Of course people are going to talk about SpaceX. They're the only ones who have rockets that land. It's because of this that SpaceX launches more mass to orbit than the rest of the world combined. Since last year, the majority of satellites ever launched have been put into orbit by SpaceX.
You might as well suggest a Godwin's law for phone discussion where someone mentions Apple.
One of those is sub orbital still afaik, the other is a beautiful work of engineering but very much retired due to the complexities of the design and is more of a spaceplane than a rocket.
Regarding Blue Origin, if you can pad the margins of your vehicles heavily because you don't need to reach orbit, then it's a lot easier to make a vehicle reusable. This is why Scaled Composites could relatively easily throw together a vehicle that could perform this back in 2004.
NASA and the DoD had orbital programs (Delta Clipper) vertically landing rockets back in the early 1990s.[1] Funding shortfalls eventually killed the program before it could reach its potential.
Not quite. SpaceX is willing to be push the limits of cash incineration where others are not, and that explains all of their progress. They boldly go where no-one has gone before, raising $10B so far and looking to raise more as we speak. This is standard operating procedure for Musk companies; burn cash to attempt to boil the ocean, then brag brag brag about how far ahead they are.
I find it kind of refreshing (and rationally optimistic) that Falcon 9 launches are as uneventful as Airbus 320 flights. I sincerely hope one day space launches are considered a nuisance like airports are in cities that grew around them.
SpaceX wouldn't exist without US government funding.
"...NASA awarded the first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract to SpaceX in December (2008), thus financially saving the company." Give the bureaucrats some credit.
That's a spicy take, but I fully agree with you, and it's a shame you're getting reflexively downvoted instead argued against. SLS is a hugely expensive pork-barrel project that's basically the same as Atlas in the 1960s, and Artemis is an equally pointless rehash of the Apollo program. Neither will meaningfully advance the state of anything.
If I have learned anything from my time in technology, it's that nothing is ever optimal. As much as we fight it, the world is run on big balls of mud. I for one will always celebrate any success from NASA no matter how contrived the path to get there was. Sometimes it just takes compromise to accomplish something.
From the article: “The primary goal of Artemis I is to thoroughly test the integrated systems before crewed missions by operating the spacecraft in a deep space environment, testing Orion’s heat shield, and recovering the crew module after reentry, descent, and splashdown.”
Artemis I is a step in the Artemis Program, which has the stated purpose of building a sustainable human presence on and around the moon. https://www.space.com/artemis-program.html
Elsewhere in this discussion thread there's also cynicism as to why NASA isn't using cheaper / more efficient SpaceX hardware. I won't go into arguing all the criticism that's thrown at the edges, but instead simply point out that NASA has awarded SpaceX a $1.15b contract for second Artemis mission. https://spacenews.com/nasa-awards-spacex-1-15-billion-contra...
I'm downvoting because they're naive about long-term planning and political momentum, they're stating as fact potential alternate futures that would be far from certain, and they're wishing catastrophic failure to a complex program that would also represent a failure of engineering and safety standards, leading to its own set of negative conclusions.
They pretend that NASA/Congress would just say "whee, full tilt SpaceX" right away if SLS failed, and I don't see the evidence.
> SLS: payload 154k pounds, not reusable, 3B per rocket
> SpaceX Starship: payload 220k pounds, 100% reusable, 10m estimate per reuse
AFAIK the former is a shipping product while the latter, the Starship, hasn’t shipped yet, right?
> Even if you take the argument that Starship has not flown and the prices are not there yet- 3 falcon heavy rockets can lift the same payload today at a fraction of the cost.
If that’s true, why would SpaceX develop a whole new craft for the intended payload if they could do it with existing hardware (the 3 falcon rockets you cite)?
Starship is fully reusable so it will cost a small fraction of falcon heavy to send a much bigger payload.
The cost of sending a payload to orbit will plummet once starship is operative.
More importantly Falcon Heavy uses the Merlin engines and runs on RP-1. So, unlike methane, it cannot be produced on Mars.
Starship is very real and did an 11 engine static fire last week.
I have a hard time understanding the stance of “if it’s not ready exactly when SLS launches then it’s not comparable.” We are talking about decade spanning technologies and investments here
That's not Starship, it's the Super Heavy booster. The actual payload part is separate, and I don't think they've been combined in a single test so far.
It's not a flying rocket, and it may yet need significant adjustments before it gets there - especially given that SpaceX has a very iterative development model.
Also remember that the current Starship design requires a completely unproven technology (in-orbit refueling) to be able to reach the moon - it can't do so in a one-shot manner like SLS will hopefully succeed today. That piece of the mission alone may significantly alter the capabilities and costs.
These are decades long investments and technologies. The next Artemis doesn’t launch for something like 2 years. Starship/Superheavy will be flying by then. I don’t see the point of declaring non-compete just because it’s not flying at exactly this moment.
SpaceX’s refueling for approach may need iteration but they have shown incredible ability to iterate. It’s also cheaper by orders of magnitude.
If you were running a business and deciding on a 5 year vendor contract, would you just ignore the vendor who had a 10x better product but required you to wait a bit (and you were not in a rush?)
> Starship has absolutely undergone extensive testing and continues to do so
That is the Starship module part. I edited out a portion where I indeed incorrectly claimed that Starhsip module hasn't been tested, and replaced by pointing out that the combination of launch vehicle (super heavy booster) + starship hasn't been tested. When comparing "Starship" with SLS, we actually mean the whole two-stage rocket, not simply the part of it named Starship.
> The next Artemis doesn’t launch for something like 2 years. Starship/Superheavy will be flying by then.
This remains to be seen. It was supposed to be flying this year, or even last year in some older estimates. As we've seen from SLS itself, (6) years of delay for these types of subjects are not surprising.
> SpaceX’s refueling for approach may need iteration but they have shown incredible ability to iterate.
Absolutely, but iteration necessarily implies changes in the current design - which is why I'm saying we don't actually know what the final version of Starship will support.
> If you were running a business and deciding on a 5 year vendor contract, would you just ignore the vendor who had a 10x better product but required you to wait a bit (and you were not in a rush?)
It depends on how confident I can be, and in how little of a rush I am. If I think they will deliver the first copy of the 10x better product 5 years from now, I may well award a 5 year contract to the vendor of the 0.1x product today, and have something to work with for the next 5 years.
"Let's be very honest again," Bolden said in a 2014 interview. "We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.
So if I were you I would shut up, just in case, given that SLS flew 7 years later than expected and Bolden was destroyed for his laughable interview.
Falcon heavy is delivering real payloads, Starship will do the same soon, SLS will maybe fly another time of two before retirement.
I can’t wait to see your post next time that SLS will fly.
Sure, we'll have to wait and see. I hope you also agree that, if Starship is also delayed 7 years, the decision to go with SLS was not in fact a problem, even if it only flies once or twice a year and is completely replaced by Starship after 7 years.
And SLS is a rocket that is built, and already launched to space. Starship is a fewer dream of Musk, launching in August, no, September, no October, no November or like, soon
Fever dream, and yes, since Tom Mueller left their ability to build reliable engines has declined substantially. Elon's inflating ego is going to get him burned. Unfortunately he's not a reliable road to the Moon and Mars.
And Elon is supposed to fly people to the moon in 2023. But keep in mind, Elon has been talking about Starship for longer than the SLS was being planned. Starship (under other names) was officially announced and work on the Raptor engines Starship uses started at the same time as the SLS.
Raptor is a breakthrough engine. If NASA with nation state resources and 23B is 6 years late, let’s cut SpaceX some slack for building a profitable launch business with multiple successful vehicles while also being very close with Starship.
> As of 2019, only three full-flow staged combustion rocket engines had ever progressed sufficiently to be tested on test stands; the Soviet Energomash RD-270 project in the 1960s, the US government-funded Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated powerhead demonstration project in the mid-2000s,[6] and SpaceX's flight capable Raptor engine first test-fired in February 2019.
I don't see how the breakthroughness of the Raptor engine is relevant. It's one of the reasons that Starship is cheaper to launch. If you want to say "without that, Starship would be operational" you also have to say "without that, Starship would be more expensive"
1. Efficiency is not an American value. The society almost always chooses decentralization over efficiency. For good and ill, the SLS project looks like America.
2. I don't think SpaceX is lacking talent at this point. Their primary constraint is time, not money. The Starship will fly when it's ready.
3. Three Falcon Heavy rockets can't launch the same payload as a single SLS. Cost per payload mass is only one factor. Maximum payload and the physical dimensions of the fairing are often equally important constraints. And those, rather than the price, are the main reasons why the Starship looks so promising.
The SLS is not $3b per rocket. Those numbers, just like the numbers everyone trotted out for the Space Shuttle, are NASA's manned spaceflight budget divided by the number of launches per year.
It's not an accurate cost for the SLS, you don't come up with the cost of a SpaceX launch by taking into consideration their whole operating budget. Even your Starship cost is inaccurate by half, a single Starship launch can only get it to low Earth orbit with just enough fuel to land. To get anywhere interesting a Starship needs to refuel in-orbit, a capability SpaceX has yet to demonstrate even at the small scale. So every Starship launch needs a second buddy launch to refuel in orbit.
The SLS is not a perfect launch system but it's actually flying right now. Starship is still years out and requires unproven and as-yet undeveloped technology. It'll be interesting when it flies but it's a lot of undelivered promises at the moment.
> or the benefit of humanity it is unfortunate that the SLS did not blow up on the launchpad
This is genuinely one of the most vile and disgusting things I've read on this thread so far. Cheering on the hypothetical destruction of people's hard work to create a significant engineering and technological milestone is so fundamentally antithetical to the hacker ethos that I can't believe you found it acceptable to put that into writing in such a crass manner.
> Imagine what SpaceX could have produced for $21b
Considering the vast majority of SpaceX's technical achievements are built on the back of the American taxpayer (through use of public-domain NASA documentation and blueprints as well as government contracts), likely not much. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, SpaceX's strengths lie in their crack team of software engineers for which you can credit their advances in reusability, not necessarily their hardware.
It's extremely tiresome to see individuals so cynical that their bias against government-funded research and technology manifests in such an ugly way, especially against the backdrop of such a magnificent success story despite overwhelming odds. Good night.
They are the only current player building with stainless steel.
Software alone doesn’t let you catch a rocket out of the air when it lands.
We literally just pulled out old shuttle engines from storage for today’s launch. And new ones will cost 146M a pop. And they aren’t as sophisticated as the SpaceX Raptor.
Government's role is more than just launching rockets at the lowest price point. People deride pork barrel politics and contracts going all over America, but supporting communities is part of the mandate of a government. NASA funding is also partially possible, as politicians can say it is supporting jobs. If they couldn't justify it like that, NASA funding would be a lot less.
SLS: payload 154k pounds, not reusable, 3B per rocket, currently on its way to the moon
SpaceX Starship: payload ??? pounds, ???% reusable, ??? estimate per reuse, hasn't flown once
Taking Elon numbers for what Starship might one day be and comparing it to the SLS which is actually working right now is entirely misplaced.
If and when the numbers turn out to be true, then I will join in congratulating an extraordinary accomplishment from SpaceX. We are nowhere close to that though at the moment, so let's reserve judgement of how Starship may or may not compare to SLS.
Well, imagine you were an engineer working a decade on this rocket. You wouldn't want the outcome you described.
SLS Development started in 2011, I suspect decision to build was way before (budget had to be allocated after all). SpaceX first F9 launch was June 2010 and landing was Dec 2015. On 2011 they were awarded contract to develop launch escape system for Dragon for preparation of crew launch.
I mean at the time SLS was planned everyone was laughing Elon off at the idea of landing a rocket. SpaceX was new kid on the block and not yet as trusted and reliable as we view them today. I think it wouldn't have been a wise decision to: "No, let's not develop a rocket for us to go to moon, let's wait maybe some commercial launcher will have so much success and resources that we will do it so much cheaper after 10-15 years."
So, what I want to say - SLS looks like an old-time-space participant, and if capabilities will be here (I sure think so), it will be much cheaper to achieve moon landings.
Honestly I had the opposite reaction about the video. Compared to the polished on-rocket camera angles and real-time telemetry we get from a SpaceX launch, tonight's grainy footage of a white spot speeding away into the distance overlaid with a monochrome low-res technical readout felt like a step backward.
I was surprised they didn't show any view from on-board cameras. Even on later Shuttle launches they had cameras on the solid rocket boosters and the external tank.
The stream did show a heavily corrupted video for a few moments that could have been from the rocket. So I guess they had cameras, but maybe had problems receiving the signal from them.
The "media" stream on YT showed the on-board cameras continuously until a few minutes ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA9UZF-SZoQ) Not sure why the main NASA stream only cut to them briefly
The main NASA stream (which I watched the launch on) lacked a lot of things I'd prefer.
While they did have a time-graph line, it wasn't relatively spaced just integer ticks along the line.
No list of upcoming steps (1-3 next events) with associated -T+ timestamps they should happen at.
Most glaringly, while they did have a T clock up at some points, there was not a single, always in the same spot, T-clock, and they had a like 90 min hold at T-00:10:00 which is absolutely useless for viewers. It was tough peeking in every so often to tell what they were even waiting for with so many 'ad's / filler segments of videos that should be on the website / youtube in a press kit.
Seconded. I enjoyed the launch (which I watched on several streams carrying NASA coverage). Ultimately, NASA gets money to launch payloads not entertain people, but there is a great opportunity to increase public excitement and engagement. SpaceX's production formula (which built on NASA's) seems quite successful.
I agree I want to see a scaled timeline with upcoming milestones. I'd like to see basic telemetry (speed, alt, attitude) and a T count at all times, (with an estimated launch time (L-time) before launch). I actually like the way ISRO and ESA present time vs altitude and time vs velocity graphs with an expected line and an actual telemetry line. So I'd welcome something like that.
We got video from some engineering cameras later on in the launch, but the more the merrier; views of Earth from the rocket can be spectacular. Of course there's a practical matter of support for them and TDRS downlink bandwidth, but I think the outreach value of them should be a consideration for NASA.
After launch, for a quick moment can be seen frozen images from inside the decoupling tube, so it is my guess that something did not worked as expected. The only detail I did not liked is someone decided to introduce some unforgivable images of the probe rendered with CGI, without warning to the viewers about the source (Perhaps telemetry data was expected to be overlayed on that image?)
Yeah, correct! Though my typo still stands I suppose as it's only streaming in 4k at the moment. Can't wait for them to punch in (zoom in) tomorrow! I am UTC+1 and I should probably take a nap after TLI. That was a good time!
I think the paint job (or lack of paint job) on Artemis makes it look smaller to me than the Saturn V rockets. When I saw a diagram showing the relative sizes of different rockets I was surprised that it was around the same size as the Saturn V.
Same goes for SpaceX’s super heavy. I don’t get much of a sense of the size from photos.
Yeah getting the sense of scale from SpaceX rockets is really hard. The various Starbase streams usually have a "woah" moment for me when you finally see people standing next to our working on some of the features of the various hulls as a point if comparison.
I think you don't really appreciate how big the Saturn V (and similar) are unless you see the museum pieces in person. I grew up near a place that had one of the engines up on poles so you could walk under the bell and look up... kind of spooky to stand there and imagine the violence of the thing running.
Same for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Saturn V is truly jaw-dropping to see in person, especially as you round the corner and see the gargantuan engines fill your view. The rocket is hung from the ceiling horizontally, allowing you to walk underneath its entire length. An unforgettable experience.
Should have launched in 2015 for the cost of 12 billion.
Launched in 2022 for the cost of 23 billion.
It costs 3 billion per launch. (As per Wikipedia)
And it is recycled Space Shuttle design and material.
Compare that with Space X Falcon Heavy launch costs of 100-150 million per launch.
Falcon Heavy is not designed for crew. Starship is but is still under development. On the other hand, this launched today. We can afford the extra cost, I celebrate the success.
As far as I understand Starship can only reach LEO and requires refueling from several refueling missions while in orbit for longer missions. Great if spacex is able to pull it off, but it is years if not decades until they get there.
> downplaying the difficulties of on orbit refuelling.
Every single person I've heard say this hasn't given a reasonable reason why it's difficult other than "we've never done it before". Also on-orbit refueling has been done, just not with cryogenics. Additionally it's only been done in zero-G with bladders. A slight vehicle spin to settle tanks seems like it would be sufficient to feed some low speed pumps without bladders.
Starship didn't even exist other than in the form of some slides and early test articles as of 3 years ago. Now it's a fully built vehicle with one almost completed pad and one pad in early construction, getting very close to launch.
Predicting decades when it took them only 3 years to go from "nothing" to on the pad is a bit much.
“Let’s be very honest, We don’t have a commercially available heavy-lift vehicle. The Falcon 9 Heavy may some day come about. It’s on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.”
If in 2014, when this was said, NASA asked and funded SpaceX to human rate Heavy, they’d have launched already.
Not designed for crew does not mean much, there is nothing inherent about that rocket that means you can't put a crew capsule on it. hell, project mercury slapped one on an atlas icbm. The aprophical story was that the astronauts could feel the rocket seeking to fulfill it's ballistic missile targeting duties when the signal from the ground stations cut out momentarily. which I don't believe for a minute, but it does make for a good story.
> there is nothing inherent about that rocket that means you can't put a crew capsule on it
But there is; gold standard for human rated missions is 98% reliability rate. This means testing every single component, and making sure that Product(Px) > 0.98 where Px is the probability failure of component x. This drives the cost up exponentially. E.g. if the rocket has Px = 0.99 and the crew capsule has Pcapsule = 0.99, then Psystem = 0.98, barely clearing the threshold.
Falcon 9 had 3.5 failures out of 185 launches, giving it a Pfalcon9 = 0.98; PfalconHeavy then is,at most, 0.98^3 = 0.84, way too low to make it human-rateabale.
The difference between Procket 0.84 and P0.99 is exponential cost.
Falcon Heavy has never had a launch failure. It's 4/4
If you're arguing it's had a failure because it shares heritage then SLS was 133/135 before the launch which is worse
and so shouldn't fly crew until it does way more than just one flight.
First, one should not apply statistics retroactively until you hit large numbers.
Second, I am talking about design goals, not track records. You don't evaluate the safety of a large system by running it a lot of times and see what happens - you design the thing towards a goal of safety. So this involves designing each component to the specific failure rate, and testing individually, then then testing together, documenting every step, to provide traceability of every change on every component.
The comparison to historical data on Falcon is not entirely valid, because we don't know the design goals of Falcon, etc. Just because Falcon 9 is human rated, doesn't mean Falcon Heavy is human rated, etc.
Small nit: this assumes all components are series. You can also increase reliability through parallel (i.e., redundancy). Obviously, this may not work for all systems.
“Abort to Orbit” constitutes a mission failure and therefore doesn’t increase reliability. It decreases severity (and therefore lowers risk) by limiting loss of crew/spacecraft, but it’s not quite the same as increasing reliability
Take a look at NASA STDs and you’ll understand there’s a world of difference between the requirements levied on human rated flights. Those extra requirements dramatically increase cost.
The quiet secret is that CCP can bypass a ton of requirements that NASA can’t. That is, until they do something like lose an astronaut and then I suspect they will get much more oversight.
Falcon Heavy was not needed to be designed for crew, and the base rocket IS designed for crew. The only thing AFAIK that would make it "designed for crew" is a whole lot of NASA paperwork, and some throttling profiles to reduce peak accelerations.
There’s a lot more for consideration. All that “NASA paperwork” covers things to ensure the design meets specific risk thresholds.
For example, human-rated system usually are a no-go with a single point of failure that can cause a loss of crew. If that does exist, they either need to redesign or get everyone to agree to the new risk assessment.
That’s not really a fair comparison. That 3 billion bought us a launch that lasted from July to November. With Falcon Heavy you typically only get the one day.
Just a little reminder: Space X is leveraging decades of research and billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars put into this industry already. It didn’t start from scratch as some scrappy upstart that is now showing some sloppy, bloated government boondoggle up.
Not to mention you’re comparing apples to oranges. I suppose a decade from now after NASA has done all the work to lay the foundation when Musk comes in and brags about how much cheaper his version is we’ll see a similar narrative.
True, but SpaceX is at least advancing the "state of the art" with reusable rockets, whereas Artemis is just recreating a single-use moon rocket, which was already done with Saturn 5 more than 50 years ago.
The 'state of the art' that SpaceX is pushing is nearly entirely a software thing aided by Falcon's unique engine arrangement. Hardware-wise Falcons are no more advanced than an SLS core stage, and are likely even ore technically primitive than most LVs. If SLS' mission criteria included an emphasis on reusability, NASA would have a fully reusable booster + core stage by now.
This decision was entirely due to doctrine. STS was designed as a mostly reusable product and failed costs-wise, so the government basically forced NASA to go with something expendable instead. It is genuinely impressive that SpaceX proved that reusable launch vehicles can be made cost-effective, but it's nowhere near the kind of massive quantum leap that SpaceX's legion of hardcore followers seems to be convinced it is. Everything on a Falcon or a Dragon is public domain 60s technology besides the code and guidance hardware (based on COTS components). The same is likely be true of Starship, which explains a lot of the significant teething issues it has suffered over the past several flight tests.
We are always standing on the shoulders of giants. That is going to be the case always in the future.
However it is a question what SLS will do when they run out of these engines that's cost is in the same ballpark per piece as a full Falcon heavy. Or something like that. And those are just the engines. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...
SpaceX is making significant breakthroughs that you can appreciate if you understand the tech.
> As of 2019, only three full-flow staged combustion rocket engines had ever progressed sufficiently to be tested on test stands; the Soviet Energomash RD-270 project in the 1960s, the US government-funded Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated powerhead demonstration project in the mid-2000s,[6] and SpaceX's flight capable Raptor engine first test-fired in February 2019.
> Everything on a Falcon or a Dragon is public domain 60s technology besides the code and guidance hardware
What a nice way to belittle the enormous significance of their achievements.
Reliability, total mass to LEO/GEO/TLI/Whatever, and $/kg in each of these cases, coupled with an amazing launch cadence, are where you can see the magnitude of the progress they've enabled. Whether you do it with expendable or reusable vehicles, burning RP-1, methane or a custom mixture of concentrated Jack Daniels and dog hair, doesn't really matter. They do it reliably, often and amazingly cheaply. SLS does none of that, and neither do any of the other launch systems.
Also if you value their improvements so little over "public domain 60s technology", how come nobody else did it in 50 years?
Come on, Elon is immensely questionable, but SpaceX is awesome (thanks in no small part to Gwynne Shotwell!) and SLS is... not, but at least it finally launched and didn't even blow up, so let's celebrate that instead of turning this into an opportunity to disparage them.
You are going in circle here. SLS won't have many launches because it's too expensive, and they can't build more than one per year.
The cost and the tendency of its launch being scrubbed makes it a risk for any time sensitive mission, as shown by NASA decision to switch Europa Clipper to Falcon Heavy:
SpaceX seemed very scrappy to me, certainly an upstart, and their costs seem offer of magnitude lower. They also seem to have pushed the boundaries of technology, eg by landing boosters - not just on land but also at sea. I think the accusation that they just copied existing technology is untrue.
I think it’s fair to say that SpaceX has done innovative work here too. And if the SLS and Starship launches go as planned, SpaceX will have launched Starship many times before Artemis launches a second time. And Starship will be able to launch for 1/30th the cost, at a significantly higher launch cadence.
I will personally be surprised if SLS still exists in a decade.
Just remember I am saying “if Starship development goes according to plan” which I think is reasonably likely but of course not guaranteed.
Yes, it's fair to say SpaceX has done innovative work. It's not fair to compare the cost of something that is an incremental improvement on a huge body of engineering knowledge to what NASA is doing, here.
And this comparison always comes up in the context of "evil inefficient gubmint stealing our tax dollars versus awesome private corporation showing how it should be done".
> It's not fair to compare the cost of something that is an incremental improvement on a huge body of engineering knowledge to what NASA is doing, here.
Just to be perfectly clear, are you saying SLS development also results in a lot of engineering knowledge? If so can you highlight what that knowledge would be -- propulsion, material, efficiency, avionics, manufacturing?
What NASA is doing here is an incremental improvement on a huge body of engineering knowledge, at best. SLS is a bunch of Shuttle technology assembled into a multi-billion-dollar disposable rocket, not to serve the needs of NASA but as a Congressional jobs program for legacy contractors.
From an engineering point of view, I don’t understand how you can imply that “what nasa is doing here” is more impressive than what SpaceX is doing. Perhaps I have misread your implication, but I believe the SpaceX rocket to be far more innovative than SLS.
As far as government spending, I’m far from a free market advocate. But I would rather see the government spend money effectively. If SLS will cost, say, ten billion dollars over the next decade to complete three more flights, I’d rather see the government buy $1B in services from SpaceX to ensure they finish development of Starship, securing rides on a rocket which is 1/30th the launch costs, and then spend the other $9 billion on social housing programs to alleviate homelessness in the country.
My point is not that I believe free markets will magically solve any problem we can imagine, but that a specific solution to the problem of heavy lift space vehicles that shows real promise is already nearly complete. I simply believe it would be a better use of funds to invest in that system than to continue to burn money on SLS. And the government understands this as it has awarded some money to SpaceX for moon missions with Starship. So they’re finding the much cheaper private option and the very expensive NASA option. And I just think that’s a poor use of funds given what each project promises.
NASA and contractors are also leveraging decades of research and billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars put into this industry already, or have the same opportunity for leverage and are failing to effectively leverage it.
Yet - they did it. It's actually done now. Amazing feat. NASA should be granted more funding, and in my opinion it should come out of the military budget. That's going to be a controversial opinion, I know.
How would this solve the massive issue of politicians deciding on the technology based on what will maintain industry and funding for their electorate? Throwing money around isn't actually necessarily the right thing to do, no matter how noble you think a cause is (although in this case obviously that applies to a lot of military projects too).
More realistically funding for NASA probably needs to be decoupled from political will in the specifics and it should be allocated a yearly budget that it can spend however it wants with no pork barreling.
It's not just recycled Space Shuttle materials, though - the program (if it ever gets far enough) will run out of recycled Space Shuttle launch hardware after 3 or 4 flights... at which point the plan for additional launches is to use new hardware (theoretically with improved performance) that is still in the process of being designed and built.
To me, that seems to be the worst of both worlds: all the cost and headaches of developing an effectively new launch system, but doing so shackled to a launch vehicle design that's dominated by ideas from the late 60s.
And in the case of the engines, once those existing engines are used, Aerojet Rocketdyne has to spin up a new assembly line, and they are essentially a sole source contractor, so they can charge nearly whatever they want.
So what started out as a grand idea to reuse old Shuttle hardware ends up with Aerojet Rocketdyne charging $146 million per engine. Each. And there are four of them.
Those engines were designed to be re-usable and each were used on multiple Space Shuttle flights. Besides the huge cost, it seems super wasteful to be strapping them on to an expendable rocket!
The point is that there are multiple ways to spend that money in a way that makes "thousands of jobs possible". You could fund healthcare, and spend the money for doctors, nurses and infrastructure.
Or you could spend it on education. Or research.
It's good in my opinion to have the conversation.
As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal. Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
Great you looked it up, and thanks for posting fresh numbers!
In such conversation, it's also important to look at the return of investment, note the diminishing returns of large endeavors, and consider the exploration-exploitation dilemma[0].
The way I see it:
1. Americans would definitely want to cut down the military spending a bit, because of diminishing returns/waste and how it perverts the US politics (once you have all that combat hardware and trained warriors, you feel the itch to use them). But, despite popular opinion, I think it's important to remember that this military spending is buying relative calm and peace for the entire Western world, so it's not all wasted. Unfortunate reality of human condition is that, until we invent some new, surprising technologies (including social technologies), militaries will be needed to maintain peace.
2. Healthcare and education in the US arguably has more than enough money. The problem isn't the funds, it's their allocation, and the corruption.
3. NASA is, for the most part, your most high-tech part of the "exploration" arm of the exploration/exploitation tradeoff (whereas education, healthcare, and anything you could describe related to maintaining a standard of life, is on the "exploitation" side). US is already (IMO) spending too much on the exploitation side relative to exploration, compared to optimum, so if you want to rebalance the budget, I'd focus on cutting some exploitation spending (but, for your own self-preservation, add some more money to infrastructure maintenance).
agreed, but in this case this is of course a part of the package deal: the only way for nasa to get their sls is to be a glorified jobs program for congress. So the price must be seen in that light, too. A clean comparison on price may not be possible.
Some of the money trickled down into fundamental rocket related research.
Lots of the money went into the pockets of tens of thousands of tradesmen and tradeswomen -- welders, fabricators, machinists, NDT technicians, etc -- who further developed their skills, passed it onto newer generations of workers, and ensured manufacturing skills don't become lost to time. The same manufacturing skills that will be used to make the technology and infrastructure we need to continue to live dignified, modern lives.
It went into the pockets of engineers -- who continue on a tradition of engineering established since the first space race. Some of them would have taught and mentored the ones who would go on to make rockets at all the New Space startups, including SpaceX. Others will take their skills to other fields.
It went into the pockets of hundreds of small businesses who contract with the makers of the SLS.
Could we have been wiser with the money? Can we be more effective? Sure. But it is not all for naught and quite frankly if we are to continue as a modern first world society, making sure the skills and tech that go into making a rocket stay alive is just as important as funding healthcare, education and research.
And tonight, there will be some kids inspired by the footage of the most powerful rocket ever made by humans to pursue careers in manufacturing and engineering.
This is not just "creating jobs." This is making sure another piece of a cornerstone of American technological dominance stays alive so we can continue to maintain the standard of living we have now.
$23 billion is a small price to pay. Social media sites have been sold for much more.
> This is not just "creating jobs." This is making sure another piece of a cornerstone of American technological dominance stays alive so we can continue to maintain the standard of living we have now.
There's something deeply disturbing in this passage. I hope I'm not the only one seeing it. It sounds like you think the global stage is a zero sum game, and the only way to maintain the current standard of living is to assert dominance.
To clarify with an example: in a group stranded on a desert island, without enough food for the whole group, I think a good strategy would be:
* share the available food fairly
* work to get more food
The mindset of the passage I quoted would probably lead people in this situation to, instead, try to get as much food as possible for themselves.
> There's something deeply disturbing in this passage. I hope I'm not the only one seeing it.
Yes. This "disturbing thing" is, unfortunately, the cold, hard reality of the world.
> In a group stranded on a desert island, without enough food for the whole group, I think a good strategy would be: \n\n* share the available food fairly\n\n* work to get more food
Yes. Unfortunately, the entire recorded history and everything you see happening every day provides an unending stream of hard evidence that this strategy is not naturally possible for humans to take. The entire enterprise of society and civilization is, in a sense, about making it so that people take your strategy more often than the obvious one, which is for groups and individuals to hoard enough to minimize perceived risk to their own survival.
Additionally, the idea behind a competitive, free market, is that this very nature can be exploited for good of all, if the effort can be directed towards methods of hoarding that actually grow the pie.
I'm not an American, but I do recognize that "American technological dominance" in this technology is a big part of what kept my neighborhood (Europe) in peace for the past few decades. Americans would be wise to recognize that this is a big part of what makes your country rich.
I don't think GP sees space industry, or the economy, as zero-sum game in an absolute sense. But it obviously is in the relative sense, and it's the relative sense that also translates into geopolitical importance.
(And FWIW, I suspect bringing this up is another kind of "make people complaining about space industry funding go away", because again, this kind of argument typically resonates with them. Commercial and scientific space sectors, as well as enthusiasts, tend to lean towards cooperation, "citizens of the world" kind of thinking. Space exploration is actually one of those things that encourage this view.)
Well, not directly SLS itself but some of the money probably allowed the NASA centers to keep their lights on and allow for their researchers to go off and do their own thing.
> Or you could spend it on education. Or research.
Or military. Or political campaigns. Or grift.
> It's good in my opinion to have the conversation.
This conversation has been had to death. NASA gets table scraps anyway. Also this whole program is research, and of the quite practical kind.
> As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal.
It's not. It's just something that's being brought up to make the people saying to gut NASA "because education! healthcare!" go away, because it usually resonates with them.
> Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
Yes, that's the long-term point of the whole endeavor, and of possible line items on the Federal budget, space historically had quite a good ROI here.
You’re missing the key piece: we can still spend the money on NASA programs but demand 10x more productivity and cost reduction of their vehicles. Let’s see them turn on a dime and out compete any private venture.
So all points still stand: money goes into the economy and jobs, but the workforce becomes more competent, cost aware and sharp.
I don't think you can just cut funding to NASA and expect them to become more efficient. They'll just do less with the same efficiency they have.
The issue here is that a lot of what NASA does is not driven by current market needs. They're doing speculative, curiosity-driven R&D, on the extreme end of the "exploration" arm of exploration/exploitation tradeoff. Even though evidence to date tells us NASA spending (and space exploration in general) has a huge RoI, and there's good reason to suspect it'll continue to be huge indefinitely, it's not easy to quantify in terms and on time horizons the market understands[0]. NASA having less money just means less R&D being done.
Now, I agree the way they go about things could be improved in terms of efficiency. But, unlike with for-profit companies, budget is the wrong knob to turn. Something else must be changed. I have no idea what[1].
Also, one has to be careful comparing e.g. SpaceX and NASA in terms of costs, because for the former, rocketry is a service they sell. NASA isn't there to be in the business of affordable rocket launches, it's there to be in the business of expanding what's possible.
--
[0] - In particular, the market has a really hard time dealing with the idea of work that enriches the society at large - which, from company/investor point of view, is just enriching random third parties.
[1] - In a sense, using money for this in the market economy is a way to side-step figuring out what the problem is - the threat of running out of money makes the companies individually try and do something, and either it works or they die. Obviously, this approach can't work in non-profit R&D.
Yes, but. Boeing is a tricky case, because it's a strategic company for the US - in the actual, military/security sense of the word: the US government is willing to burn money with them in peace time, so their expertise and factories exist and are available during war time.
If you want to compare SLS and Starship, just recall that the SLS started development after the Falcon 1 flew and at that time SpaceX had been talking about a SuperHeavy for 6 years. Work on the Raptor engines started around the same time. If you hold them to the original launch date, in terms of "time since deal signing", we already would have seen the return of the 9 people who paid for a flight around the moon on a Starship.
In the grand scheme of things, I don't care about 11 billion as much as I care that it's done and moving.
Also, I cannot find a wikipedia citation for $3 billion/launch. I found one for $2.3 billion/year for SLS launches.
> We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch at a cadence of approximately one mission per year.
> The cost per launch was calculated as follows: $1 billion for the Orion based on information provided by ESD officials and NASA OIG analysis; $300 million for the ESA’s Service Module based on the value of a barter agreement between ESA and the United States in which ESA provides the service modules in exchange for offsetting its ISS responsibilities; $2.2 billion for the SLS based on program budget submissions and analysis of contracts; and $568 million for EGS costs related to the SLS/Orion launch as provided by ESD officials.
Oh, if you go beyond the SLS itself to include all the ancillary costs, then yeah. But adding those same ancillary costs to Starship (assuming it costs SpaceX $150MM to launch it) brings the total to over $2 billion/launch. The payload, people on the ground working for months during the mission, etc. are all included.
> Oh, if you go beyond the SLS itself to include all the ancillary costs, then yeah. But adding those same ancillary costs to Starship (assuming it costs SpaceX $150MM to launch it) brings the total to over $2 billion/launch.
I just used the same inspector general report as the person I was responding to. Literally that PDF. If you read how they determined $4.1 billion/launch, and change the SLS line item to "Starship, $150MM" it runs to over $2 billion a launch.
It's obviously inflated, as I took the whole lifecycle of the company and technically they still haven't completed it yet (Because that and starship is what the whole company has been working towards since inception)
They've received around $10B[0] in funding. About 3.2B [1] in fed payment, with about $13B, in appropriated funding. I would say they've launched a number of private missions as well that made them a profit.
well NASA does alot more than launches. They have telescopes, a portion of the ISS, and generally conducts advanced research on exploration.
>Now do the cost for SLS based on the total cost to date for NASA and all contractors since inception, including the costs for Apollo and the shuttle.
But I would agree with that sentiment if you only included rocket development. It's not just the cost of that vehicle but also the total cost of the institutional knowledge to get there. Starship might cost _X_, but it's because you already developed reusability and the ability to land the boosters.
Also, the biggest difference between spaceX and nasa is spaceX is verticly integrated where NASA avoids the development of alot of manufacturing capability.
I understand the grievances about delays and overruns, but I am disappointed that the complainers can't for one moment be excited about the most powerful rocket in 50 years launching a crew-capable module further than ever before.
If the world didn't have a plane the size of a 747 for 50 years, and didn't have anything comparable planned when the rebuild was initiated 10 years ago, I'd be pretty psyched.
It’s incredible and the more organisations doing amazing things in space, the better! If SpaceX are focusing on unit economics and repeatable smaller launches, and NASA are still on the big ticket strategy - well, having both can only be a good thing!
I understand your feelings, but this rocket has way too many issues (and I'm not talking technical ones) with it for me to feel happy about it's launch. Also, at least to me, this continues to be a distraction for NASA preventing it from moving into the future. SLS is a roadblock to be overcome, not the future.
It's a re-living of the past rather than a look to the future.
Couldn't NASA have put a little of its giant budget into a presentation that's more appealing than a Wordpress blogpost? I don't think it would just be sugarcoating. Millions of people are passionate about space and billions were around the first moon landing. SpaceX has done a great job reviving this space age excitement with their pre launch interviews, life coverage and analysis. NASA could easily have done the same by directing 0.0001% of their funding to this aspect, but for some reason chose not to.
I'm not sure if we were watching the same livestream, but the official launch livestream was incredibly high-budget and high production values. Felt like you were watching a trailer for Top Gun or Interstellar. It's really funny to me that SpaceX fanboys can't set aside their polemics against SLS for five seconds despite a pitch-perfect launch while Starship fumbles about with inordinate delays and cost overruns -- the exact same thing SLS is most criticized for.
What was wrong with the interviews that NASA did? Some of the celeb stuff didn't do it for me, but know it probably does for some people. And it was neat that they talked to so many Apollo people.
I also thought it was cool that they brought the red team in for an interview shortly after launch. That's not really something they could've planned in advance, but it was super entertaining.
I had my 7 years daughter on my lap during the launch (minutes before school here), I dropped a tear when the engines went on. It had something magical to it. Hope for the future.
I know what you mean. I have a memory of watching a suborbital Mercury Redstone go up, on a B&W TV at age 4 and some months.
I still get a visceral thrill when one of those damn things reluctantly lifts itself up off the ground but then decides to let'er rip and pour on the speed and leap into the air like a frantic beast.
When will society stop wasting time with chemical rocketry and start work on the only scalable approach to space travel with nuclear propulsion. We've wasted over 60 years of development pursuing a path that is physically impossible to lead to real space travel (the energy density/mass of chemical propellants means we waste an enormous amount of energy just moving the propellant into space, let alone the actual payload).
You’re proposing that we should be using nuclear propulsion to get mass from earth’s surface to earth orbit?
The only proposed method of doing this that I’m aware of is nuclear pulse propulsion like project Orion. I think there are a few pretty legitimate reasons that we’re not doing that.
A nuclear salt water rocket has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 40, so you could presumably use a NSWR to launch payloads to orbit. If you're going to turn the launch pad into a radioactive wasteland, might as well go all the way :).
Seems like a weird take to me. Chemical rocketry can meet all of our space "needs" (e.g. satellite launches) and many of our space "wants" (e.g. solar system exploration, large space telescopes). The "chemical" part of chemical rocketry has proven to be pretty economical - the fuel itself is just a small portion of the cost of a rocket. It's building the thing that's expensive.
Why incur the safety hazards of nuclear propulsion or the large fixed costs of something like a sky crane when we've just developed reusable rockets?
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadService module fairing jettison, launch abort system jettison complete : https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/16/service-module-fai...
Core stage main engine cutoff, core stage separation complete : https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/16/core-stage-main-en...
Orion Solar Array Deploy Complete : https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/16/orion-solar-array-...
Perigee Raise Maneuver Complete : https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/16/perigee-raise-mane...
Orion on Its Way to the Moon : https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/16/orion-on-its-way-t...
Orion Begins Checkouts, Completes First Service Module Course Correction Burn : https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/16/orion-begins-check...
---
Orion Spacecraft - @NASA_Orion - 2h
Mission Time: 1 days, 2 hrs, 5 min
Orion is 121,949 miles from Earth, 173,277 miles from the Moon, cruising at 3,076 miles per hour.
P: (-121391, -32858, -6119) V: (-2675, -1419, -540) O: 355º, 331.4º, 316.1º
Track NASA's Artemis I Mission in-real-time : http://www.nasa.gov/feature/track-nasa-s-artemis-i-mission-i...
#TrackArtemis
You might as well suggest a Godwin's law for phone discussion where someone mentions Apple.
Blue origin also vertically land (and the Shuttle also landed)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
For me, personally, flying never gets old.
The launch was flawless; well done to NASA, and let’s hope the 2nd stage performs for the TLI!
A little under half the cost of destroying Twitter?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_6
Elsewhere in this discussion thread there's also cynicism as to why NASA isn't using cheaper / more efficient SpaceX hardware. I won't go into arguing all the criticism that's thrown at the edges, but instead simply point out that NASA has awarded SpaceX a $1.15b contract for second Artemis mission. https://spacenews.com/nasa-awards-spacex-1-15-billion-contra...
They pretend that NASA/Congress would just say "whee, full tilt SpaceX" right away if SLS failed, and I don't see the evidence.
AFAIK the former is a shipping product while the latter, the Starship, hasn’t shipped yet, right?
> Even if you take the argument that Starship has not flown and the prices are not there yet- 3 falcon heavy rockets can lift the same payload today at a fraction of the cost.
If that’s true, why would SpaceX develop a whole new craft for the intended payload if they could do it with existing hardware (the 3 falcon rockets you cite)?
I have a hard time understanding the stance of “if it’s not ready exactly when SLS launches then it’s not comparable.” We are talking about decade spanning technologies and investments here
https://youtu.be/7x1-W7k9V-s
It's not a flying rocket, and it may yet need significant adjustments before it gets there - especially given that SpaceX has a very iterative development model.
Also remember that the current Starship design requires a completely unproven technology (in-orbit refueling) to be able to reach the moon - it can't do so in a one-shot manner like SLS will hopefully succeed today. That piece of the mission alone may significantly alter the capabilities and costs.
These are decades long investments and technologies. The next Artemis doesn’t launch for something like 2 years. Starship/Superheavy will be flying by then. I don’t see the point of declaring non-compete just because it’s not flying at exactly this moment.
SpaceX’s refueling for approach may need iteration but they have shown incredible ability to iterate. It’s also cheaper by orders of magnitude.
If you were running a business and deciding on a 5 year vendor contract, would you just ignore the vendor who had a 10x better product but required you to wait a bit (and you were not in a rush?)
That is the Starship module part. I edited out a portion where I indeed incorrectly claimed that Starhsip module hasn't been tested, and replaced by pointing out that the combination of launch vehicle (super heavy booster) + starship hasn't been tested. When comparing "Starship" with SLS, we actually mean the whole two-stage rocket, not simply the part of it named Starship.
> The next Artemis doesn’t launch for something like 2 years. Starship/Superheavy will be flying by then.
This remains to be seen. It was supposed to be flying this year, or even last year in some older estimates. As we've seen from SLS itself, (6) years of delay for these types of subjects are not surprising.
> SpaceX’s refueling for approach may need iteration but they have shown incredible ability to iterate.
Absolutely, but iteration necessarily implies changes in the current design - which is why I'm saying we don't actually know what the final version of Starship will support.
> If you were running a business and deciding on a 5 year vendor contract, would you just ignore the vendor who had a 10x better product but required you to wait a bit (and you were not in a rush?)
It depends on how confident I can be, and in how little of a rush I am. If I think they will deliver the first copy of the 10x better product 5 years from now, I may well award a 5 year contract to the vendor of the 0.1x product today, and have something to work with for the next 5 years.
Unless I missed something, it seems to me that NASA is being highly strategic and practical, in contrast to theoretical debate.
So if I were you I would shut up, just in case, given that SLS flew 7 years later than expected and Bolden was destroyed for his laughable interview.
Falcon heavy is delivering real payloads, Starship will do the same soon, SLS will maybe fly another time of two before retirement.
I can’t wait to see your post next time that SLS will fly.
> As of 2019, only three full-flow staged combustion rocket engines had ever progressed sufficiently to be tested on test stands; the Soviet Energomash RD-270 project in the 1960s, the US government-funded Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated powerhead demonstration project in the mid-2000s,[6] and SpaceX's flight capable Raptor engine first test-fired in February 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle
If you want to learn more
https://youtu.be/LbH1ZDImaI8
1. Efficiency is not an American value. The society almost always chooses decentralization over efficiency. For good and ill, the SLS project looks like America.
2. I don't think SpaceX is lacking talent at this point. Their primary constraint is time, not money. The Starship will fly when it's ready.
3. Three Falcon Heavy rockets can't launch the same payload as a single SLS. Cost per payload mass is only one factor. Maximum payload and the physical dimensions of the fairing are often equally important constraints. And those, rather than the price, are the main reasons why the Starship looks so promising.
It's not an accurate cost for the SLS, you don't come up with the cost of a SpaceX launch by taking into consideration their whole operating budget. Even your Starship cost is inaccurate by half, a single Starship launch can only get it to low Earth orbit with just enough fuel to land. To get anywhere interesting a Starship needs to refuel in-orbit, a capability SpaceX has yet to demonstrate even at the small scale. So every Starship launch needs a second buddy launch to refuel in orbit.
The SLS is not a perfect launch system but it's actually flying right now. Starship is still years out and requires unproven and as-yet undeveloped technology. It'll be interesting when it flies but it's a lot of undelivered promises at the moment.
This is genuinely one of the most vile and disgusting things I've read on this thread so far. Cheering on the hypothetical destruction of people's hard work to create a significant engineering and technological milestone is so fundamentally antithetical to the hacker ethos that I can't believe you found it acceptable to put that into writing in such a crass manner.
> Imagine what SpaceX could have produced for $21b
Considering the vast majority of SpaceX's technical achievements are built on the back of the American taxpayer (through use of public-domain NASA documentation and blueprints as well as government contracts), likely not much. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, SpaceX's strengths lie in their crack team of software engineers for which you can credit their advances in reusability, not necessarily their hardware.
It's extremely tiresome to see individuals so cynical that their bias against government-funded research and technology manifests in such an ugly way, especially against the backdrop of such a magnificent success story despite overwhelming odds. Good night.
Re-linking my earlier response about Raptor engines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33620423
They are the only current player building with stainless steel.
Software alone doesn’t let you catch a rocket out of the air when it lands.
We literally just pulled out old shuttle engines from storage for today’s launch. And new ones will cost 146M a pop. And they aren’t as sophisticated as the SpaceX Raptor.
SpaceX Starship: payload ??? pounds, ???% reusable, ??? estimate per reuse, hasn't flown once
Taking Elon numbers for what Starship might one day be and comparing it to the SLS which is actually working right now is entirely misplaced.
If and when the numbers turn out to be true, then I will join in congratulating an extraordinary accomplishment from SpaceX. We are nowhere close to that though at the moment, so let's reserve judgement of how Starship may or may not compare to SLS.
SLS Development started in 2011, I suspect decision to build was way before (budget had to be allocated after all). SpaceX first F9 launch was June 2010 and landing was Dec 2015. On 2011 they were awarded contract to develop launch escape system for Dragon for preparation of crew launch.
I mean at the time SLS was planned everyone was laughing Elon off at the idea of landing a rocket. SpaceX was new kid on the block and not yet as trusted and reliable as we view them today. I think it wouldn't have been a wise decision to: "No, let's not develop a rocket for us to go to moon, let's wait maybe some commercial launcher will have so much success and resources that we will do it so much cheaper after 10-15 years."
So, what I want to say - SLS looks like an old-time-space participant, and if capabilities will be here (I sure think so), it will be much cheaper to achieve moon landings.
The stream did show a heavily corrupted video for a few moments that could have been from the rocket. So I guess they had cameras, but maybe had problems receiving the signal from them.
While they did have a time-graph line, it wasn't relatively spaced just integer ticks along the line.
No list of upcoming steps (1-3 next events) with associated -T+ timestamps they should happen at.
Most glaringly, while they did have a T clock up at some points, there was not a single, always in the same spot, T-clock, and they had a like 90 min hold at T-00:10:00 which is absolutely useless for viewers. It was tough peeking in every so often to tell what they were even waiting for with so many 'ad's / filler segments of videos that should be on the website / youtube in a press kit.
I agree I want to see a scaled timeline with upcoming milestones. I'd like to see basic telemetry (speed, alt, attitude) and a T count at all times, (with an estimated launch time (L-time) before launch). I actually like the way ISRO and ESA present time vs altitude and time vs velocity graphs with an expected line and an actual telemetry line. So I'd welcome something like that.
We got video from some engineering cameras later on in the launch, but the more the merrier; views of Earth from the rocket can be spectacular. Of course there's a practical matter of support for them and TDRS downlink bandwidth, but I think the outreach value of them should be a consideration for NASA.
The truth is, NASA’s strategic goals go beyond delivering payloads. E.g., they also have the explicit goal to
“Inspire and Engage the Public in Aeronautics, Space, and Science”
Can't do a timestamp yet as it's still live but it's obviously towards the end. Look for the Replay overlay on lower left.
https://youtu.be/FbX2VuOwJGk
edit with timestamps:
Tracking wide slow motion: https://youtu.be/FbX2VuOwJGk?t=29944
Tracking zoom: https://youtu.be/FbX2VuOwJGk?t=30547
These zoom shots are really freakin cool.
I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't live stream actual 4K HDR content. Modern HD video was 10 years ago.
I think the paint job (or lack of paint job) on Artemis makes it look smaller to me than the Saturn V rockets. When I saw a diagram showing the relative sizes of different rockets I was surprised that it was around the same size as the Saturn V.
Same goes for SpaceX’s super heavy. I don’t get much of a sense of the size from photos.
Should have launched in 2015 for the cost of 12 billion. Launched in 2022 for the cost of 23 billion. It costs 3 billion per launch. (As per Wikipedia) And it is recycled Space Shuttle design and material.
Compare that with Space X Falcon Heavy launch costs of 100-150 million per launch.
Some day Starship will have its moment as well.
This isn't kerbal space program... Fluid's gonna fluid dynamics in a 0g environment...
I bet it won't take more than 5 tries to do a full tank Starship transfer. And SpaceX iterates quickly
Every single person I've heard say this hasn't given a reasonable reason why it's difficult other than "we've never done it before". Also on-orbit refueling has been done, just not with cryogenics. Additionally it's only been done in zero-G with bladders. A slight vehicle spin to settle tanks seems like it would be sufficient to feed some low speed pumps without bladders.
Predicting decades when it took them only 3 years to go from "nothing" to on the pad is a bit much.
If in 2014, when this was said, NASA asked and funded SpaceX to human rate Heavy, they’d have launched already.
But there is; gold standard for human rated missions is 98% reliability rate. This means testing every single component, and making sure that Product(Px) > 0.98 where Px is the probability failure of component x. This drives the cost up exponentially. E.g. if the rocket has Px = 0.99 and the crew capsule has Pcapsule = 0.99, then Psystem = 0.98, barely clearing the threshold.
Falcon 9 had 3.5 failures out of 185 launches, giving it a Pfalcon9 = 0.98; PfalconHeavy then is,at most, 0.98^3 = 0.84, way too low to make it human-rateabale.
The difference between Procket 0.84 and P0.99 is exponential cost.
Falcon Heavy has never had a launch failure. It's 4/4
If you're arguing it's had a failure because it shares heritage then SLS was 133/135 before the launch which is worse and so shouldn't fly crew until it does way more than just one flight.
Second, I am talking about design goals, not track records. You don't evaluate the safety of a large system by running it a lot of times and see what happens - you design the thing towards a goal of safety. So this involves designing each component to the specific failure rate, and testing individually, then then testing together, documenting every step, to provide traceability of every change on every component.
The comparison to historical data on Falcon is not entirely valid, because we don't know the design goals of Falcon, etc. Just because Falcon 9 is human rated, doesn't mean Falcon Heavy is human rated, etc.
The quiet secret is that CCP can bypass a ton of requirements that NASA can’t. That is, until they do something like lose an astronaut and then I suspect they will get much more oversight.
The Orion capsule launched today did not include the ECLSS system.
For example, human-rated system usually are a no-go with a single point of failure that can cause a loss of crew. If that does exist, they either need to redesign or get everyone to agree to the new risk assessment.
Not to mention you’re comparing apples to oranges. I suppose a decade from now after NASA has done all the work to lay the foundation when Musk comes in and brags about how much cheaper his version is we’ll see a similar narrative.
This decision was entirely due to doctrine. STS was designed as a mostly reusable product and failed costs-wise, so the government basically forced NASA to go with something expendable instead. It is genuinely impressive that SpaceX proved that reusable launch vehicles can be made cost-effective, but it's nowhere near the kind of massive quantum leap that SpaceX's legion of hardcore followers seems to be convinced it is. Everything on a Falcon or a Dragon is public domain 60s technology besides the code and guidance hardware (based on COTS components). The same is likely be true of Starship, which explains a lot of the significant teething issues it has suffered over the past several flight tests.
However it is a question what SLS will do when they run out of these engines that's cost is in the same ballpark per piece as a full Falcon heavy. Or something like that. And those are just the engines. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...
> As of 2019, only three full-flow staged combustion rocket engines had ever progressed sufficiently to be tested on test stands; the Soviet Energomash RD-270 project in the 1960s, the US government-funded Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated powerhead demonstration project in the mid-2000s,[6] and SpaceX's flight capable Raptor engine first test-fired in February 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle
If you want to learn more
https://youtu.be/LbH1ZDImaI8
What a nice way to belittle the enormous significance of their achievements.
Reliability, total mass to LEO/GEO/TLI/Whatever, and $/kg in each of these cases, coupled with an amazing launch cadence, are where you can see the magnitude of the progress they've enabled. Whether you do it with expendable or reusable vehicles, burning RP-1, methane or a custom mixture of concentrated Jack Daniels and dog hair, doesn't really matter. They do it reliably, often and amazingly cheaply. SLS does none of that, and neither do any of the other launch systems.
Also if you value their improvements so little over "public domain 60s technology", how come nobody else did it in 50 years?
Come on, Elon is immensely questionable, but SpaceX is awesome (thanks in no small part to Gwynne Shotwell!) and SLS is... not, but at least it finally launched and didn't even blow up, so let's celebrate that instead of turning this into an opportunity to disparage them.
Bare-skin stainless steel rockets?
The cost and the tendency of its launch being scrubbed makes it a risk for any time sensitive mission, as shown by NASA decision to switch Europa Clipper to Falcon Heavy:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/325106-europa-clipper-di...
I will personally be surprised if SLS still exists in a decade.
Just remember I am saying “if Starship development goes according to plan” which I think is reasonably likely but of course not guaranteed.
And this comparison always comes up in the context of "evil inefficient gubmint stealing our tax dollars versus awesome private corporation showing how it should be done".
Just to be perfectly clear, are you saying SLS development also results in a lot of engineering knowledge? If so can you highlight what that knowledge would be -- propulsion, material, efficiency, avionics, manufacturing?
As far as government spending, I’m far from a free market advocate. But I would rather see the government spend money effectively. If SLS will cost, say, ten billion dollars over the next decade to complete three more flights, I’d rather see the government buy $1B in services from SpaceX to ensure they finish development of Starship, securing rides on a rocket which is 1/30th the launch costs, and then spend the other $9 billion on social housing programs to alleviate homelessness in the country.
My point is not that I believe free markets will magically solve any problem we can imagine, but that a specific solution to the problem of heavy lift space vehicles that shows real promise is already nearly complete. I simply believe it would be a better use of funds to invest in that system than to continue to burn money on SLS. And the government understands this as it has awarded some money to SpaceX for moon missions with Starship. So they’re finding the much cheaper private option and the very expensive NASA option. And I just think that’s a poor use of funds given what each project promises.
Sarcasm, but not too much.
To me, that seems to be the worst of both worlds: all the cost and headaches of developing an effectively new launch system, but doing so shackled to a launch vehicle design that's dominated by ideas from the late 60s.
So what started out as a grand idea to reuse old Shuttle hardware ends up with Aerojet Rocketdyne charging $146 million per engine. Each. And there are four of them.
These taxpayer dollars aren't gone, they flow back into the economy. It makes tens of thousands of jobs possible.
People reacted the same over the price of the Perseverance (2.75bn) project, as if somehow all that money was now on the surface of Mars.
Or you could spend it on education. Or research.
It's good in my opinion to have the conversation.
As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal. Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
I was not aware of how the NASA budget compares to US military spending, so I just looked it up.
In Fiscal year 2022 the DoD had $1.94 Trillion allocated to it. Or $1,940 billions. NASA's budget in FY 2022 is $30.62 Billion.
So reducing military spending by 1/64th will free up as many resources as closing NASA altogether.
In such conversation, it's also important to look at the return of investment, note the diminishing returns of large endeavors, and consider the exploration-exploitation dilemma[0].
The way I see it:
1. Americans would definitely want to cut down the military spending a bit, because of diminishing returns/waste and how it perverts the US politics (once you have all that combat hardware and trained warriors, you feel the itch to use them). But, despite popular opinion, I think it's important to remember that this military spending is buying relative calm and peace for the entire Western world, so it's not all wasted. Unfortunate reality of human condition is that, until we invent some new, surprising technologies (including social technologies), militaries will be needed to maintain peace.
2. Healthcare and education in the US arguably has more than enough money. The problem isn't the funds, it's their allocation, and the corruption.
3. NASA is, for the most part, your most high-tech part of the "exploration" arm of the exploration/exploitation tradeoff (whereas education, healthcare, and anything you could describe related to maintaining a standard of life, is on the "exploitation" side). US is already (IMO) spending too much on the exploitation side relative to exploration, compared to optimum, so if you want to rebalance the budget, I'd focus on cutting some exploitation spending (but, for your own self-preservation, add some more money to infrastructure maintenance).
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[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit
I get the whole monopoly of violence logic here but remember your clarifying, end point. "the entire Western world".
Because go ask anyone from the middle east if they think the US military is buying calm and peace.
Lots of the money went into the pockets of tens of thousands of tradesmen and tradeswomen -- welders, fabricators, machinists, NDT technicians, etc -- who further developed their skills, passed it onto newer generations of workers, and ensured manufacturing skills don't become lost to time. The same manufacturing skills that will be used to make the technology and infrastructure we need to continue to live dignified, modern lives.
It went into the pockets of engineers -- who continue on a tradition of engineering established since the first space race. Some of them would have taught and mentored the ones who would go on to make rockets at all the New Space startups, including SpaceX. Others will take their skills to other fields.
It went into the pockets of hundreds of small businesses who contract with the makers of the SLS.
Could we have been wiser with the money? Can we be more effective? Sure. But it is not all for naught and quite frankly if we are to continue as a modern first world society, making sure the skills and tech that go into making a rocket stay alive is just as important as funding healthcare, education and research.
And tonight, there will be some kids inspired by the footage of the most powerful rocket ever made by humans to pursue careers in manufacturing and engineering.
This is not just "creating jobs." This is making sure another piece of a cornerstone of American technological dominance stays alive so we can continue to maintain the standard of living we have now.
$23 billion is a small price to pay. Social media sites have been sold for much more.
There's something deeply disturbing in this passage. I hope I'm not the only one seeing it. It sounds like you think the global stage is a zero sum game, and the only way to maintain the current standard of living is to assert dominance.
To clarify with an example: in a group stranded on a desert island, without enough food for the whole group, I think a good strategy would be:
* share the available food fairly
* work to get more food
The mindset of the passage I quoted would probably lead people in this situation to, instead, try to get as much food as possible for themselves.
Yes. This "disturbing thing" is, unfortunately, the cold, hard reality of the world.
> In a group stranded on a desert island, without enough food for the whole group, I think a good strategy would be: \n\n* share the available food fairly\n\n* work to get more food
Yes. Unfortunately, the entire recorded history and everything you see happening every day provides an unending stream of hard evidence that this strategy is not naturally possible for humans to take. The entire enterprise of society and civilization is, in a sense, about making it so that people take your strategy more often than the obvious one, which is for groups and individuals to hoard enough to minimize perceived risk to their own survival.
Additionally, the idea behind a competitive, free market, is that this very nature can be exploited for good of all, if the effort can be directed towards methods of hoarding that actually grow the pie.
I'm not an American, but I do recognize that "American technological dominance" in this technology is a big part of what kept my neighborhood (Europe) in peace for the past few decades. Americans would be wise to recognize that this is a big part of what makes your country rich.
I don't think GP sees space industry, or the economy, as zero-sum game in an absolute sense. But it obviously is in the relative sense, and it's the relative sense that also translates into geopolitical importance.
(And FWIW, I suspect bringing this up is another kind of "make people complaining about space industry funding go away", because again, this kind of argument typically resonates with them. Commercial and scientific space sectors, as well as enthusiasts, tend to lean towards cooperation, "citizens of the world" kind of thinking. Space exploration is actually one of those things that encourage this view.)
Is how to use seventies-era parts to build a new rocket really a field of research?
Or military. Or political campaigns. Or grift.
> It's good in my opinion to have the conversation.
This conversation has been had to death. NASA gets table scraps anyway. Also this whole program is research, and of the quite practical kind.
> As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal.
It's not. It's just something that's being brought up to make the people saying to gut NASA "because education! healthcare!" go away, because it usually resonates with them.
> Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
Yes, that's the long-term point of the whole endeavor, and of possible line items on the Federal budget, space historically had quite a good ROI here.
So all points still stand: money goes into the economy and jobs, but the workforce becomes more competent, cost aware and sharp.
The issue here is that a lot of what NASA does is not driven by current market needs. They're doing speculative, curiosity-driven R&D, on the extreme end of the "exploration" arm of exploration/exploitation tradeoff. Even though evidence to date tells us NASA spending (and space exploration in general) has a huge RoI, and there's good reason to suspect it'll continue to be huge indefinitely, it's not easy to quantify in terms and on time horizons the market understands[0]. NASA having less money just means less R&D being done.
Now, I agree the way they go about things could be improved in terms of efficiency. But, unlike with for-profit companies, budget is the wrong knob to turn. Something else must be changed. I have no idea what[1].
Also, one has to be careful comparing e.g. SpaceX and NASA in terms of costs, because for the former, rocketry is a service they sell. NASA isn't there to be in the business of affordable rocket launches, it's there to be in the business of expanding what's possible.
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[0] - In particular, the market has a really hard time dealing with the idea of work that enriches the society at large - which, from company/investor point of view, is just enriching random third parties.
[1] - In a sense, using money for this in the market economy is a way to side-step figuring out what the problem is - the threat of running out of money makes the companies individually try and do something, and either it works or they die. Obviously, this approach can't work in non-profit R&D.
In the grand scheme of things, I don't care about 11 billion as much as I care that it's done and moving.
Also, I cannot find a wikipedia citation for $3 billion/launch. I found one for $2.3 billion/year for SLS launches.
> We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch at a cadence of approximately one mission per year.
> The cost per launch was calculated as follows: $1 billion for the Orion based on information provided by ESD officials and NASA OIG analysis; $300 million for the ESA’s Service Module based on the value of a barter agreement between ESA and the United States in which ESA provides the service modules in exchange for offsetting its ISS responsibilities; $2.2 billion for the SLS based on program budget submissions and analysis of contracts; and $568 million for EGS costs related to the SLS/Orion launch as provided by ESD officials.
Gonna need a source for that.
The only figure for the development cost i can find online is “more than $500 million.”
From https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-o...
They've received around $10B[0] in funding. About 3.2B [1] in fed payment, with about $13B, in appropriated funding. I would say they've launched a number of private missions as well that made them a profit.
[0]https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... [1]https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?q=spacex+UEI_NAME%3A...
This is not just inflated, it’s 100% bogus - this is not a reasonable way to estimate development costs for a launch vehicle.
>Now do the cost for SLS based on the total cost to date for NASA and all contractors since inception, including the costs for Apollo and the shuttle.
But I would agree with that sentiment if you only included rocket development. It's not just the cost of that vehicle but also the total cost of the institutional knowledge to get there. Starship might cost _X_, but it's because you already developed reusability and the ability to land the boosters.
Also, the biggest difference between spaceX and nasa is spaceX is verticly integrated where NASA avoids the development of alot of manufacturing capability.
Let's just celebrate this moment, for a moment.
It’s hard to be excited about a new 747 from Boeing that flies one way and then you throw it away.
Artemis is not changing the economics of space in any way. Just going back to the moon is not very interesting IMO.
It's a re-living of the past rather than a look to the future.
NASA needs a better brand management team with swift authority to demand sub teams to abide by the identity standards.
I also thought it was cool that they brought the red team in for an interview shortly after launch. That's not really something they could've planned in advance, but it was super entertaining.
I still get a visceral thrill when one of those damn things reluctantly lifts itself up off the ground but then decides to let'er rip and pour on the speed and leap into the air like a frantic beast.
The only proposed method of doing this that I’m aware of is nuclear pulse propulsion like project Orion. I think there are a few pretty legitimate reasons that we’re not doing that.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php...
Why incur the safety hazards of nuclear propulsion or the large fixed costs of something like a sky crane when we've just developed reusable rockets?