The Standard Model Imploding?

[rcain]

...
As I recall, they were previously fired from the USS Glacier (AGB-4) circa 1957 in Antarctica.

looks like a fun way of getting tourists into space to me.

i'm starting to wrestle inwardly with issue of tethering cables

[rcain]

rcain, SpaceX is planning to launch their Flacon Heavy next year. This has a payload of 55 (and with later improvements even more) metric tons.
The SLS has a payload of 70 tons at first and in later stages is supposd to have 130 tons of payload, though I am not sure whether these are english tons or metric tons (I dont think the senate knows either).
The thing is that even though the SLS has on paper a higher payload capability than the Falcon Heavy a single launch with the thing is going to cost about 1.5 billion USD IIRC.
A launch with the Falcon Heavy only costs 60 million...
You can launch a lot of Falcon Heavies for that 1.5 billion.
Anyway, with the current budget NASA will only be able to do a launch of the SLS once every two years. It is to expensive otherwise. Unfortunately, development and the standing army for manufacturing of new SLS rockets and the launch crews still have to be paid, whether you launch once or many times.
The development cost including the Orion capsule until the first unmanned testflight in 2017 will be 18 billion USD. Then it will cost an ADDITIONAL 23 billion to do yet another unmanned testflight in 2019 and a manned testflight in 2021.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... for%20$18B

Yeah, you hear right 2021 and that only if we dont see cost overruns and time overruins. The senators does not care about that. They dont expect the thing to ever take off. They just want to keep the money flowing to their districts.
The thing is that it is not even in the best interest for their districts. Texas would actually benefit more from the commercial space industry. SpaceX is already employing hudreds of workers in Texas and is planning to expand that. But Hutchinson is for some reason for wasting money on the SLS. I think that there is some heavy lobbying and campaign financing from the usual suspects going on. I really dont have any other explanation for this sort of insanity.
Talking about super heavy lift provided by commercials. SpaceX has plans for future launch vehicles that can do that as well, though I think that the Falcon Heavy is already on the upper end of what you really need. I know that Elon Musk rather wants to try reusability.

falcon = 60m$/55T
SLS = say 1500m$130T

yep factor of 10 at least out there. well spotted. (if your figures are correct).

certainly on that basis they have discovered no economies of scale and seem to offer little or no advantage to the existing market.

i dont know what else to suggest.

[93143]

(if your figures are correct)

They aren't.

Just FYI, Skipjack basically has no idea what he's on about...

[Betruger]

@Betruger: do you have a link to anything, re the NSF assessment?

It's from memory but I don't remember the exact thread... It was recent though. Within the last month or two. I can't recall if it was in its own thread, or as a tangent. Sorry

If I remember, I'll link to it.

[Skipjack]

They aren't.

Just FYI, Skipjack basically has no idea what he's on about...

Yes, they are. I posted links to back them up and I can post several more. In fact my cost projections for the SLS were OPTIMISTIC. The SLS would have to launch twice a year to meet the projected 1.8 billion cost per launch.
I think it is YOU, who has no idea what he is talking about.

[KitemanSA]

i'm starting to wrestle inwardly with issue of tethering cables

I've lost track; is this in re tethered wind power or tethered space launch?

[rcain]

i think it started off at "No Higgs" then rapidly fragmented and ended up a hybrid. what you said. (i was contemplating cheap 'lift'.)

[93143]

They aren't.

Just FYI, Skipjack basically has no idea what he's on about...

Yes, they are. I posted links to back them up and I can post several more. In fact my cost projections for the SLS were OPTIMISTIC. The SLS would have to launch twice a year to meet the projected 1.8 billion cost per launch.
I think it is YOU, who has no idea what he is talking about.

First off, a launch on Falcon Heavy costs about $80-125M according to SpaceX, not $60M. And that's only sustainable at a launch rate of 10 Falcon 9s and 10 Falcon Heavies per year. And it's 53 tonnes, not 55.

Second, no, your SLS numbers are wrong and your link does not back them up (even leaving aside the "2015" typo in reference to the accelerated scenario, which actually goes to 2025 and does include work on a lander). Perhaps you're reading total SLS+MPCV+21CGS costs as SLS alone? The launcher itself, once developed, should have somewhere between $1B and $2B fixed costs (the graphs in the "leaked" Budget Availability Scenarios document the WSJ got hold of seem to imply the low end of that, but it's hard to tell; the document is blatantly and egregiously not a cost estimation document), and costs maybe $300-400M incremental to launch with the upper stage, or ~$200-300M without it.

Please note that at the same upmass rate as SpaceX (690 tonnes per year), the launch rate for SLS 130-tonne is 5.3/year (or 7-10/year w/o upper stage, assuming the payloads all go to LEO, like the Bigelow BA-2100 - which incidentally doesn't come close to fitting on a Falcon Heavy either volume-wise or mass-wise).

Falcon Heavy still beats SLS solidly on $/kg (assuming their numbers are reliable), but SpaceX's launchers are narrowbody with short-duration kerolox upper stages, which makes them virtually unusable for exploration (and suboptimal even with a long-duration depot-fed US).

EELV Heavy does not beat SLS on $/kg (well, it's within the error bars at that upmass rate). The difference is due to SpaceX's radical approach (which has yet to be proven in the long haul), not to any unique massive lack of efficiency in SLS. Even with the inevitable efficiency hit from government involvement, it does okay.

The key technical reason to have SLS is that a true HLV makes manned exploration architecture design much easier, since you don't have to cram everything onto launchers that were designed to put unmanned comsats in GTO. (For this reason, a straight comparison at the same upmass rate is misleading.) The other key reason is that it props up political support for NASA as a whole, without which exploration (manned or otherwise) will not happen. (It would have been nice if we could have saved the decades of irreplaceable experience NASA has built up over the years, but it's almost too late for that now - MOD has been decimated, for instance, and the Shuttle flight software team (arguably the best software development team in the world) is gone. It's Saturn->Shuttle all over again, and this time it might be worse.)

I guess Congress is just going to have to step up and provide funding for a lander. But if you think they're going to do that more readily if you take away SLS, I think you are horribly mistaken.

[Skipjack]

First off, a launch on Falcon Heavy costs about $80-125M according to SpaceX, not $60M. And that's only sustainable at a launch rate of 10 Falcon 9s and 10 Falcon Heavies per year. And it's 53 tonnes, not 55.

Yes, I mixed it up with the prices for the Falcon 9.I appollogize. The launch cost is still about 1/20 of the projected launch cost of the SLS.
It says nowhere that this launch cost requires a sustained launch of ten a year. I quoted the payload capability from memory. I think that 55 tons is close enough to 53. We will see how the real payload numbers for the SLS will turn out versus the projected ones.

The launcher itself, once developed, should have somewhere between $1B and $2B fixed costs (the graphs in the "leaked" Budget Availability Scenarios document the WSJ got hold of seem to imply the low end of that, but it's hard to tell; the document is blatantly and egregiously not a cost estimation document), and costs maybe $300-400M incremental to launch with the upper stage, or ~$200-300M without it.

1B plus 400 mill (assuming one flight a year) ~ 1.5 billion.
That nowhere factors in the cost the US taxpayer had from the development of the launcher. You are behaving as if that does not count for anything!

Falcon Heavy still beats SLS solidly on $/kg (assuming their numbers are reliable),

Space X is currently selling launches on FH for the prices given on their website. So I am sure they are relyable. Certainly more relyable than the numbers you have projected for the SLS. The numbers given in the document I provided were called optimistic anyway.

but SpaceX's launchers are narrowbody with short-duration kerolox upper stages, which makes them virtually unusable for exploration (and suboptimal even with a long-duration depot-fed US).

There are several plans to do BEO missions with Falcon Heavy. I have to look them up. In addition to that SpaceX is planning a more powerful upper stage.

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 2:14 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skipjack wrote:
Quote:
They aren't.

Just FYI, Skipjack basically has no idea what he's on about...

Yes, they are. I posted links to back them up and I can post several more. In fact my cost projections for the SLS were OPTIMISTIC. The SLS would have to launch twice a year to meet the projected 1.8 billion cost per launch.
I think it is YOU, who has no idea what he is talking about.


First off, a launch on Falcon Heavy costs about $80-125M according to SpaceX, not $60M. And that's only sustainable at a launch rate of 10 Falcon 9s and 10 Falcon Heavies per year. And it's 53 tonnes, not 55.

Second, no, your SLS numbers are wrong and your link does not back them up (even leaving aside the "2015" typo in reference to the accelerated scenario, which actually goes to 2025 and does include work on a lander). Perhaps you're reading total SLS+MPCV+21CGS costs as SLS alone? The launcher itself, once developed, should have somewhere between $1B and $2B fixed costs (the graphs in the "leaked" Budget Availability Scenarios document the WSJ got hold of seem to imply the low end of that, but it's hard to tell; the document is blatantly and egregiously not a cost estimation document), and costs maybe $300-400M incremental to launch with the upper stage, or ~$200-300M without it.

Please note that at the same upmass rate as SpaceX (690 tonnes per year), the launch rate for SLS 130-tonne is 5.3/year (or 7-10/year w/o upper stage, assuming the payloads all go to LEO, like the Bigelow BA-2100 - which incidentally doesn't come close to fitting on a Falcon Heavy either volume-wise or mass-wise).

Falcon Heavy still beats SLS solidly on $/kg (assuming their numbers are reliable), but SpaceX's launchers are narrowbody with short-duration kerolox upper stages, which makes them virtually unusable for exploration (and suboptimal even with a long-duration depot-fed US).

EELV Heavy does not beat SLS on $/kg (well, it's within the error bars at that upmass rate).

Of couree if you disregard the development cost for the SLS and I read somewhere that even the EELVs would beat it. I have to look it up again.

The key technical reason to have SLS is that a true HLV makes manned exploration architecture design much easier, since you don't have to cram everything onto launchers that were designed to put unmanned comsats in GTO. (For this reason, a straight comparison at the same upmass rate is misleading.)

This is utter nonsense. SpaceX has designed their launchers with manned missions to LEO and also BEO in mind from the start.
Besides the projected cost of the SLS will not leave any funds for any missions on it anyway and it is way to expensive for ISS resupply. So again my point is: There is no need for it.
Bigelow also has a station that will fit perfectly on the Falcon Heavy, btw.
He simply made the concept for the big station to show that he can go even bigger if he gets a launcher to get the thing to LEO.
The version for the Falcon Heavy will be more than big enough though, IIRC.

Fact is that the SLS is a waste of money.
The shuttle whichs demise you seem to lament here, was a terrible design also. I dont cry a single tear about it. I wished they had cancelled it decades ago. Then we would probably be much more advanced by now. But the stupid thing ate up all the funds for anything else, because it was so darn expensive.

[93143]

Are you on NSF?

[Skipjack]

Are you on NSF?

I lurk there occasionally.

I am more on the new space related sites, like Hobby Space.

[djolds1]

falcon = 60m$/55T
SLS = say 1500m$130T

yep factor of 10 at least out there. well spotted. (if your figures are correct).

certainly on that basis they have discovered no economies of scale and seem to offer little or no advantage to the existing market.

darn if SLS doesn't look like DIRECT. Wiki cites an SLS cargo capacity of 70-130 tonnes to LEO - DIRECT again. So dies the last of Griffin's obsessions.

Wiki cites 80-125 million USD for a Falcon-Heavy launch, tho at 50 tonnes to LEO, FH blows away the former "heavy lift" category (~25 tonnes to LEO) and eats up the entire 100-150 tonne booster niche; its the optimum low-cost intermediate cargo capacity.

[Skipjack]

NASA unveiled their SLS design, sigh. I really wished they would have manged to explain to congress that it is not needed and that they should rather fully fund a commercial fleet for all their space transport needs.
This would bring not only major cost savings, but also redundancy in case one of the systems experiences a failure and is grounded. Currently it looks like NASA wont have enough money to finance that though, because they will have to spand many, many billions on the SLS- abomination. The thing has no mission and no purpose. The only thing it is a is a job programe for the states of Utah and Alabama. Texas and Florida believe that it will keep Shuttle- jobs in their states, but it will cost them jobs in the long term, since the commercial providers would have brought many more jobs to their states.
It is a sad day for US space flight.

[93143]

Are you on NSF?

I lurk there occasionally.

I am more on the new space related sites, like Hobby Space.

I thought so. It's certainly possible to oppose SLS reasonably, based on known facts, but you don't seem to be doing that. Your level of knowledge and understanding on this topic doesn't seem to be much past the level of the blogs and mass media.

I'm sorry, but I don't have time for a point-by-point. I have accordingly deleted the beginnings of one, in what is probably a misguided attempt to wind this down without accomplishing much of anything...

[Skipjack]

I think that the massmedia are indeed misguided. They all seem to think that the SLS is the only means for the US to insure future leadership in manned spaceflight. This is of course utter nonsense.
Thanks for the ad hominem though. Your level of knowledge and understanding does not seem to be past the one of Senators Nelson and Hutchinson. So you are in "good" company there.
Anyway, not even NASA wanted the SLS. The administration definitely did not want it. It would have never happened hadnt Senators Nelson and most of shameless Shelby instered language into a bill and then kept ranting and ranting about it.
IMHO the original Obama administration plan for NASA was solid and it would have saved NASA a lot of money as well as bringing about a brighter faster advancing future. The SLS by all means is a step back. It is even more expensive than the shuttle and it is completely and utterly pointless as there is not money left to finance any missions on it! In contrast SpaceX could do a moon fly by as soon as their Dragon capsule has been upgraded to support crew.

Oh and just to make this clear, I am not the only one saying that. The tea party thinks the same way and actually most sensible people in the space industry do so as well.