NASA's Megarocket, the Space Launch System, Rolls Out To Its Launchpad
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NASA's Megarocket, the Space Launch System, Rolls Out To Its Launchpad
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Odds depend on just how far these Shuttle contractors have fallen from their heyday in the '80s. We know they can't do shit without a blank check, but the SLS program has had a blank check for many years now, so...who knows?
Their cynicism is bottomless, but that doesn't rule out the ability to be competent in a purely technical / non-financial sense.
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I'm pretty sure there's a guy up high on the gantry, messing with the rocket. Looks like there might be a black cat on his shoulders.
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You might want to be a little careful mentioning the possibility of ISIS being inside any US government facility...:-P
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You have to wonder just how long it will take for them to build a second one?
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"The timing is interesting too. Right after they could no longer use Russian engines."
It takes longer than a month to design and build.
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The "Russian Engines" literally have nothing to do with this thing. Those were being phased out regardless, and are used on Titan rockets, which have a completely different use case than the SLS.
You're basically saying that the timing of the release of the Ferrari F1 car is interesting due to bikes being expensive.
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Titans never used Russian engines. They used hypergolic engines by Aerojet.
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You are correct. Atlas, not Titan.
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The rocket is the one on the left.
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What a waste to spend money on disposable rockets. Transfer all non-executive workers to SpaceX and give them the funds. Flushing money down a non-reusable toilet is wasteful. There is no credible non-contrived logic to it.
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Fuck that. SpaceX is already getting plenty of our tax dollars, and doing just fine. There's plenty of other things that actually need funding.
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sure just wait for a private corporation to figure it out for us. that's always what works. right?. crypto, cloud, broadcast media, news, water rights, human rights....
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WTF does your comment have to do with what I said?
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Yep - let's ditch the SLS, which was already made mostly obsolete by Falcon Heavy, and will be rendered completely irrelevant by Starship. Get NASA out of the rocket business, which they haven't *really* been in since what, the Saturn V? And cast their cost-plus contractors adrift to prove themselves in the market, if they can.
Instead NASA could spend those billions on, I don't know, getting serious about developing a lunar outpost. Maybe throw some more money in SpinLaunch's direction as well - that tech
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It wouldn't have been a waste if they'd been able to deliver on time. In 2011, reusing shuttle-derived components to build a super-heavy launch vehicle in five years was plausible.
Remember, Block 1 of this thing was supposed to be delivered in 2016, and lift 95 tons to LEO; that's 50% more than Falcon Heavy in *expendable* mode, and more than any other operational system *as of today*.
The concept was almost sound, but had one fatal flaw: all the shuttle-derived bits were sourced non-competitively. Congress *mandated* SLS as a jobs program.
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Also the little problem that they're using engines designed in the 70s, with money no object, to be reusable, and dumping them in the ocean with each launch.
SLS was always destined to be super expensive, regardless of the usual US military-industrial complex shenanigans. It was a reasonable stopgap until something better could be made post-shuttle, or as a flagship project to the moon or Mars. Until was more than a decade late and SpaceX happened.
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Sure, it's a shame that they're throwing away those magnificent engines, but that's not what's driving the cost of the SLS up. It was supposed to be a half billion dollars per launch, even with throwing the engines away. Now it's 8x that much.
I agree that *on paper* i t was a reasonable stopgap; the problem is that the paper didn't include the lack of incentives to keep on schedule and within budget. If the reward for failure is more money, you get failure.
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My goodness, what a stupid discussion, even for today's Slashdot. No insult intended, but you do seem to be right in the middle of the stupidity, so I'll try to explain. Boy, trying to explain something in today's Internet climate? Now I sound stupid.
It's the weight thing. The more weight, the more fuel you need. That includes the weight added for "reusable" features, but mostly the cost explosion comes from the weight for the extra fuel needed to soft land the reusable features. Various factors make the en
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far better to give the SLS to the companies that built it, and then allow them to bid on launch service.
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The only reason this thing exists is to give factories that used to make Space Shuttle parts something new to make in order to keep the powerful congressmen and senators who's districts and states include said factories and who are concerned about losing votes if those factories (and the jobs they provide) go away.
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Isn't this amazing!
Spending billions of tax dollars on moving a heavy object horizontally back and forth!
I can't wait until they decide to move it vertically.-
You're saying it like blowing government money on prostitutes isn't an ancient tradition in many parts of the world.
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In the time it takes for this thing to roll back and forth between the construction hall and launch pad, SpaceX can launch, crash, redesign, and modify 3 Starships. Fail fast...
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The more relevant thing is that for the money it takes for this thing to roll back and forth, SpaceX can launch, crash, redesign, and modify multiple Starships... Letting these entrenched assholes even have any money represents a real theft from the American people, because it's money wasted. There's simply no need for this project at all.
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Don't forget this launch, when it finally happens, will be the only one to ever use that $1 billion mobile launch platform.
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If the launch is this summer or even this year, no way. If the schedule slips again to a summer in some year, I'd bet on Starship being first.
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Heh - conspiracy theory of the day: the FAA's hesitancy to approve Boca Chica for even a handful of orbital test flights is actually a ploy to let SLS look somewhat relevant on its big day.
I mean, if SLS is already a remote second best before it ever leaves the ground, what was all that congressional pork for? Could look rather bad for a few key Senators.
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Actually except for the first few kilometres, moving horizontally is the way to go. Getting to parking orbit is horizontal, translunar injection is horizontal, moon capture is horizontal, moon departure is horizontal.
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Is it just me or does this thing look like some badly aged (hopefully flying) rust bucket? Is the budget THIS tight, or did NASA run out of paint?
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If Walmart had a space station, this thing would look right at home parked in orbit.
"Just stopped in for some space beer, a bag of space dog food, and Kanye's greatest hits on vinyl." - future space Walmart shopper
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The budget *is* "THIS tight". The mass budget on the rocket that is. The red "rusty" part (it's not actually rust, it's spray-on insulation layer) is basically a repurposed Space Shuttle External tank. They used to paint them white during early Space Shuttle missions (like on this photo: click [wikipedia.org]), but they stopped after realizing that the paint itself weighs about 0.5t IIRC, and that's a 0.5t you have to carry into space instead of payload. Pretty hefty price to pay just to look cool.
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I'd have to assume OP was referring to photos like this one: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbo... [vox-cdn.com] Obviously that's not the rocket, but I can agree that wheeling your billion dollar vehicle out on something that looks like it was rescued from a scrap yard isn't a good look.
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Yes but maybe if the foam was painted it might not have come loose as easy and damaged the wing on the shuttle. Just a possibility.
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Paint is heavy, and not terribly useful on something you're only going to use once and then throw away.
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more like sucker's launch system.
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I still can't see this phrase without hearing the original "Mortal Combat" theme song play in my head.
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"Kombat," sorry.
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That's just you. It's common phrase that's been used for a very long time.
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Toasty!
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Maybe, but the odds against SLS are so enormous, you'd never make any money.
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The FAA is blocking SpaceX with its bogus and endless "environmental review." The FAA keeps postponing the report. It is now way overdue. They are still struggling to find a native turtle or reptile that gets scared by rocket engines.
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And each flight will burn up $4B. Why don't they ditch it and just use the Falcon Heavy and eventually the Starship system? Oh that's right - politics.
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When the choice and spending was pending nearly a decade ago, the choice was to have at least 2 heavy lift options to orbit. We may be 6 months away from the united states 2 nearly heavy lift manufactures competing on price and delivery timelines. Currently the heavy lift options are none operational. Both consortiums need to do about 5 flights each rate each platform for human spaceflight. 100 tons to near earth orbit and 40 tons to translunar is a real sweet spot on cargo lift. Either system must get stuff to orbit 95% on parameters of the time. It is a 5 year testing program to see if there is a lighter, safer and more economical way to get humans in space with the gear to go to the moon than a 600 ton Saturn 5 Rocket.
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Interesting. Do you happen to know if the Falcon Heavy has that lift capacity? The Starship is projected to have 100+ ton to orbit capacity.
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The Falcon Heavy is quite a bit smaller than the Starship or SLS. It has about 2/3 the capability.
It's just not in the same class.-
Such a shame that the Saturn V was allowed to just fade away - to build that and then just let the design rot. It is really horrendous that NASA chose to create SLS - essentially the same capability as we created in the 60s - not reusable. I am glad that they have learned from SpaceX. Are you familiar with the COTS (Commerical Orbital Technology...?) program headed by Dan Rasky? It bridges NASA and commercical space startups.
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Agreed. I don't think reusability was realistically on the table at that point since NASA's funding model makes them rather allergic to "try until we succeed" development, even for secondary objectives like landing. But why design a whole new rocket rather than resurrecting the old flight-proven design that's more capable than even the "end goal" version of the new one?
I suppose it makes sense in the context of using existing shuttle part manufacturing to get something flying within only a few years, but
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I think they just lack a charismatic visionary _technical_ leader - like Werner von Braun. Without that, it is "design by committee" like you say.
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The SLS isn't a "whole new rocket". It's just Space Shuttle parts rearranged.
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It's important to note that while FH is not in quite the same class as SLS and Starship, there's currently very little demand for the extra capacity. At present I believe that all of the missions planned for SLS could actually be handled by a FH
Payload comparison to LEO:
Falcon 9 - 23t if expended (16t if landing booster)
Falcon Heavy - 64t fully expended (57t center-expended, 30t if landing all three boosters)
SLS - 95t Block 1, fully expended (105t Block 1B, 130t Block 2... both requiring further developmen
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... looking down from SpaceX and Amazon vehicles.
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If by Amazon you mean Blue Origin, then you're only looking down on the SLS for about 5 minutes at a time.
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5 minute more... lol
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B-O achieves "orbit" for only about 90 second; It's debatable if the apogee is indeed an orbital altitude, and they don't truly orbit the earth, just punch through a line in space and drop back for landing.
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In all likelyhood, it will work just fine. This is because of the most pathetic aspect of the SLS. What you're looking at is literally Space Shuttle parts. The engines, including the booster segments, have been used on previous launches. Even that tank is basically just a Space Shuttle tank.
Now think about that. All they did was move a bunch of Space Shuttle parts around for the last decade, but they managed to spend billions of dollars on it. And I'm not even including the Orion capsule, because it was de-
NASA does deep space telescopes, probes and rovers like nobody else. They are truly the best at that. The actual launch vehicles themselves? Tesla has totally dunked on them in that area. The only real purposes for SLS is keeping a bunch of local companies in the space launch game just in case Elon Musk has a massive stroke or heart attack and nobody similar can take the reins. Which is a legitimate concern, since I doubt that Musk has thought much about succession questions.
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What you're looking at is literally Space Shuttle parts. The engines, including the booster segments, have been used on previous launches.
I haven't really followed SLS. But it looks like the thing is a space shuttle external tank + 2 SRBs, and they say it uses RS-25 engines, which are the same as the shuttle? So SLS is literally the launch system for the shuttle, but instead of strapping a shuttle onto the side of the assembly, they put the Orion module at the top?
And this took them how many years?
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why are we wasting time and money making space trucks to deliver cargo to deep space when we can barely make it into orbit
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Umm... what are you smoking?
We make it to orbit just fine, cheaper than ever thanks to Falcon 9.
The primary purpose of SLS is to carry bigger things to orbit. One of those bigger things is eventually supposed to be a little space truck for deep space missions, but with luck that will be cancelled before it ever gets off the drawing board.
Starship's primary goal is arguably to be "good enough" to haul large payloads into deep space and enable Elon's dream of a Mars colony... bbut its primary business goal is
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getting into obit "just fine" should have been a mundane thing like a train ride at this point, not a news event that it actually happened while everyone involved puckers their butt and holds their breath. If private companies want to take it up fine good for them, we need space exploration, fully agree, but just one launch of this government funded space truck, could fix a lot of low hanging fruit issues here in the states
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