costs are one of the biggest costs, especially when you're looking at the trend for small groups with similarly small budgets wanting to send up things that you could fit on your desk. And for that sort of thing, SpaceX and others pushing for significantly reduced launch costs has been a big deal.
But for larger missions to send significant payloads to the Moon, Mars, and other distant places, the cost of the actual launch is a much, much smaller proportion of the overall cost. The Mars Science Laboratory mission (including the still running Curiosity rover) has so far cost in the region of $3 billion, with the launch cost being around $140 million. If they'd used a Falcon 9 instead, it might have saved maybe $40m at best. This is why NASA has tended to focus a lot less on worrying about the cost of rockets. No-one looking at manned Moon or Mars missions cares if Falcon Heavy or SLS turn out to be cheaper, because as long as they can get the job done the difference in launch cost will be a rounding error on the total cost of the mission.
The BFR not only has the potential to be cheaper than Falcon 9 to launch, but it can put 150 tons to LEO in reusable mode, and 150 tons to apparently anywhere when refueled in orbit. This allows you to send telescopes and such with much more mass, meaning they can use cheaper components. It also allows you to propulsively land on Mars and other locations, which could help you do the same with rovers since they would no longer need to land using a "rocket crane" or giant bouncing airbag.
"But for larger missions to send significant payloads to the Moon, Mars, and other distant places, the cost of the actual launch is a much, much smaller proportion of the overall cost. "
Yes and no.
The high cost of launchers drives projects to make everything _perfect_ and to pile as much as possible into one mission.
The result is hundreds of prototypes and a shitload of stuff piled onto one spacecraft.
Cheaper launchers would mean more tolerance of failure, which in turn means that fewer prototypes can be churned out and possibly more spacecraft contemplated.
As one example it's been floated that perhaps a dozen Beagles could be built and scattered across Mars. We pretty much know why the original failed (the airbag, resulting in a hard landing, resulting in it not opening) and if it had been properly funded then it wouldn't have been sent out with a used (and patched, and still full of ice crystals) prototype airbag fitted. The cost of a dozen Beagles would be around twice that of the original one and the hard part then becomes hitching lifts on passing spacecraft.
Falcon Heavy compared to SLS is invalid. Like comparing a Dodge ram to a Kenworth.
Now, Musk is known to have bad timeline planning, but it rather seems that he gets to end goal eventually, even if late. BFR will likely happen, and I'm going to bet before SLS and Orion get off the ground, SpaceX will have gotten a load of astronauts to the ISS in once piece.
What I keep running through my mind is BFR Heavy. But then I'm a crazy assed dreamer when it comes to getting humanity off the surface of this miserable swamp.
"But then I'm a crazy assed dreamer when it comes to getting humanity off the surface of this miserable swamp."
It may be a miserable swamp to you but I have difficulty finding anywhere in the Solar System better for human life.
(And can you imagine what a spacecraft smells like after a week or two?)
I wouldn't count on a BFR Heavy. But if Congress really wanted to get bang for their buck, instead of SLS pork for their states, they could pay SpaceX to make the Interplanetary Transport System. That design could get 300 tons to LEO (reusable) and more to other destinations with orbital refueling. Compared to a modest 150 tons for BFR (reusable). And if NASA wanted to waste them like they will with SLS, they would get an incredible 550 tons to LEO, more than four times the best version of SLS.
"Musk is known to have bad timeline planning"
An easily accepted claim, but is it actually true?
Falcon Heavy was delayed by about 5 years. But Falcon 9's thrust and payload capacity increased massively over those years, allowing SpaceX to take customers to orbit using Falcon 9 instead of Falcon Heavy. It would make no sense to fly a Falcon Heavy based on the old, impossible-to-land, expensive-to-refurbish Falcon 9 boosters from years ago.
Falcon 9 was supposed to send crew to the ISS by now as part of the Commercial Crew Program. That will probably end up at least 2 years late. But ULA's Atlas V is also in the running, and has seen the same delays. This could be chalked up to unrealistic NASA standards rather than poor planning on Musk's part. The same kinds of standards that end up delaying the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope for over a decade, but will somehow allow the Space Launch System to carry live human crew on its second flight because it's based on proven designs or something.
BFR has to potential to reach lower launch costs than Falcon 9, so it is slated to replace both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. It is a top priority for the company and the spaceship part is now under construction. It seems like they can get testing underway from 2019-2021, possibly with real launches as soon as 2022.
@ Voyna:
"Better for human life" :
While I realize that climate change is happening, with or without us, I was less referring to the environmental aspects than to the socio-economic-political end of the spectrum. I rather suspect a couple of million miles disconnect would be valuable to acquiring a better group of settings on that front. Possibly not having 7+ Billion other humans about might help my spirit too.
STark is out of print, and DVDs of the 1993 miniseries are no longer available since some rioters set fire to Sony's distribution centre in 2011, apparently. One forum suggests it's on YouTube, but I can't find it.
Ben Elton also write This Other Eden, taking shot at environment poseurs (as opposed to people genuinely working to protect the environment) amongst others, and featuring self-contained biospheres of geodesic construction. It also featured inflatable breasts and spray-on condoms.
But the idea of self contained biospheres is going to be core to any settlement on Mars, and even should we not get that far might provide an Earth-based backup plan against toxic air pollution / nuclear winter / zombies / epidemics etc.
"We cannot allow a mine shaft gap!"
And what parts of the 7+ billion would you like to see eliminated? I think we should start with those who consume many more resources than average, so the US, Canada and Western Europe are the obvious candidates.
So if you could be so kind to gather up your family and go to the closest centre for processing, it will be a step closer to your goal if reducing the population.
All three of Elon Musk's current businesses were underwritten by U.S. tax payer money. For the record SpaceX has a checkered performance history. Tesla hasn't made a dime profit, has multiple lawsuits for fatalities from users of model S vehicle operating in "autopilot" mode, had a model X fatality last week in CA, has been unable to come close to production levels on the troubled model 3 and Musk is being sued by stockholders over the conversion of the solar panel company stock to $500 million in Tesla stock.
The house of cards is likely to fall sooner than later as Tesla is burning through over a billion in cash per quarter. Bloomberg's calculates they will be out of cash by August '18 as they are spending $480,000 per minute with minimal revenues and many unresolved production issues.
Ahh, the old government subsidy attack. It was wrong before and it's wrong now.
Tesla WERE helped in the initial stages by government subsidies. The same subsidies that were available to other businesses. Any business in the same area was able able to take advantage, if they didn't that was not Musk's fault. Subsidies are used by governments all round the world to kick start business and new tech.
Tesla paid back their government loads (not subsidies).
SpaceX were paid to provide a service to NASA (not a subsidy). They have been providing that service cheaper than anyone else, so in fact, NASA have saved money by using SPaceX.
SpaceX performance history is pretty good, checkered is entirely wrong, they have over 50 flights of the F9, with two failures early on, the causes of which have been fixed.
There has been a accident with a ModelX - whoopy doo,. There were 37,461 road deaths in the US in 2016. In the same year 38,658 death by gun. Do you really think that ONE death in a X is statistically significant? Even now I suspect that computer driven cars are safer than human driven ones!
As with any company investment, on the whole the investors know what they are doing. And at the moment they are happy with Tesla. When they start dumping shares, then maybe a cause for concern, but until then Tesla are pretty safe.
All three of Elon Musk's current businesses were underwritten by U.S. tax payer money.
SpaceX provides services and does development work to NASA. They were not underwritten or subsidised outside of some initial start-up funding which was available to all-comers - not a cheque that was specifically cut for SpaceX. This is no more controversial than a government agency paying Dell for computers or a software company for developing a bespoke application. Considering the amount by which SpaceX are now undercutting ULA on ISS Supply missions, that was a very worthwhile bit of investment.
Tesla and SolarCity made use of government incentive schemes, just as other electric car and solar-panel installers did. Why are you levelling special criticism at Musk? What about Nissan or BMW?
Tesla hasn't made a dime profit
Neither has Amazon. Seems like space pioneers are big into "unsuccessful" companies.
has multiple lawsuits for fatalities from users of model S vehicle operating in "autopilot" mode
O rly? There has been one fatality in a Model S and one in a Model X. There has been a separate class-action suit regarding Autopilot, but it is grossly misleading to talk about "multiple lawsuits" in relation to fatalities when each model has been involved in precisely one fatal accident. Yes, "two" is technically "multiple" but that's not what you were inferring or what readers might be reasonably expected to understand from your verbiage.
Musk is being sued by stockholders over the conversion of the solar panel company stock to $500 million in Tesla stock.
Two shareholders specifically. The remainder of Tesla's (many) investors have not felt sufficiently outraged to join the suit. That is perhaps telling. It's also not an obvious slam-dunk considering it's still rumbling on 12 months later.
There was a report that through to 2017 Nasa had spent 20 billion on sls and orion development. in comparison Spacex spent 300mil on the falcon 9, 300mil on the dragon capsule, a billion on reusability development. A billion on the falcon heavy development. Bfr development to the first launch will probably 2-2.5 billion because they need to build a new factory. So you have to wonder what the hell did Nasa spend that 20 billion on because it wasn't the engineers, they don't get paid that much. The answer is in the report, Nasa paid themselves 72% of that money for 'overheads', which is guys writing reports and doing research and for gold plated paper clips i expect. Thats for one section of Nasa employees not all of it and not including the build costs to lockheed Boeing etc.who got collectively about 5.5 billion left over after Nasa's 'overheads'.
In comparison spacex overheads cost 0.5-1 billion a year and considering its only one rocket system spacex is doing comparable work. So value for money is in the region of 10-1. And its not new engineering for the sls, a lot of its components were developed 10 plus years ago. They can't say we have huge research costs because we are developing entirely new technology. Only a tiny part of their budget is spent on new research most of it was all designed and researched many years ago. 50% of their overhead spending or more can't even be accounted for and what can be is just rehashing of old research and deliberately over complicated and expensive ways of doing things so they can charge as much as possible for producing as little as possible. They will milk the old technology as they have been, to line their pockets and delay cost cutting technology like reusability as long as possible because that would mean they get less money to waste from the American taxpayer. (who is being defrauded i think). So they don't want to legitimize falcon heavy or bfr by any means and put at risk the golden goose called SLS. So the statements from them that they can't afford to launch SLS unless congress gives them more money are highly questionable. If they were not paying themselves 72% of the 20 billion that congress gives them per year for their 'overheads', they would have enough money. If they were not providing 1/10th value for money then they would have plenty of money.
To the question what payloads will be suitable for bfr to gain experience and prove its reliability and to keep it fully employed , the answer is spacex will be a major user of the bfr for its own satellite constellation, 2 of which are in orbit now being tested, then the satellites will be built on mass and dozens of bfr launches will be required to put them all in orbit. This is why spacex is not hanging about because it needs the capacity to launch large batches of its own satellites. Falcon heavy will be used before bfr is ready and they intend to create a larger fairing for it in case bfr is delayed because its not weight constrained but capacity constrained at present. I know Nasa has done some great work there are great people working there but the people running it have paid themselves very well for doing it and often provided substandard technology. They didn't need to have o rings that was a design choice because it was more expensive to do things that way and they knew it increased risk. So whatever happens with this SLS programme its a compromised and fraudulent deception on the public using old technology in the most expensive way possible and Spacex aught to distance themselves from it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
