>/sci/ wants to cancel this

It is literraly useless, we cant go anywhere interesting because muh light speed. Its just better to understand stuff on earth better.

>>8537941
Yup, it's pork.

>>8537941
It's a colossal waste already, but it's too far along to just outright cancel. The best thing they can do at this point is finish up the first iteration and then cancel everything afterwards. Spend the remaining budget on missions for this new thing instead of spending another decade working on refinements that will be laughably outdated by the time they're finished.

If that doesn't happen it'll become another golden IV drip, aka The Shuttle Project: Electric Boogaloo and money that should've gone into NASA's mission budget for NASA themselves to appropriate (congressmen don't know shit about space).

>>8538014
IF they use the thing to send deep space probes that couldn't be sent through smaller rockets, then maybe its worthwhile in the near term to have it launch 2 or 3 times

>>8538017
It's the only scenario in which I can envision SLS being even remotely worthwhile

What's wrong with it?
>>8537991
>>8538014
>>8538032

>>8538032
But they think is, they could easily send a larger probe assembled in orbit with cheaper rockets

Even that would be far cheaper & easier to put together than this.

>>8538050
You will notice that there are no examples of probes being assembled in orbit in previous space endeavors. It is possible, but hasn't been attempted.

>>8537948
>welp it's impossible, we literally can't leave the solar system in any meaningful manner for the forseeable future
>better give up on space entirely and just roll around in the mud like niggers

>>8538050
>>8538066
Scaling rockets the crazy sizes (like the ITS) to point where you can carry up more than a spoonful at a time makes the most sense to me. Challenging sure, but infinitely rewarding if accomplished. It'd do wonders for our presence in space. With vehicles like the ITS, we could put space stations in orbit that'd make the ISS look like a toy – large enough that we might be able to start establishing some rudimentary manufacturing and repair capabilities in space.

It looks so pretty though...

>>8538107
Did you find it a shame when the Ares V program was canceled? That rocket would have been able to launch an entire ISS in one launch.

>>8538066
However there have been structures assembled, such as the ISS and the docking procedures of the Apollo missions.

>>8538230
>>8538066
when your probe costs $1.5 billion it doesn't matter if you send it up with 2 $250 mil atlas Vs or 1 $500 mil SLS

>>8538238
SLS isn't going to cost 500 mill..
SLS is going to cost billions per launch

>>8537941
Trump will take us to the stars

>>8538374
by that logic, falcon 9 costs $200 mil per launch because nasa gave spacex billions to develop it through the COTS program

>>8538036
>extremely costly development and cost per launch
>very little actual innovation (basically an updated saturn V)
>no real attempt to reuse components
>is made by the shittily shitty way of doing things that nasa have in which the manufacture it all in a billion billion of pieces with a billion billion of middlemen because congress said so and they need jobs for their districts.
so the end costs is usually well up to 1000 times more expensive what it actually costs

>>8538867
>>is made by the shittily shitty way of doing things that nasa have in which the manufacture it all in a billion billion of pieces with a billion billion of middlemen because congress said so and they need jobs for their districts.
This is like the only thing that i hope Trumpy can fix. But pretty scared that he will just cut everything to the bone because Alex Jones thinks the earth is flat or some shit.

The tweets should be funny as fuck as it all implodes though.

File: Rocket-breakdown-2.png (397KB, 1096x949px)

397KB, 1096x949px

>>8537941
>/sci/ wants to cancel this

And focus on this. SLS is just rehashing obsolete methods and technologies.

>>8537941
Na. I want to cancel SpaceX though

>>8538091
>We figured out physics guys, let's give up spaceflight and never try anything hard again
>The machines will do everything for us
>Becomes liberal arts major

File: 1481741756288.png (280KB, 668x675px) Image search: [Google]

280KB, 668x675px

>>8539116
Yeah, about that...

>>8538107
The size of ITS isn't nearly as important as its reusability, though.

With no reusability, an ITS launch to Mars would be a single-launch mission of a 200-ton payload to Mars transfer, and the incremental launch cost alone would cost maybe $2 billion, never mind the launch payload.

The advantages over just using something like Falcon Heavy would be modest.

With reusability, an ITS launch to Mars would be a multi-launch mission of a 300-ton pressurized payload to the Mars *surface*, with the incremental cost of launches, transit vehicle, lander, and return vehicle maybe $500 million, plus the payload. On top of that, payload development would be much cheaper due to low costs for testing in space.

>>8538620
First of all, that's an exaggeration. The total costs of Falcon 9 haven't been upwards of $5 billion, so even if you amortize all development costs over just the flights so far it's not $200 million per flight.

Secondly, Falcon 9 is a high-flight-rate rocket. SLS is a low-flight-rate rocket. Falcon 9 has already flown more than any reasonable projection of SLS's lifetime total launches, and they're just getting the launch rate up to speed.

Thirdly, even disregarding costs prior to the first flight, the ongoing program costs of SLS will never be anywhere near as low as $500 million per flight. That figure is purely an overoptimistic estimate of the incremental cost, the cost they can save by NOT doing a flight that's possible within their program without expanding it.

Remember, the Falcon 9 price is a *price*, not a cost, and certainly not an incremental cost. The incremental cost of a Falcon 9, the amount of money they can save by not doing a launch which their program supports without expansion, is about $25 million. The sale price is meant to cover all investments and overhead, while providing a profit.

Falcon 9 took around half a billion dollars in development money before it started doing useful, working launches, and it's costing about another billion in continuing development to make it a mature reusable rocket with a heavy variant. SLS is going to cost about $20-30 billion to get to the first working (not test) launch, and they're not going to slow down the development spending when they get there or do anything more advanced than modestly increasing payload capacity and reducing probability of failure.

>>8537941
The launch rate is too low.

>>8539149
wtf this is real based trump

>>8537941
Elon musk is a cuck. Fuck paypal. He's a gay chode. Fuck him and his faggy cars. Fuck trump. Shit on their face.

nasa barely takes up any of the national budget.

File: 1468764452411.png (484KB, 636x720px) Image search: [Google]

484KB, 636x720px

>>8539116
>>8539484
lol I love the salt. Holy shit how pathetic.

>>8537948

Yes its time to understand yourself and nature. Why its functioning in the way. Why theres so much greed and killing in the world.

File: 1481444233378.jpg (9KB, 252x200px) Image search: [Google]

9KB, 252x200px

>>8539873
it's like you guys think some people putting resources into space travel suddenly means we aren't putting any time and energy into other issues. get off /sci/ if you really are that stupid.

>>8539097
What's the use of making that if it explodes 1 out of every 9 flights?

>>8540643
but they've done 28 launches with 1 failure...

>>8537941
Literally useless without fixing our present state and planet up first. The only use it will have after that is research (mostly regarding our own bodies) and collecting resources (which is extremely far off).

>>8540729
truly delusional

>>8539836
Space Exploration should be public, a worldwide effort, and take its time. Not rush tests and make rocket explode.

>>8539149
Meme country, meme President, meme advisors.

>>8539149
I found this very surprising, considering Musk badmouthed Trump during the campaign.

If you want a space guy that is really on Trump's wavelength, look at Robert Bigelow, a hotel magnate who wants to build inflatable space hotels. He's about as rational as Trump, too, since he believes in space aliens.

>>8541272
Musk didn't badmouth Trump...

File: 640x736.jpg (61KB, 640x736px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 640x736px

>>8541272
>I found this very surprising, considering Musk badmouthed Trump during the campaign.
It's all relative

"I think a bit strongly that Trump is probably not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States."

Do you think that even makes the top 1,000,000 list of negative things said about Trump? Musk's statement is practically pro-Trump by default if placed on a sliding scale against pic related

>>8541287
Pretty sure thats just him being autistic over global warming and spouting the "safe" opinion

Musk may be a beta-cuck but I'll base my respect for him on the assumption he's a closet white nationalist

>>8541301
Like I said, I'll take it. It's mild as fuck compared to the shit flung between Trump and Jeff Bezos.

Musk also has a definite in, being close friends with Trump advisor Peter Thiel.

Aside from that, I'm pretty sure he's already in a perfect position to win Trump's favor just by saying "We're going to build better rockets and solar panels and batteries than the Chinese"

>>8541286

>Elon Musk has joined Donald Trump’s advisory council despite having dismissed Mr Trump as “not the right man for the job” during the election.

>>8541287
>Musk's statement is practically pro-Trump by default

No it isn't you fucking idiot

>>8541325
He's always tried to stay neutral on politics, and he lives in Cali
I'll accept that as him wanting to say more than just "no comment"

File: bezz.png (136KB, 592x1260px) Image search: [Google]

136KB, 592x1260px

>>8541331
You seem unaware of what year it is

>>8541360
hahaha
he types that shit after a full year of slander & libel out of the washington post???

>>8541372
Yeah. Pretty cool huh?

>>8541272
I think it should be entertaining. Imagine him and Alex Jones sitting down and discussing..well anything.
They are like matter-antimatter when it comes to space-related stuff.

>>8541301
>>8541356

Musk is a foreign proponent of alternate energy who has says wacky things like we should have a basic regardless of employment, or that someday it'll be illegal for humans to drive because it'll be safer that way. Do you really think he was secretly rooting for Trump?

>>8541753
Musk is a white South African who was hospitalized as a school child after being thrown down a flight of stairs, do you think he really loves black people?

I think unmanned exploration is just fine. There are plenty of experiments to be done in freefall as well. Manned exploration is a waste of resources, better just wait until the tech is there to build sustainable colonies. I would love to see us send unmanned probes to other stars as well.

>>8541767
>Manned exploration is a waste of resources, better just wait until the tech is there to build sustainable colonies
It already is

The biggest barrier to a city on Mars is our ability to throw a shitload of equipment at Mars instead of one RC car at a time - hence SpaceX's pièce de résistance being a fuckhuge dragon dildo that can haul 400 tons to Mars compared to the current one ton limit

>>8541778
My question is this: Why can't we just build our first colony in LEO? It requires less delta v, and if there is an emergency you can just slow down some landers and you're back to earth in a couple hours. An emergency on mars or luna?
>this is mission control, we'll tell your families.

>>8541794
No gravity, no in situ resources, you have to constantly keep reboosting the damn thing

On Mars you can forge your own ore, refine your own fuel, grow your own crops, eventually even expand your original habitat and have kids to populate it

Aside from that, if this ultimate rocket works as intended, it would be able to throw an object as large as the ISS into orbit in one flight, so you could play whatever LEO games you want at much lower cost as well.

>>8541811
>no in situ resources
Yeah, a total lack of matter is generally considered inconvenient for a self-sustaining colony.

On the other hand, an industrial/tourist "space city" in LEO makes a lot of sense once the launch costs go low enough. Think of ITS launching (and optionally returning) 300 tons or 300 passengers every day.

>you have to constantly keep reboosting the damn thing
Not really true. ISS isn't just in LEO, it's in a weird low orbit, due to the combined limitations of the space shuttle and the inconveniences of Soviet launch locations. Higher LEO orbits decay much more slowly and basically don't need to be reboosted.

File: 4f1.png (3MB, 998x1500px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 998x1500px

At a 70 ton payload it's $78,737/kg to LEO

At a 130 ton payload it's $42,396/kg to LEO

That might actually be the worst rocket I've ever seen what the fuck is NASA doing

The Space Shuttle did $18,000 to LEO and was considered disgracefully expensive

>>8541753
>Do you really think he was secretly rooting for Trump?
Maaaaybe. Practically everybody thought Hillary was going to win.

Musk is an industrialist, one of the few who managed to be building factories in America during this period of globalism and environmental over-regulation. He knows how to play politics to be allowed to do things.

For the last 8 years, Democrats have been in charge of the executive branch, and for longer than that, liberals have controlled the EPA while globalism-friendly Republicans joined Democrats in letting American industry be gutted so their rich buddy-buds could make a short-term profit moving production to low-wage China and Mexico.

>>8538867

>>no real attempt to reuse components

the point is to make a big thing that can put big things into space, a thing which the shuttle cannot do

>>is made by the shittily shitty way of doing things that nasa have in which the manufacture it all in a billion billion of pieces with a billion billion of middlemen because congress said so and they need jobs for their districts.

Ares I was fucked and shitcanned for a reason. Ares V (which is what the SLS is) has been going along fine.

>>8542326
Reuse is the next big thing though

Soon a rocket that can't land back on the pad will be worthless - SpaceX AND Blue Origin both intend to have almost every booster they launch fly back home for reuse

>>8542412

>next big thing

No, the next big thing is a moon base, manned mars missions and bigger probes all of which greatly require the SLS's added capacity.

>Soon a rocket that can't land back on the pad will be worthless

You clearly do not understand the value of a spacecraft, yes reusability is nice but what matters is it's capacity. ULA, SpaceX and BO don't have a vehicle that can put big payloads into orbit like SLS can. This is especially important if NASA begins doing manned moon missions again.

For example, look at the space shuttle. It was plenty reusable, the only item discarded was the big orange fuel tank (which with modifications probably could have been reusable too). However it's pitiful payload capacity (compared to the Saturn V) hugely limited the scope of NASA's missions.

>>8542453
The Falcon 9 Heavy and New Glenn will both approach the capacity of the SLS Block 1, and they both may well be in service before it, and they're both the kind of craft that can be launched once a month whereas the SLS will go up once every two years if it's lucky

The Space Shuttle's reusability was was absolutely miserable - early projections hoped a Shuttle mission could be reflown as soon as 48 hours after landing, but in the end the thing had to practically be rebuilt like a ship of Theseus for months after every mission.

>>8542492

Block 1 but not Block 2. Again, capacity matters.

>The Space Shuttle's reusability was was absolutely miserable - early projections hoped a Shuttle mission could be reflown as soon as 48 hours after landing, but in the end the thing had to practically be rebuilt like a ship of Theseus for months after every mission.

So it's the turnaround time that matters more than reusability now? You're moving the goalposts. Also, even then only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced, it was plenty reusable.

>>8542614
>So it's the turnaround time that matters more than reusability now? You're moving the goalposts.
It's a symptom, it took months because of the amount of work and material that needed to be replaced. That $450 million per launch cost wasn't just paying to gas it up

I'm not shitposting here, there were very high hopes for how easily reusable the Space Shuttle could be and they never came to life. If the thing worked as well as NASA hoped it would have been a $650/kg LEO platform instead of a $18,000 one - that absolutely disgraceful cost overrun went somewhere.

>>8542453
>ULA, SpaceX and BO don't have a vehicle that can put big payloads into orbit like SLS can.
Falcon Heavy can replace SLS for any useful mission. Some might require a multiple-launch architecture, but SLS isn't big enough for meaningful beyond-LEO single-launch missions anyway, and FH will have a much higher flight rate and lower cost.

Besides, Orion is a pig. Way overweight for beyond-LEO missions as a launch/return capsule (about 2.5 times the dry mass of Dragon 2, which is comparable to the Apollo capsule), without being designed for or capable of serving as a habitat for long trips, like a Mars mission.

Dragon 2 on Falcon Heavy can go more places than Orion on SLS, due to all the extra dead weight. A moon landing architecture would be much easier to put together with Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 than SLS/Orion.

>look at the space shuttle. It was plenty reusable
Opinion discarded.

>>8542614
>only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced
You have no idea what you're talking about. The shuttle didn't use "ablator tiles", it used silica gel tiles which weren't supposed to need replacement, but which often cracked or fell off. This is a general theme of how the shuttle actually worked compared to how it was supposed to work. The repair and refurbishment of "reusable components" needed after each flight were so extensive that they approached the cost of building an entire new shuttle.

Meanwhile, the fuel tank was such a large, high-performance piece of aerospace hardware that it alone cost more than an entire expendable rocket with the cargo capacity of the shuttle (for instance: Proton), since a conventional expendable rocket would be much smaller, even though it would need expensive parts like a guidance system and engines.

>>8541272
More like Zubrin.

>>8542631

so you admit to moving the goalposts

>>8542716
I said it had poor reusability and stated that it took a long time and cost a lot of money and manpower to prepare it for reuse, what would you define poor reusability as?

File: spacex_pricing.jpg (99KB, 1000x581px) Image search: [Google]

99KB, 1000x581px

>>8542662

>Falcon Heavy can replace SLS for any useful mission.

FH max capacity: 54 metric tons
SLS Block 1 capacity: 70 metric tons
SLS Block 2 capacity: 130 metric tons

This means FH is not taking people to the Moon and not taking big probes into orbit. This is a major constraint.

>without being designed for or capable of serving as a habitat for long trips, like a Mars mission.

Orion can plug into a larger vehicle and be used as a command module, just like the Dragon or CST-100. This is desirable as it gives a wide variate of vehicles (ie a space station, space tug, moon base or martian transfer vehicle) a standard command deck.

>>8542716
Stop being a retard, please. Nobody's "moving goalposts".

In the end, the shuttle was partially reusable in a narrow technical sense just to be able to call it reusable, when it had failed at achieving every useful benefit of reusability.

The point of reusability is more launches at lower per-kg cost, but a program based on expendables could have done more launches than the shuttle at a lower cost, even without progress in expendable tech from when the shuttle program was initiated.

The shuttle was the first try ever at a reusable launch vehicle, and when it was a failure, instead of going back to the drawing board like sane people, NASA continued to operate it for three decades with negligible improvement.

The shuttle is not a useful example of the cost-benefit proposition of reusable rockets in general. It was an absurd, deeply corrupt government spending program.

>>8542720

Definition of "reusable": capable of being used again or repeatedly.

From this an object "reusability" is determined by it's ability to be used multiple times without replacement. The STS did well here, as only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced. These are "dumb" things that are not technically complicated (compared to the larger vehicle) and disposable. Which is to say the system overall was extremely reusable.

The point of my argument is that reusablity is far secondary to capacity. A big rocket can take big things to space and benefits from the economy of scale. A small rocket has more opportunities (namely on re-entry) to be destroyed mid-mission and not complete it. That's not to say it shouldn't be pursued, but NASA should be focused on pushing the limit of actually doing things in space and let their contractors figure out how to make it economically feasible.

>>8542724
>Orion can plug into a larger vehicle and be used as a command module, just like the Dragon or CST-100. This is desirable as it gives a wide variate of vehicles (ie a space station, space tug, moon base or martian transfer vehicle) a standard command deck.
You've aptly described five excellent use cases.

Do you really think the SLS will be launched with five super-heavy payloads over the entire course of its existence?

>>8542728

>the shuttle was partially reusable in a narrow technical sense

The only part that had to be replaced were the abalator tiles, and the only disposable part was a fuel tank. The shuttle was plenty reusable and considering this a "narrow" technicality is incredibly stupid. Using your definition then SpaceX's vehicles aren't truly "reusable" either, since their second stage is discarded. In fact, SpaceX is wasting huge amounts of money on a fancy landing system that could have easily been serviced by a parachute.

>The point of reusability is more launches at lower per-kg cost

And lower per-kg cost can better be accomplished by building a bigger vehicle, as NASA is doing. It's all well and good SpaceX is making reusable vehicles but their aim is LEO not the Moon or other planets.

>>8542741

At once? Of course not. But in individual launches, yes. For starters, 130 mt gives us bigger probes and probes that can go further into space. For example, a Pluto or Europa lander. And if NASA does actually start doing things on the Moon (say a fuel refinery) then 100+ mt launches will become routine.

>>8542745
>The only part that had to be replaced were the abalator tiles, and the only disposable part was a fuel tank. The shuttle was plenty reusable and considering this a "narrow" technicality is incredibly stupid.
I feel like I'm talking to a wall here. Refurbishing the shuttle was disastrously expensive, an order of magnitude more expensive and difficult than it was meant to be by design. Every shuttle refurbishment involved a similar amount of cost, labor and time to building a new shuttle from scratch, it never delivered on it's own promise for reusability.

>>8542748
>But in individual launches, yes.
That's where my doubt is, because right now NASA is projecting a launch every two to five years while other rocket platforms are getting ready to move on a monthly basis. And none of them will be 130 ton payloads yet, which by current projections apparently won't come until the 2030s.

>>8542724
>FH max capacity: 54 metric tons
First of all, that's a lowball estimate, it has stayed the same even after Falcon 9's advertised max capacity increased 50%. They'll announce a larger capacity after Falcon Heavy's first flight. Plus they always have the option of upgrading the upper stage. Their Air Force grant to develop Raptor was as an engine for a Falcon Heavy upper stage.

>SLS Block 2 capacity: 130 metric tons
This is a fantasy number. Block 2 isn't even on the roadmap for flight earlier than 2030. They're not going to do that. NASA's only pretending there will be an SLS Block 2 because the act authorizing SLS development requires it to have more performance than Saturn V, and to use shuttle parts, and to launch by December 31, 2016. They can't get that performance and also use shuttle parts and also launch within a few years of the target date. So they pretend the next generation of NASA engineers will do something better and it will be called the same thing.

>This means FH is not taking people to the Moon and not taking big probes into orbit.
SLS isn't taking people to the moon either. It's not powerful enough for a single-launch moon mission (certainly not with the overweight Orion capsule), and it doesn't have the flight rate for a multiple-launch mission.

I've already explained about multi-launch missions. It only takes a couple of launches for FH to match SLS, and FH will fly much more than twice as often as SLS and for far less than half the cost. I've seen some very reasonable, conservative three-launch FH/Dragon moon landing architectures.

>Orion can plug into a larger vehicle and be used as a command module, just like the Dragon or CST-100.
...except Orion is three times heavier than either of those. If it's going to plug into a larger vehicle, there's no reason for it to be so big.

>>8542759
>>8542752
>130 tons by 2030
Wow, by the time the thing actually flies there will be higher capacity, less expensive competitors available from Blue Origin, SpaceX and the Chinese.

And I would assume that with the new generation of super heavies the Russians would also throw their hat in the ring, and maybe even Arianespace.

>>8542770
Russia got rolled back a couple years by sanctions and recession but they've got an 80 to 150 ton payload vehicle on the drawing board for the mid to late 2020s

>>8541942
What do you expect when it's 'reusing' Space Shuttle parts.

>>8542770
I think people are optimistic in predicting a superheavy performance from Blue Origin's giant rocket. It seems to me more likely that with their reuse strategy (more conservative than SpaceX, less mass-efficient vehicle, more aerodynamic features, cautious hover-landings), it will just be that inefficient, and this is the smallest thing that gives them confidence they'll be able to put a passenger capsule in orbit.

>>8542796
>it's 'reusing' Space Shuttle parts.
They're literally using the engines off of the retired space shuttles for SLS. After the first few flights, they have to go to new, unproven engines that are still in development.

>>8542752

>because right now NASA is projecting a launch every two to five years while other rocket platforms are getting ready to move on a monthly basis

NASA is also planning on doing manned missions outside of LEO, whereas the three private companies are sticking to LEO or probes. This means longer, and more hazardous, missions.

>>8542759

>First of all, that's a lowball estimate

That is the highest claimed estimate on SpaceX's website.

>This is a fantasy number. Block 2 isn't even on the roadmap for flight earlier than 2030.

That is the highest claimed estimate on NASA's website.

>NASA's only pretending there will be an SLS Block 2

Having it on every piece of material since 1999 doesn't seem like "pretend", especially when Block 2 allows NASA to put on bigger and newer boosters to ensure 130 mt (143 US tons, higher than the Saturn V) capacity. Then again if you want to throw that out the window let's also get clear that Elon Musk's 2024 ITS Mars mission is probably not going to happen.

>>8542770

Russia's program got severely cut back due to the war in Ukraine which caused Sealaunch to go on hiatus. The oil crash is still a major inhibitor to funding. China's program is a copy of Russia's and probably won't go any further especially as their economy melts down. And the ESA will be using Orion for all manned missions.

>>8542822
>Elon Musk's 2024 ITS Mars mission is probably not going to happen.
I agree there but the odds are much better that some 300 to 500 ton rocket gets fielded by 2030

>>8542844

A vehicle larger than the Saturn V hasn't yet been built. SLS is on the cutting edge in this regard. So to build a vehicle 2-3 times larger than SLS within ten years is highly unlikely.

>>8542855
However unlikely, a man can dream

>>8542822
>That is the highest claimed estimate on SpaceX's website.
13.5 tons to LEO was the highest claimed estimate on SpaceX's website for Falcon 9 until Falcon 9 FT flew. Then it shot up over 20 tons.

>every piece of material since 1999
There was no SLS until 2010, let alone a "Block 2" plan. They were going to build Ares V until they realized such a high-performance rocket was infeasible with shuttle components.

If they were going to convert the shuttle to an expendable, they should have just changed it as little as necessary, keeping a side-mounted payload like Energia, and reserving a tank stretch and the five-segment boosters for optional later upgrades. That way, they could have begun flights in time for the retirement of the shuttle, and would have had over a 70-ton capacity.

Going to a top-mounted payload and adding more main engines required a radical redesign. The SSMEs barely worked as a trio. When they first put them together, after having tested them singly, they shook each other apart with their vibrations and needed redesign.

When first announced, SLS was supposed to launch by the end of 2016. Now it's here, and they still haven't even tested four SSMEs together on one stand.

>>8542738
> The STS did well here, as only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced.
The tens of thousands of tiles had to be inspected and hand replaced
This was a huge cost & manpower sink
They were not ablative tiles, they were supposed to last forever

The engines had to be removed from the vehicle and refurbished
The boosters were not reusable, thats like 300-400 million dollars worth of hardware thrown away for a launch.

>but NASA should be focused on pushing the limit of actually doing things in space and let their contractors figure out how to make it economically feasible.

Except you can't DO things in space without getting there in the first place. That is 9/10ths out of the difficulty of space, for now. And the contractors have to do what NASA tells them to do, they aren't interested in lowering costs.

>>8542855
>SLS is on the cutting edge in this regard.
SLS isn't bigger than Saturn V. It's not "cutting edge" in any regard. It's a floundering attempt to recreate the capabilities of the 1960s using parts from a 1970s rocket.

>So to build a vehicle 2-3 times larger than SLS within ten years is highly unlikely.
Saturn V is nowhere near the upper limit of the size of a practical rocket. Its design was finalized in 1962, a mere five years after Sputnik, then it flew its first flight in 1967, and put the first man on the moon in 1969.

In many ways, rockets get easier as they get bigger. Thicker-walled tanks are more rugged and fault-tolerant. Due to square-cube law there's less mass penalty for surface treatments and insulation. Air resistance matters less for a bigger rocket. It takes longer to turn, so the engine gimballing doesn't need to be as quick. Guidance systems are pretty easy these days, but it's still an advantage that on a larger rocket you don't need a larger guidance system.

SpaceX has announced an entirely plausible plan for building a 500-ton-to-LEO rocket in the next five years, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if something four times bigger than Saturn V can be done for much cheaper after half a century of technological progress.

>>8542922

>It's a floundering attempt to recreate the capabilities of the 1960s using parts from a 1970s rocket.

70s era engine with modern computers is still far better than either the Shuttle or a 1960s rocket with 1960s era computers. And again, it'll have a slightly higher capacity than the Saturn V which gives it the edge.

>Saturn V is nowhere near the upper limit of the size of a practical rocket.

True, but thus far nobody has successfully built anything bigger. The last Saturn V launch was in 2973 and nobody has exceeded it since.

>SpaceX has announced an entirely plausible plan for building a 500-ton-to-LEO rocket in the next five years, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if something four times bigger than Saturn V can be done for much cheaper after half a century of technological progress.

I certainly believe SpaceX can do it, just not in ten years let alone five.

>>8542907

>And the contractors have to do what NASA tells them to do, they aren't interested in lowering costs.

who cares about costs? NASA isn't a business.

>>8542941
It still has a fixed budget

>>8542941
If they could launch 10 times or 100 times the payload for the same price
Thats kinda a big benefit you know

>>8542939
>70s era engine with modern computers is still far better than either the Shuttle or a 1960s rocket with 1960s era computers.
On a superheavy rocket, modern computers aren't a significant advantage, unless you want to do something like SpaceX and land it. There's very little use for computing power on an ascending rocket, and the mass penalty of a transistorized computer is nothing on a superheavy.

>it'll have a slightly higher capacity than the Saturn V
No it won't. I've explained why SLS Block 2 isn't a real thing.

>nobody has successfully built anything bigger
It only took them a few years to build one that big in the 60s, and nobody has really been trying to go bigger. They're not hard, they're expensive and hard to justify.

NASA's not having trouble building a superheavy, they're having trouble working within congress's pork agenda.

>I certainly believe SpaceX can do it, just not in ten years let alone five.
I don't believe they could do it in much more than five. The effort would collapse. It's hard to keep a good team together for long without major successes, not to mention the investors.

It might not be reliably reusable in five years, but it should be flying.

>>8543030
I'm think it'll be faster than 5 years if Musk gets a contract to produce it from Trump

>>8542959
>payloads can be launched in pieces
this faggot thinks that the ISS is more cost-effective than the BA-2100

arent the solid boosters super dangerous in case of an explosion?

>>8539873
keep your damnable morals off my science board /pol/ fag

>>8541767
>better just wait until the tech is there to build sustainable colonies.
Bad idea. Technology necessary to do X doesn't just magically appear, it comes into existence as a result of people trying to do X. If we don't try to do manned spaceflight in the capacity that we can no (however limited that may be) it'll never develop to be better.

>>8543211
They're dangerous because once you start them, you can't turn them off. All you can do is blow them up, which isn't so great if you have crew nearby. Congress wants NASA to use them to keep the old Shuttle-era pork alive (hence the snarky name "Senate Launch System"), but SRBs are a horrible idea on any human-rated vehicle.

SLS/Orion still won't be as unsafe as Shuttle, because the crew vehicle is on top where it can actually be aborted with escape rockets. Side-mount was the other bad idea of Shuttle, not only did it make an escape system not possible in case of SRB failure, it also exposed the tiles to foam and ice crap falling off of the ET. Guess what? It had a failure with loss of crew from BOTH scenarios!

>>8543365
and because you have to ship solid rockets fueled
and because they are pre-mixed fuel/oxidizer
and because you have to assemble the vehicle with this giant firecracker sitting next to it
SRB's exist because all these defense contractors have existing solid rocket departments who wanted pork

>>8537948
>Titan isn't interesting

>>8543551
YOLO!

Admittedly the only pre-launch incident with a commercial/public rocket in recent times has been with a liquid-fueled rocket (LOX can make things go very boom very fast), but I would still feel a lot safer with the fuel and oxidizer in different compartments that stay empty until the thing is on the pad preparing for a launch, and not while it's on a truck rolling down I-10.

(and then Google gives me a captcha pic of an interstate highway intersection sign in SC, fucking Google)

>>8542662
>>8542759
Falcon Heavy is vaporware.

File: vape-1437910565042.jpg (16KB, 320x212px) Image search: [Google]

16KB, 320x212px

>>8543593
Until it isn't.

SLS is even more vaporware, at least FH will finally launch next year.

Which is more vaporware: six months away, or six years away?

And in those six years, Congress will probably change its mind twice, each with a chance to delay it again or kill it completely. FH isn't dependent on the whims of pork dealers.

>>8543601
FH is six months away since 2012 or so tho...

>>8543912
Whatever happened to that exploding Falcon 9 must have actually been worse than anyone let on because the whole business keeps getting pushed back now, EVERY project is on freeze.

Worrying.

>>8543918
>EVERY project is on freeze.
just the rocket or what else is there?

>>8543935
As in 9, Heavy, Crewed Dragon, Red Dragon, don't know about ITS but that's barely drawing board as-is

>>8543964
ok and by freeze you mean delayed?

>>8543918
We'll it did major damage to the launch facility, so that takes time to rebuild.

>>8543918
Part of the problem is that it fucked up pad 40 a bit, but 39A was already close to being ready, so that helps take off some of the urgency to repair. And they will do their next launch from Vandenberg anyhow, so that gives them a little more time to get their KSC/CCAFS launches back on track.

>pad accident fucks up their main launch pad
>launches stop because pad is fucked up
>launches stop because their pre-launch process needs to be reviewed
Who would've thunk it? Of course their launch schedules are getting pushed back, what else is on their launch schedules other than launches, which they can't do because they can't launch anything?

>>8543918
>EVERY project is on freeze
Oh bullshit. Dragon 2's getting pushed back again because NASA is taking months to review things they were supposed to take weeks for. NASA is so deep in CYA mindset that they can't even get stuff done when all they have to do is approve the work that other people are doing according to their own plan.

I haven't heard anything about Falcon Heavy getting pushed back any more than other launches. From what I've heard, it's still on for early 2017.

And NO major SpaceX project is "on freeze". They're actively working on the final revision to Falcon 9, pad construction and upgrades, the first reflight of a landed stage, Falcon Heavy, Dragon 2 (including propulsive landing), Red Dragon, and ITS.

Now that they're ready to try reflying stages, this should be the year they start flying a lot.

>>8543030

>On a superheavy rocket, modern computers aren't a significant advantage,
>There's very little use for computing power on an ascending rocket

This is wrong, if only because modern computers are far more reliable than 60s era ones. This is why the shuttle needed a total overhaul in the mid 90s. Reliability matters.

>No it won't. I've explained why SLS Block 2 isn't a real thing.

ok so you're making up your own reality to argue with instead of being in reality. In which case further arguing is a waste of time.

>>8543601

>Which is more vaporware: six months away, or six years away?

SLS launches next year and EM-1 (unmanned Orion test around the moon) is scheduled for 2018.

>>8544154
I doubt they'll make that deadline
and it'll be canceled

>>8537948

Anyone with this oppinion will be killed or invaded by someone without that opinion.

>>8538374
Titan IV was 1.5 billion a pop, I'd guess 2 billionish per SLS

>>8539097
I like this but I don't like the mega cluster of small engines. A lot of the problem with the four N1 rockets the Russians blew up came from the 30 engine cluster and it's associated rube Goldberg plumbing. I'd say 5 big engines max in the first stage.

>>8544419

I think I heard that the reason they got so many engines is because they need them for controlling the rocket during descent.

>>8544144
>modern computers are far more reliable than 60s era ones
What? No they aren't. NASA wasn't still struggling with vacuum-tube burnouts in the 60s. The Saturn V computer was solid-state discrete transistors and diodes, and the Apollo spacecraft computer used small-scale integrated circuits.

With the 3-unit vote system, the tested units simply didn't fail often enough to affect the launch failure rate. A Saturn V computer failure was expected about once in a hundred thousand flights, and they could have reduced that to one in a billion, but it wasn't worth the effort due to the much higher probability of failure from other components.

>>No it won't. I've explained why SLS Block 2 isn't a real thing.
>ok so you're making up your own reality
NASA talks about the SLS Block 2 as a possibility "no earlier than" 2030, 13 years in the future. That's beyond the horizon of meaningful planning. It's not something they have a serious intention of doing, though they're going through the motions.

With any kind of reasonable development program, it should be possible to develop something with the described capabilities of the SLS Block 2 in five years. In a slow, troubled program, it might take ten years. Saying it's coming more than ten years in the future is saying they aren't doing it.

>>8544419
Yeah, it'll end up unreliable like Soyuz, with its 32-engine cluster (20 main engines to provide thrust, 12 vernier engines to steer).

N1 wasn't unreliable because it had many small engines. It was "unreliable" because they had inadequate funding, decided to use a test-by-flying approach (the assembled first stages where never tested on the ground before flight), and the main designer died mid-project.

Failing on launch, but they detect the cause and fix it for the next attempt, was actually how the N1 development project was supposed to work. The fourth launch attempt almost worked, suffering only a water hammer effect on engine shutdown. The fifth launch would probably have gone to orbit, if they continued the program.

>>8544521
>Yeah, it'll end up unreliable like Soyuz, with its 32-engine cluster (20 main engines to provide thrust, 12 vernier engines to steer).

Those aren't separate engines, each core uses a single engine with 4 combustion chambers. Not sure about the verniers.

>>8544627
The distinction is not useful. What you save in failure potential by reducing the number of turbopumps comes back in the increased complexity of the chamber-pressure plumbing and lost pump-out capability.

>>8544445
This is just where the engines optimized in thrust to weight and I imagine cost to produce
Though the small engines allows them to have an engine out & still land successfully, which was probably a consideration.

>>8541325
ts never too late to suck up, especially with trump.

just stay off trumps tweeting radar and they will do fine.

>>8538381
Keep dreaming retard

File: sls render.jpg (3MB, 3840x2160px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 3840x2160px

>>8538148
The concepts now look like this, with ugly shuttle orange rather than Saturn V patterns. Also note the booster paint, which looks atrocious but I very much doubt will actually happen.

>>8545824
It's the silhouette of the shuttle wings. Because these stupid assholes still think the shuttle program is something to be proud of rather than a shameful symbol of pork over results.

As for the orange, that's just the natural color of the insulation. Since that huge tank goes basically all the way to orbit, every pound of weight on it subtracts a pound from the LEO payload, and more than a pound from the payload to higher orbits.

The boosters are much less mass sensitive, so things like paint don't really matter.

>>8545824

>orange
>ugly

pleb detected

>>8545838
>more than a pound from the payload to higher orbits.
I feel stupid for having written this.

It's not true. Of course you lose less than a pound to higher orbits, but you have less pounds to work with so it's as bad or worse.

90% of the stuff ITS uses has never been done before

It will not operate as a viable SLS replacement for at least 15 years

Baby steps; how about we build a colony on the moon to generate more power, serve as a factory for large scale space vehicles, and test the affects of long term space travel to produce better astronauts? THEN we should send our finest men and women (which would then be better from lunar training) with our finest technology (refer to previous parenthesis) 100 mil. km away (which will end up being up to 400 mil. km away)

>>8547161
the only reason to go to the Moon today is to set up a permanent residence there ahead of the Chinese

>>8547173
Or maybe everything I previously said. Unless you plan on creating a satellite so massive that it can serve as a self sustaining colony for humans to live and build on without the assistance of a lunar colony to complete the tasks that I just presented.

>>8547133
Not sure why you believe that
It's fully reusable so they just need to assemble one, and then they could launch it 50 times a year

>>8547299
unprecedented methalox ffsc engines with restarts, reusability and highest ever chamber pressure
huge carbon fibre fuel tanks
biggest, heaviest rocket ever made
has to land precisely back on its own launch pad or everything's fucked
crane that lifts upper stage onto the booster
in-orbit refueling
keeping methalox cool for 6 months on the way to Mars
ISRU of fuel on Mars
most ever engines on a stage on a working rocket
the windows
by far the biggest ever manned capsule
aerobraking shuttle-style then flipping to land
a space ship travelling for months, landing, spending years on an alien world, then taking off and coming back with no maintenance facilities or launch towers.

This is from a company that blew a rocket up just by tweaking the fueling on a simple rocket they already had experience with, and can't even test struts. There's no way they can do this.

>>8547341
Thank you, Muskfags are truly delusional.

>>8545838
Fuck performance it needs to look cool.

>>8547341
>unprecedented methalox ffsc engines with restarts, reusability and highest ever chamber pressure
>huge carbon fibre fuel tanks
Both are well under way, with working prototypes demonstrated

>has to land precisely back on its own launch pad
It'll have powerful thrusters and hover capability, so yes they will land precisely every time

>crane that lifts upper stage onto the booster
That was obviously a artists conception, and the reality would look different, but that sort of automated vertical integration is the inevitable future.

everything else is trivial

>>8547341
>This is from a company that blew a rocket up just by tweaking the fueling on a simple rocket they already had experience with
I always wonder if anyone actually believes this, or it's all shilling and trolling.

Falcon 9 FT isn't a "simple rocket", it is the most advanced rocket ever built and they were still developing its software and pad procedures, so each flight was new. No one had ever done subcooled propellant before, nor put composite-overwrapped helium tanks inside the liquid oxygen tanks. Due to its advanced construction, it has the highest fuel mass fraction of any rocket ever built, which is why it can do flyback reusability with decent performance.

SpaceX went with "fail fast" over "failure is not an option", which has kept their development processes fast and affordable.

>>8547731
Everything you just said is all the more reason why this big project that's worth more than the company is doomed to failure.

>>8547885
I'd be inclined to think the absolute opposite. Ironically, the "avoid failure at all costs" model taken by ULA is precisely how you end up with spacecraft projects that run billions over budget while performing half as well as stated by the original proposal. It's also how you ensure that progress moves at a sub-glacieral speeds; if Old Space was left undisturbed by Bezos and Musk, the rockets we'd be launching in 2069 would be scarcely different from those launched in 1969, because while avoiding risks keeps you safe, it also ensures that you're learning practically nothing and keeps technological improvements to a tiny, incremental minimum.

On the other hand, the rapid iterative failure-as-inevitability approach that SpaceX takes allows them to make rapid advances at lower costs all while never betting the farm on huge mega-projects. Many components of the ITS are being developed in some capacity on their other rockets, distributing and diluting the risk.

>>8548070 (cont)
The ITS isn't a singular megabudget project, it's a huge collection of smaller projects that are useful in other ways as well.

SpaceX probably won't meet the current expected timeline for the ITS, but I doubt it's going to be 15 years past schedule.

>>8548086
falcon heavy is 5 years behind schedule and it is zero (0) new hardware

>>8548107
Because there's very little demand for the FH – most people just want an F9, so that's where they've been focusing their energies – and the F9, which the Heavy is based on, keeps changing. Why would they build a Heavy that's based on an obsolete version of the F9? They've obviously been rolling the improvements into the FH and maybe even been waiting for the final version of the F9 to drop.

>>8548128
And to top all this off, the F9 has improved to the point to where it can handle many missions originally slated for the FH. Only a tiny handful of customers truly need an FH now.

>>8548128
>there's very little demand for the FH
...and there's zero demand for ITS

Honestly you people who think any part of this thing will fly, let alone land on Mars, by 2025 are simply delusional.

>>8548144
>...and there's zero demand for ITS
Well no shit, there's never been a rocket with capabilities even approaching those of the ITS. The most comparable thing out there that's actually flown is the Saturn V, which is less than a third as powerful as the ITS and hasn't been launched in 43 years. Missions have had to live within the constraints of rocket technology, so of course there aren't projects calling for something as large as the ITS, because up until this year the very proposal of a satellite/probe/rover that larger was ludicrous. You either crammed your project into an oversized soda can or you weren't getting launched, or hell, even funding.

Now that such a spacecraft has a chance of existing, that can change and the closer it comes to fruitition the more interesting use cases you'll see people coming up with.

>>8548107
Joke:
>falcon heavy is 5 years behind schedule and it is zero (0) new hardware
Woke:
>Falcon 9 is the Falcon Heavy of 5 years ago

Falcon Heavy was announced early on because Falcon 9 1.0 wasn't adequate for the GTO comsat market. Then Falcon 9 1.1 was adequate for smaller GTO comsats. Then Falcon 9 FT was adequate for any GTO comsat launch in the existing market.

Now the only real motive for Falcon Heavy is to enable booster reuse on big GTO comsat launches.

>>8548144
>there's zero demand for ITS
They're building the ITS "spaceship" (upper stage) first, in a version which can launch from the surface. This will give them two options aside from the full ITS plan: one is to make an expendable version which is a full functional replacement for SLS, and another is to make it a flyback booster to replace Falcon 9 and Heavy with even lower operating costs and enough additional capacity to make a small reusable upper stage that can serve the existing market and carry established vehicles like Crew Dragon.

>>8548190
Falcon 9 and FH are still not adequate for the GEO sat market, as they cannot even GEO insertion (even China can do this)

>Now the only real motive for Falcon Heavy is to enable booster reuse on big GTO comsat launches.
They need Falcon Heavy as a preliminary enabler of Mars missions, but even that is not going to happen until 2020.

>They're building the ITS "spaceship" (upper stage) first, in a version which can launch from the surface.
this vehicle will be more complicated to build than the space shuttle
it will take a decade or more to complete

>This will give them two options aside from the full ITS plan: one is to make an expendable version which is a full functional replacement for SLS, and another is to make it a flyback booster to replace Falcon 9 and Heavy with even lower operating costs and enough additional capacity to make a small reusable upper stage that can serve the existing market and carry established vehicles like Crew Dragon.
all of this is made up bullshit
New Glenn is a more viable replacement for (block 1) SLS in any case

>>8548173
they can't even get the exceedingly simple falcon 9 to work without exploding, and there is no way they will find funding for ITS

>>8548225
Why do you believe they will miss the red dragon launch for 2018

>>8548228
Why do you believe they will have FH flying by 2018, let alone red dragon?

>>8548230
because they have no choice, thats the whole point of the company
And theres nothing stopping them from doing it.

>>8548245
>And theres nothing stopping them from doing it.
how about the fact that none of the hardware exists for it yet, or that they are statistically likely to have another launch failure between now and then?

>>8548225
>they cannot even GEO insertion
The Western method of using the satellite's own propulsion to circularize is superior, because there is always some uncertainty in launch performance, as well as residual propellant when a tank must be shut down, so a common pool of propellant for the circularization and stationkeeping is a major advantage both in mission assurance and longevity.

They could, of course, build a stage to perform GEO insertion if customers wanted it. It's much easier than building Dragon.

>this vehicle will be more complicated to build than the space shuttle
Not really, it's not a winged craft. Anyway, there have been over four decades of technological progress since the start of space shuttle development.

>New Glenn is a more viable replacement for (block 1) SLS
New Glenn will have inferior performance to Falcon Heavy, let alone any ITS-derivative.

>the exceedingly simple falcon 9
See: >>8547731
...and take your meds.

>>8548253
With a republican in the whitehouse, they could just waive the need to stand down for 6 months after another launch failure
If one happens

>>8548317
There's objectively nothing wrong with that

Think of how many hundreds of millions spacex has already cost its customers in lost revenue due to these delays

File: 665473656354643.png (788KB, 575x728px) Image search: [Google]

788KB, 575x728px

>>8548287
>New Glenn will have inferior performance to Falcon Heavy
kek
This is why nobody likes spacex nutters

>>8548415
As someone who's just not happy with NASA's path I get the distinct impression that thing is ALSO going to fuck up SLS's hypothetical shit

>>8548460
any sort of reusable vehicle makes the SLS 100% obsolete

>>8548483
No.

>>8538164
>Payload to LEO: 188,000kg
>ISS mass: 419,000kg

>>8548415
Zubrin also thought Ares V was a good idea and could be thrown together in a couple of years whenever NASA wanted it.

These are extremely optimistic figures. He left no margin for reusability, and New Glenn will be a reusable-booster-only rocket without an expendable variant.

It's not big to lift huge payloads, it's big to pay the cost of flyback reuse. Blue Origin's reusable booster design is more conservative than SpaceX's, so it will have poorer mass fractions and suffer larger performance penalties compared to a hypothetical expendable model.

>>8538164
Ares V wasn't exactly cancelled. It ran for four years of studies without producing a credible design with the specified performance, so when they changed the performance spec they changed the name.

SLS is Ares V. All the same people and organizations continued doing the same work, just with a more realistic attitude toward what could actually be achieved with shuttle parts.

So yeah, SLS has been under active, well-funded development for eleven years and still no launch coming any time soon. And it was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty job of moving the shuttle main engines to an external fuel tank and sticking another stage on top.

And Orion was supposed to be flying routinely to the ISS "no later than" 2014. Also a quick-and-dirty job, which is why they went with Apollo-era tech like the same primitive heat shield material. It was supposed to be proven extensively in LEO before being used for two-launch moon missions with combined LEO payload over 200 tons.

>>8548497
yes

>>8548605
>SLS is Ares V
I must have missed the part where SLS uses rs-68s and a J-2x

>>8548605
Yep. "Quick and dirty" just doesn't work in space. Either plan for proper R&D that doesn't just duct tape old parts together or don't fucking bother.

>>8548612
You're talking about Ares V possibilities under discussion, when nothing about it was settled but the performance target. The SSME was always the more likely possibility, until it was the only one when analysis showed th RS-68 wouldn't work with the solid boosters. And the J-2X was still under discussion when the name was changed from "Ares V" to "SLS" (hint: read up on SLS Block 1A). They still say it will be used on the Block 2.

SLS is the finalized Ares V, as it got past the concept phase.

>>8548786
how do you spend a decade on the conception stage...

File: 1454903928110.png (160KB, 331x352px) Image search: [Google]

160KB, 331x352px

>>8537948
>we cant go anywhere interesting because muh light speed

Please don't post on any space-related /sci/ threads again.

>>8548812
By being ULA and optimizing for minimal innovation and maximum congressional cash flow

>>8548812
Well, the idea of a shuttle-derived expendable was around as an unrealized concept for longer than a decade. Something nearly identical to Ares V was notably proposed in Zubrin's 1996 "The Case For Mars" (as a capability "we already have").

The complete broad-strokes SLS design wasn't finalized until 2015 (yes, last year), when NASA decided to pursue the RL-10-powered EUS instead of the J-2X-powered EDS for the upper stage. (the IUS, a modified Delta IV upper-stage, was never intended for more than one or two test flights)

Yup. They didn't even have a basic outline of the design of a complete vehicle until last year.

That's why, while there's a test flight (with a high probability of failure baked in) scheduled for (but not actually expected to fly in) 2018, the first working flight isn't scheduled to fly until 2021, and isn't realistically expected until the mid-2020s given the program's history of delays.

>>8548900
By which time even if it works perfectly they'll be launching it for billions of dollars every couple years and there will be half a dozen contemporary designs that are completely superior to it

the only question is if spacex can nail reusability at a reasonable price

>>8548963
I'm reassured by the fact that SpaceX and Blue Origin are both chasing that meme at full speed

>>8548900

Upper stage testing has already begun and (barring weather delays) it's likely NASA will be able to make their Sept. 2018 target for EM-1. The only major issue is if the crawler and launchpad software don't work, this was identified in the GAO's report last year.

>the first working flight isn't scheduled to fly until 2021

The first working flight is scheduled for Sept. 2018, the first crewed flight (ie the one that matters) is in 2021.

>>8548988
That's not a working flight, that's a test flight, and it's with an incomplete rocket, using the "interim" upper stage (borrowed off of Delta IV with minor modifications) which will never be used again.

The plan as announced was to send astronauts into high lunar orbit with a spacecraft that had never been tested in orbit in complete form (the EM-1 capsule won't be the complete Orion spacecraft, but a modified test article) using an upper stage which had never been tested.

This is obviously insane, and now that it's coming close enough they have to actually think seriously about doing it, they're saying that they can't do it that way. They have to test the upper stage first, do a manned test of Orion in LEO first, and do a manned lunar flyby before doing an orbit.

>>8549013

A working flight is a flight where the vehicle works.

>This is obviously insane, and now that it's coming close enough they have to actually think seriously about doing it, they're saying that they can't do it that way. They have to test the upper stage first, do a manned test of Orion in LEO first, and do a manned lunar flyby before doing an orbit.

if it works, it works

>>8549024
>A working flight is a flight where the vehicle works.
No, it's a flight where the vehicle gets work done. These are the words I chose and the meaning I intended.

For instance, Falcon 9 had its first test flight on June 4, 2010, but its first inarguable working flight was October 8, 2012, when it launched Dragon to ISS with a load of useful supplies. The two flights in between could be argued to be "working flights" for Falcon 9 but test flights for Dragon, since they carried complete functional vehicles, but the first one only carried a boilerplate load.

In SLS's case, there is no ambiguity: EM-1 will launch on an incomplete SLS, with a jerry-rigged upper stage which they never intend to use again.

>>This is obviously insane, and now that it's coming close enough they have to actually think seriously about doing it, they're saying that they can't do it that way.
>if it works, it works
I'm not sure you got the point: they're not actually going to try, because it would be so grossly negligent as to border on attempted murder. And they're starting to admit publicly that they won't, now that it's getting within five years of when they said they were going to do it.

>>8549072

>And they're starting to admit publicly that they won't, now that it's getting within five years of when they said they were going to do it.

They are actually going to do it as planned though.

>>8548910
>and there will be half a dozen contemporary designs that are completely superior to it

Unlikely. The only ones currently developing a super heavy rocket are: Blue Origin, SpaceX, China, and India. Russia has already passed on it due to budgetary pressures.

I have high faith in Bezos and Blue Origin. But SpaceX I don't think they will have ITS ready by mid 2020s. Maybe in the next decade.

>>8549133
>They are actually going to do it as planned though.

Not that anon, but I highly doubt they will be ready by Sept. 2018. This program has already had a very long series of delays and setbacks dating back well over a decade.

My guess it Sept. 2020 as a more reasonable date for their first launch. Then a manned launch with Orion by 2023. GAO themselves have already stated that they doubt Orion would be ready by 2021.

File: nhq201611140001.jpg (873KB, 2614x3595px) Image search: [Google]

873KB, 2614x3595px

arent delays and redesigns just normal things in these big technical projects? happens all the time not just with rockets

>>8549133
>They are actually going to do it as planned though.
You're going on nothing when you claim that. These are the same people who said in 2004 that they'd be routinely flying crew to ISS in Orion by 2014 and landing on the moon by 2019.

They gave up entirely on flying crew to ISS and landing on the moon. Then they said instead that they'd have SLS ready by the end of 2016 and do an asteroid capture and rendezvous. Then that became a boulder-size-piece-of-an-asteroid capture and rendezvous, so it makes absolutely no sense to send astronauts up to it rather than bring it down to LEO.

They aren't even working on an upper stage for EM-1:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2016/05/nasa-forgot-to.html

Low confidence in NASA meeting the 2021 launch date:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2016/07/nasas-faith-bas.html

The SLS software is a trainwreck:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2016/10/sls-flight-soft-1.html

NASA's actual "commitment" is to a 2023 launch:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2016/11/nasa-oig-reiter.html

And the icing on the cake, this Dec. 2 2016 article:
>NASA considers shorter first crewed SLS/Orion mission
http://spacenews.com/nasa-considers-shorter-first-crewed-slsorion-mission/
>Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, discussed what he described as a new proposal for Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2) that would last eight days.
>Orion would fly on a “free return” trajectory around the moon without going into orbit and without requiring another engine burn.

The next thing we're going to be told is that with the new plan, there's a new schedule, no earlier than 2023. Then after a couple of years, they'll tell us Orion needs a LEO manned test. They'll say they need to man-rate the interim launcher and do an unmanned test, and this is an excuse to push the first unmanned SLS launch back to 2020. The first manned beyond-LEO flight will be pushed back to 2025.

And so on. SLS/Orion is in a death spiral.

>>8549221
Lot of retardation in 1 post.
>These are the same people who said in 2004 that they'd be routinely flying crew to ISS in Orion by 2014
Wow, it's almost like the rocket that was supposed to do that was cancelled by Obama or something.
>and landing on the moon by 2019
Wow, it's almost like the rocket that was supposed to do that was cancelled by Obama or something.
>Then they said instead that they'd have SLS ready by the end of 2016
They're still on track to be monumentally faster than anyone else, except Apollo, less than 2 years behind the original schedule. Consider, for example, that falcon heavy was supposed to fly in 2012 but is now not flying until 2018 at the earliest
>nasawatch.com
nice Republican-paid for shill website you moron
see link related for actual, non-shill news and updates on SLS
>https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=37.0

The only thing missing from your post is how FH is a "replacement" for SLS when it has less than half the capability.

>>8549235
>it's almost like the rocket that was supposed to do that was cancelled by Obama or something.
Because they failed at designing it and admitted they couldn't do it. He didn't just swoop in and fuck up all of their good work. They fucked up hopelessly and he approved the drastic lowering of goals.

>They're still on track to be monumentally faster than anyone else, except Apollo
SLS is a continuation of the Ares V development. They've been working on it since 2004.

>falcon heavy was supposed to fly in 2012 but is now not flying until 2018 at the earliest
Falcon Heavy is not a vehicle, but a configuration of a vehicle, and it has been under development for less time than SLS.

>how FH is a "replacement" for SLS when it has less than half the capability.
SLS: 70 tons to LEO. FH: was announced at 53 tons to LEO when F9 was still at 13.5, now F9's over 20 and they haven't updated FH, plus they're working on one more thrust upgrade for Merlin 1D before calling the vehicle final and concentrating development effort on ITS. I'd be pretty surprised if FH advertised performance wasn't updated to over 70 tons to LEO after the first launch.

All they'd need to do is put a LOX/H2 departure stage on top of FH, and it will do everything SLS was supposed to do.

Anyway, there's no need to replace SLS, which since its downgrade from the Constellation specs is a rocket to nowhere. It is purely to push Orion around, and it's too feeble to send Orion anywhere interesting. The Constellation two-launch mission architecture would have offered roughly triple the LEO payload of SLS, which is what made the high mass of Orion (double that of the Apollo capsule) acceptable in a beyond-LEO context and compatible with moon-landing missions. SLS can only send Orion to high lunar orbit with enough propellant to get back. That's worthless unless it's cheap with a high flight rate, and it's expensive with a low flight rate.

>>8549258
...and the only non-Orion proposed SLS mission was originally baselined to launch on an Atlas V, not even Delta IV Heavy.

>>8547357
>Both are well under way, with working prototypes demonstrated

Prototypes are one thing. Remember that COPVs are well understood and they still fucked it up.

>It'll have powerful thrusters and hover capability, so yes they will land precisely every time

And if they get it wrong once, they don't just damage a barge but lose their entire launch pad.

>>8547731

>No one had ever done subcooled propellant before, nor put composite-overwrapped helium tanks inside the liquid oxygen tanks.

And that, right there, is the problem. The ITS is full of stuff no-one has done before, so why won't it blow up over and over again?

>>8549258
>>how FH is a "replacement" for SLS when it has less than half the capability.
>SLS: 70 tons to LEO
inb4 BUT MUH BLOCK TWO

>>8549421
because its 2016 and you can extensively model stuff to make sure it doesn't

Both Falcon 9 failures were by the COPV, ITS won't have a COPV

>>8539149
Finally something Trump has done right in his staff picks, it's a shame his Secretary of Education is a fucking moron.

>>8539206
It's not meant to be reusable, it's a one-way trip.

>>8539116
>>8539484
Sorry you got so bootyblasted in the other thread anon. It's ok, space doesn't exist if you don't want it to exist.

>>8549758
>It's not meant to be reusable, it's a one-way trip.
I hate to "nuh-uh" but it's definitely made to be reusable. They're even working on that in situ fuel refinery so they can gas the thing up to fly back

>>8549421
>The ITS is full of stuff no-one has done before, so why won't it blow up over and over again?
Sure, like Falcon 9 is full of stuff no-one has done before. And it has had three infant-mortality blow-ups, two from discovering certain suppliers couldn't be trusted (one of which didn't stop the vehicle from reaching orbit), one from where they had just started trying something new.

ITS isn't the space shuttle, where they just build four before they fly the first test and have staked their careers on everything working without major changes and never having to build any more or go back to the drawing board. They can afford to blow up a few getting it right. Because it's a highly reusable vehicle, they can do lots of test flights before putting any cargo on it.

>>8541272
>I found this very surprising, considering Musk badmouthed Trump during the campaign.

When you need advice, you want the truth, not ass kissing. Politicians don't know this, but businessmen do. Trump is a businessman not a politician.

>>8549221

>These are the same people who said in 2004 that they'd be routinely flying crew to ISS in Orion by 2014 and landing on the moon by 2019.

That was before Constellation was canned, due to Ares I being a mess. Ares V (SLS) doesn't have the same problems because it's a bigger rocket.

>>8549752

>and you can extensively model stuff to make sure it doesn't

do people actually believe this shit? Part of real life tests is to look for things that you wouldn't expect

>>8550708
>Constellation was canned, due to Ares I being a mess.
Ares I was the best part of Constellation. It was just proceeding the fastest so its shortcomings were the most obvious. Orion and Ares V were the messes. One of the main problems with Ares I was that Orion was shaping up to be so far over the specified weight that they needed to keep upgrading the Ares I upper stage just to get it to LEO (in fact, this is why the J-2X had to be changed to a clean-sheet redesign rather than being a straightforward preparation of the Apollo-era J-2 for modern manufacture).

Ares I was based on the shuttle SRB, which failed only once in over a hundred flights (and it was used in pairs, so that's 270 SRBs), when it was launched outside of the design range of operational temperatures. Furthermore, the design was upgraded with redundant seals so even if abused in this way again, it shouldn't blow up. It was as man-rated as a stage gets.

There was some panic over theoretical thrust oscillations on Ares I, but the flight test ended it.

An Air Force study (which NASA disputed the correctness of) claimed there was no abort model for a catastrophic blow-up of the Ares I booster from 30-60 seconds after launch, and this is often cited as the reason for cancellation, however their claim should apply equally to any launch vehicle using the shuttle SRBs, so going from Ares I to SLS *doubles* this risk. Ares V was intended from the beginning to not be man-rated.

When Ares I was cancelled, all rationality was thrown out from the Constellation plan: Orion was designed *primarily* as way to rotate ISS crews. That's why it's so big and heavy: room for six astronauts plus supplies (twice as big as the 3-man Apollo capsule). So they'd have many routine LEO missions to prove its spaceworthiness. Ares V was designed to have the additional performance over Saturn V to use the heavy Orion on a moon landing mission (with the additional help from Ares I actually launching Orion).

so the main problem is sls? the orion capsule is allright yes?

>>8537948
>anywhere interesting

What is Europa, Titan, Enceladus, Ganymede, Io, etc. And those are just the main Jovian and Saturnian moons.

Then theres the dwarf planets and Kuiper belt objects, and everything else.

Nowhere interesting my ass.

>>8551359
Orion is crap, it's what killed Constellation. Here's the deal: it was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty job to replace the shuttle for ISS missions, so it needed to be able to carry half a dozen passengers and supplies, but it was also supposed to be part of a bold return to beyond-LEO manned spaceflight, so it needed to be able to work in deep space and handle a return from lunar orbit, AND it needed to be a significant improvement in safety from the shuttle.

They based it on an Apollo capsule scale-up, right down to using the same heat shield material, despite half a century of progress in materials science and despite all of the people involved in producing the original heat shields being retired or dead. It was considered a time-saving choice, but actually turned out to be very difficult to reproduce.

Not only was Orion too heavy at the concept stage, it gained mass as the design progressed, until it was too heavy to fly on the planned Ares I. It was a development disaster: mediocre men in charge of packing an Apollo soft reboot with all the profiteering opportunities that would fit.

The overweight Orion (which no longer makes the slightest sense now that it's not going to the ISS) is behind the unachievable performance specifications of Ares V and the unreasonable ones of SLS. The only reasonable shuttle derivative to develop was a three-engine one: a simple removal of all parts unnecessary for crew, recovery, and reuse.

Orion is worse than worthless. A basic manned capsule isn't that hard to develop. The original Apollo capsule took under 5 years, back when nobody had done anything like it before. Even if we didn't have Crew Dragon on the horizon, it would make far more sense to throw Orion out and develop something that makes sense than to ever launch it.

>>8551923

>Orion is crap, it's what killed Constellation.

No, Ares I did. NASA didn't have a dedicated command module and sometime in the early 2000s they decided Orion would fulfill that role which meant a redesign. Ares I couldn't be enlarged by that point, and NASA wasted five years trying to build it until getting one non-LEO launch in and scrapping it. This is exactly the market SpaceX now services.

>is behind the unachievable performance specifications of Ares V and the unreasonable ones of SLS.

You're confusing Ares I with Ares V the latter of which benefited from being rebooted as SLS, so it could incorporate the Orion redesign into it.

>>8551359

There's no major problem with either, it's just that NASA (like all government agencies) is slow and they screwed up early on with Ares I. As a result SpaceX fanboys harp on NASA because they seriously think Musk wants to compete against them.

>>8550867

>Ares I was the best part of Constellation.

Yes because non-reusable LEO vehicles are a good use of taxpayer money. SpaceX has shown that, in 20/20 hindsight, NASA's biggest mistake was even planning for LEO missions and not subcontracting them all out.

>Ares V was intended from the beginning to not be man-rated.
>Ares V was designed to have the additional performance over Saturn V to use the heavy Orion on a moon landing mission (with the additional help from Ares I actually launching Orion).

Then priorities changed, and as Ares V started off being a 130 (American) ton vehicle it can certainly be modified to fit the new role. Going big (ie with Ares V) allows NASA to be flexible. All they have to do is make sure it doesn't blow up (and even if it does, the fact that Ares V even has a launch escape system means it's a huge safety improvement over the STS).

It all worked out in the end, NASA finally got to dump LEO missions onto private companies allowing themselves to free up space for bigger rockets that (ideally) mean more moon missions.

>>8552065
>Spend DECADES with zero results
>Operate the space shuttle for DECADES at a cost of hundreds of billions with nothing to show for it

yea ok NASA is just grate

>>8552080
>NASA's biggest mistake was even planning for LEO missions and not subcontracting them all out.
It was only Musk who ever thought about doing reusable rockets
Without Musk they would just be building another space shuttle

>>8552106

Wrong about the Shuttle, as misguided as it was it gave us the ISS which was a scientific achievement of era 2000. However twenty years later it's long in the tooth which is why NASA would like to be doing moon missions in the 2020s. Hence why Ares V is happening.

As far as government agencies go, NASA is fairly standard. They're arguably better than the standard as they only had one major fuckup, Ares I whose role is now taken over by companies such as SpaceX.

>>8552114

They already did though, as the X-37. Boeing is already looking at making a larger crew-rated variant.

>>8552122
>it gave us the ISS
??
Any launch vehicle could have done the ISS
Nor is the ISS anything special.. It does no real research, it proves no new technologies, it's useless for any practical purpose beyond makework pork..

>>8552126
X-37 is just a reusable PAYLOAD for a normal rocket...
It's just another makework program that makes no sense

>>8552135

>X-37 is just a reusable PAYLOAD for a normal rocket...

so is every other spacecraft in existence as SSTOs haven't been built yet

>It's just another makework program that makes no sense

It currently holds the title as the world's longest-duration reusable spacecraft.

>>8552135

>Nor is the ISS anything special.. It does no real research

That's wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_research_on_the_International_Space_Station

>>8552061
What is this "dedicated command module" shit? Orion and Ares I were designed together. The Orion team fucked up and would not unfuck it, insisting that Orion would come in far over the mass allowance and that was that, so the Ares I team tried to compensate.

The major reason to give up on Ares I was that Orion wasn't going to be ready to carry crew any time soon, and commercial crew was looking much more viable.

>>is behind the unachievable performance specifications of Ares V and the unreasonable ones of SLS.
>You're confusing Ares I with Ares V
I am not, you fucking chimp. Ares V was specified as being capable of at least 188 tons to LEO, a large increase over the capabilities of Saturn V, let alone the shuttle stripped of all reusable elements.

This was required to do an Apollo re-creation mission with four crew in the Orion capsule, which was always going to be considerably heavier than the Apollo capsule.

SLS is a huge downgrade of Ares V, from 188 tons to LEO to 70 tons to LEO, and an even bigger downgrade of the Ares I+V two-launch mission architecture (total of 213 tons to LEO). Orion got even fatter while the launch apparatus was reduced to a third of its capability, making the system suitable for no worthwhile missions whatsoever, but it was continued solely to feed money to the politically-connected contractors.

>>8552080
>non-reusable LEO vehicles
Ares I was originally intended to use a reusable booster, being based on the shuttle's reusable SRBs.

>It all worked out in the end, NASA finally got to dump LEO missions onto private companies allowing themselves to free up space for bigger rockets
It hasn't worked out in the end. SLS is a downgrade of Constellation to meaninglessness.

>>8552206
>Ares I was originally intended to use a reusable booster, being based on the shuttle's reusable SRBs.
Solid rockets are not "reusable" though
Just like the Shuttle SRB's were not reusable
They salvaged the tube for political reasons

>>8537948
>implying anything below lightspeed is shit tier

We will soon be able to accelerate a microship to 20% of the speed of light, meaning it will take it 20 years to reach our next closest star system. Fuck out of here with your pessimism

>>8537948
I hate people like you.
It's not useless, they learn a lot about the universe by doing tests in space. New technology comes from NASA. Technology that benefits us all
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/index.html

>>8552269
No we won't

Starshot requires a sustained 100 gigawatt laser that can be fired for five minutes straight and focused accurately on an object the size of an iPhone as it accelerates 36 million km away from Earth and for aforementioned small object to be able to survive this incredible energy exposure without being vaporized while carrying enough equipment to take useful measurements in Alpha Centauri and a transmitter powerful enough to broadcast those measurements all the way back to Earth where they can be detected.

Measurements taken during the hour it takes to whip straight through the Alpha Centauri system at the end of it's 20 year journey because there's no fucking way that thing is going to be able to be decelerated or orbited

Question. How do a lot of you know so much about rockets? where did you learn about all of that information?

>>8552288
>there's no fucking way that thing is going to be able to be decelerated
just crash it into the star

>>8552250
>Solid rockets are not "reusable" though
Tell that to all of the high-power rocketry enthusiasts, who love to recover their solid rockets to cast new propellant in them, or put new motors in, and know it saves money.

>Just like the Shuttle SRB's were not reusable
>They salvaged the tube for political reasons
The SRBs were the most usefully reusable part of the shuttle. They didn't just salvage "the tube" (which was rugged and survived splashdown well, unlike Falcon 9, which is built very lightly and therefore didn't survive any of the "ocean landing" attempts), they saved the guidance system and nozzle actuators. Replacing the seals and recasting the propellant was a considerably lower cost than building a whole new booster.

The trouble for the SRBs was low flight rate. The ocean recovery required a special ship. It and its crew could have gone out and fetched SRBs every week, but the shuttle only launched a few times per year. Therefore the potential saving was small and there was signficant overhead.

Even so, the reusability of the SRBs is considered to have saved money in the shuttle program, and analysis showed that it would have saved money on Ares I and Ares V (but it would have cost a some performance, which is the reason it was dropped from SLS).

>>8552288
All valid points, however this idea is still in its infancy.
I'm not talking about funding SOLAR FREAKIN ROADWAYS, just saying it doesn't hurt to have a little faith anon.
Keep in mind people once thought that the human body couldn't handle going faster than 30mph.

File: nerva.jpg (44KB, 800x450px) Image search: [Google]

44KB, 800x450px

Question: I saw some anons come up with the Russian space program being massively cut in budget due to the ol' boom boom die die

Are they still going to test the nuclear thermal rocket in 2018? Is this thing safe/feasible/cost-effective?

>>8552351
That'll just destroy it too

so what even makes a good rocket development program? is the ariane 6 any good? im from eu and there seems to be alot of burocracy

>>8552469
no and no, unfortunately

>>8552307
You can learn quite a lot on your own just from wikipedia and other material like books and videos. If you know basic physics and math, rocket science isn't that much of a stretch.

I assume there are probably some anons with formal educations in engineering and what not here as well.

If a subject genuinely interests you, learning more about it is fun rather than work.

>>8537941
It's a huge money sink with no clear goal that will be obsolete almost as soon as it's rolled out. It's not even that good for deep space missions because if you really wanted to, you could do almost the same with existing hardware or stuff that will be here a lot sooner than this pork festival.

Mark my fucking words, the first test flight won't happen any time sooner than 2020.

>>8552469
No, anything space related coming from Russia is dead.

>>8553564

>no clear goal

wrong, it's goal is moon missions

>that will be obsolete almost as soon as it's rolled out

only if SpaceX actually builds ITS to the released spec on schedule, of which I'm doubtful of

>>8554243
SLS has no ability to do any moon missions

>>8554259

yes it does, why do you think it's a big rocket

>>8554243
>wrong, it's goal is moon missions
No, that's what Constellation was for. SLS is a rocket to nowhere. There's no reasonable architecture or plan involving SLS for any moon missions. (and no, I don't acknowledge a lunar flyby or high lunar orbit as a "moon mission")

>>that will be obsolete almost as soon as it's rolled out
>only if SpaceX actually builds ITS to the released spec on schedule
...or if anyone builds storable-propellant modular propulsive units which can be launched on Falcon Heavy.

Actually, that's not even necessary. Falcon Heavy will be able to send Dragon to more places in a single launch than SLS will be able to send Orion, because the barebones Orion capsule, even stripped of its required external service module, will be twice as massive as the complete Crew Dragon capsule, and SLS will not even be twice as capable as Falcon Heavy.

Besides that, Falcon Heavy will have a low price and support a high launch rate, making multiple-launch mission architectures feasible. A three-launch Falcon Heavy moon landing (lander, tug, Crew Dragon) would cost less than a single SLS/Orion launch to nowhere special and could be accomplished before the first manned SLS/Orion launch.

There is no reason to build SLS/Orion.

>>8554280
>huge out-of-control government project
>start your reasoning from the assumption that it makes sense
Constellation (Orion, Ares I, Ares V) was designed for:
1) continuation of the flow of funds to the space shuttle contractors and employment of NASA workers,
2) a rapid return to ISS crew rotation capability after discontinuation of the shuttle, and
3) eventual moon landings and construction of a moon base.

With the revision to SLS/Orion, they threw out goals (2) and (3). There's no purpose left but to disburse funds to politically-entrenched groups.

>>8554379

#1 is true of all government projects

#2 was Ares I

#3 is Ares V aka SLS

>With the revision to SLS/Orion, they threw out goals (2) and (3).

You got it backwards, Ares-I was nixed so they could have a reasonable shot of actually achieving goals (2) and (3)

>>8554286

>No, that's what Constellation was for. [...] There's no reasonable architecture or plan involving SLS for any moon missions.

SLS is more or less a continuation of Constellation's crown jewel, Ares V. It can take Orion + lander to the moon, or just a cargo lander. The lander hasn't been built yet though so I'll grant you that.

>and SLS will not even be twice as capable as Falcon Heavy.

FH to LEO: 60 US tons

SLS block I: 70 US tons

SLS block II: 130 US tons

>>8554464
>#1 is true of all government projects

nopey nope

there are times in which goverment projects are god tier mission victorhy machines of achieving things, like the saturn v moon missions or atomic bomb

>>8554478
>FH to LEO: 60 US tons
thats reusable configuration, expendable it takes like double.

and even expendable it costs much MUCH less than an SLS. even tough SLS (supposedly a ship of the future) does not have reusability in mind (which is the god tier way of the future which will bring costs down)

>>8554464
>Ares V aka SLS
It's true that SLS is a continuation of the development of Ares V, but not to the performance specification required for moon landing missions with the Orion capsule, which is twice the mass of the Apollo capsule and therefore requires a more powerful rocket to launch the storable propellant to haul that dead weight to low lunar orbit and back.

>>8554478
>The lander hasn't been built yet
Not even under development. There is no plan to do any moon landings with SLS.

Ares V: 207 US tons.
Ares V+I dual-launch architecture: 235 US tons
>SLS block I: 70 US tons
SLS Block I, A.K.A. "the only SLS there is any real plan to build".

>SLS block II: 130 US tons
You mean that distant fantasy variant that they've said might get built some time after 2030? After every important person involved today has retired?

>FH to LEO: 60 US tons
FH capacity will be significantly uprated after the first launch, I guarantee it, just as the Falcon 9 capacity was uprated 50% after the first flight of F9 FT. There's also an option to add a Raptor-powered upper stage.

How come NASA needs so much money to launch something, they can't launch manned missions and russians do both and 10 times cheaper? What the fuck is wrong with the system?

>>8554523
>What the fuck is wrong with the system?
corruption, basically

>>8554523
Massive bureaucracies that all take paychecks and delay everything out into infinity

>>8554464
The SLS is NOT the Ares V, it's nowhere near as good as the later was going to be.

>>8554523
Muh jobs, essentially. Everything is needlessly complicated because they need to keep a certain quota of people employed in certain places.

>>8554762
i think the ares 1 was pretty clever, i mean if you gonna go full expendable that is the way to go, a big dumb barrel full of solid fuel, it would have been cost effective at least

>>8554790
Ares I was originally intended to be partially reusable, since it was based on the shuttle SRBs.

See: >>8552358

>a big dumb barrel full of solid fuel, it would have been cost effective at least
The main thing that would have made it cost-effective is that they were starting with proven components for man-rated systems, which could have been used almost unaltered.

Ares I was supposed to be simply a shuttle SRB topped with a shortened shuttle external tank with a J-2 engine (from Saturn V) stuck on the bottom, and Orion was supposed to be sized to fit on top of it. Straightforward. Should have taken a couple of years to put together at reasonable cost on a very predictable schedule.

Where Constellation went completely out of control was that Orion was allowed to grow too big to fit on this Ares I. When told about the predicted Ares I performance, the Orion team started out aiming to use all that weight, and then let it creep up.

>>8554859
Obviously it's retarded & program crippling of them to design their booster first, then the payload second

>>8554859
why did they scarp the whole thing tough, seems like they could make a cheap LEO vehicle with the ares 1 and as you say most of the components are already fligth proven, hell just stick a gemini capsule on top of that

File: fairiesbig.jpg (238KB, 400x1942px) Image search: [Google]

238KB, 400x1942px

>>8554478
>SLS block II: 130 US tons
And there it is, as I predicted in >>8549679 As the other anon said, lucky to have it by 2030. Anything from NASA that's more than a decade away might as well be fairy dust, since they're dependent upon the whims of Congress.

>>8554859
>Ares I was originally intended to be partially reusable, since it was based on the shuttle SRBs.
There's a difference between "reuse" and "remanufacture".
Taking the empty tube and shipping it back to a factory to be "refueled" (repacked with firecracker powder), then shipped back to the pad, is re-manufacturing. Liquid fuels allow for same-pad (or at least same base) turnaround.
The avionics? That shit is nothing, it's easy to replace a little computer that costs a few thousand bucks.

(now inb4 "but SpaceX still has to take their rockets to a shed to inspect them before reuse!")

>>8554876
because a 100 million dollar SRB is not cheap at all
And the second stage of it didn't exist

>>8554869
Who the fuck designs a new rocket for each payload? Almost every payload is designed to fly on an existing launch vehicle, and the design team has to stay under the mass limit.

Even for the Apollo Program, when they were designing Saturn V just for the mission, they committed to the payload mass limit early on, long before the detailed design of the Apollo spacecraft was complete.

>>8554876
>hell just stick a gemini capsule on top of that
I don't think you understand just how fucked their organizational situation is.

Orion was supposed to be "just stick an Apollo capsule on top of that". If they can't build an Apollo capsule, they can't build a Gemini capsule.

Anyway the Gemini capsule was tiny. Ares I would have had 600% more capacity to LEO than was necessary. And it's not all suitable for ISS crew rotation.

>>8554892
>(now inb4 "but SpaceX still has to take their rockets to a shed to inspect them before reuse!")
They're a long way away from being able to just give it a quick look-over, fill it up and refly. They may never get there. They first recovered a booster a year ago (to the day) and still haven't reflown one.

>>8554920
>They're a long way away from being able to just give it a quick look-over, fill it up and refly.
If they can do 10 static burns with a landed booster, they could have just refueled & flown it immediately.

>>8540958
nice fairy tale land you live in. can I join you?

>>8554927
>If they can do 10 static burns with a landed booster, they could have just refueled & flown it immediately.
almost true, the static test do not account for the mechanic stress that the rocket goes trough due to atmospheric drag, that is the only variable left unchecked but its a big one, each launch shakes the thing like a motherfucker

>>8554927
also, you dont know what kind of refurbishment it had before it was static tested so tone down your fanboyner

>>8554927
As I recall, they shut down the first static burn test shortly after they started it when they detected an irregularity.

I repeat: it has been a FULL YEAR with no launch of a recovered booster. They have a whole stack of them now. They also have several used Dragons gathering dust.

An upper stage only costs them a few million dollars to build, and a small fraction of the factory time needed to build a whole new Falcon 9. So why haven't they just given it a shot?

Maybe reusing these boosters is a little more complicated than you're claiming it is.

>>8552469

I don't think nuclear reactor will ever go to space. It would take at least an impending catastrophe that could make mankind go extinct in order for nuclear reactors to be put into space. Even then, i wouldn't be surprised certain people of strong principles would fight tooth and nail to prevent it and rather allow all life on earth go extinct.

Obviously i'm ignoring radio thermal generators since those are not nuclear reactors.

>>8555087
Weren't they planning on doing one this year then a rocket blew up in september?

It's still a non-trivial amount of work, and if the regulatory jews won't give permission then it can't be done.

>>8555302
I've seen a lot of shit blamed on the jews, but this is a new one for me.

I 100% guarantee you this hasn't been waiting on regulatory approval.

As for SpaceX announcing they have plans to do things, and then not doing them, they don't always blow up a rocket in between. Even then, their plans were still to attempt the first relaunch, of a selected stage out of several recovered ones, near the one year mark after their first flyback recovery.

Not exactly an overwhelming case for the idea that Falcon 9 is soon going to be capable of gas-and-go reflight.

>>8555269
>I don't think nuclear reactor will ever go to space.
https://archive.org/details/71502FirstNuclearReactorInSpace
>SNAP-10A, an experimental nuclear reactor launched into space in 1965.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A
>The US-A programme was responsible for orbiting a total of 33 nuclear reactors, 31 of them BES-5 types with a capacity of providing about two kilowatts of power for the radar unit. In addition, in 1987 the Soviets launched two larger TOPAZ nuclear reactors (six kilowatts) in Kosmos satellites (Kosmos 1818 and Kosmos 1867)

>>8554523

Non-meme answer: because NASA invested in the space shuttle from 1970-2011 while Russia never moved on from Soyuz. Also, NASA's original phaseout plan for the space shuttle was interrupted by 9/11, the response to which (both the creation of the DHS and the mideast wars) sucked up valuable tax money. Things like the V-22 and F-35 took prominence. Then Ares I couldn't even get to LEO and Congress couldn't justify the entire program that went with it.

It was a series of unfortunate events, there's no way NASA could have predicted 9/11 or stopped the government from reinvesting into defense (which prior to 9/11 was steadily getting less and less money as the cold war was over).

>>8554565
>>8554658
>>8554768

Go back to /pol/

>>8554892

>As the other anon said, lucky to have it by 2030. Anything from NASA that's more than a decade away might as well be fairy dust, since they're dependent upon the whims of Congress.

and it's Congress who kept the V-22 and F-35 alive, this works both ways

>>8555945
nothing wrong with the F-35
The V-22 was a marine corps disaster, they got no idea how to procure useful stuff

>>8555534

Thank you!

>>8555939
Your statements explain why NASA doesn't have absolutely unlimited money.

They say nothing to explain why NASA is so incredibly inefficient and can't get things done with the huge amounts of money they do get (NASA gets several times more money every year than has ever passed through SpaceX's hands), which is explained by the posts you're deriding as /pol/-tier.

>NASA invested in the space shuttle from 1970-2011
They weren't "investing". The space shuttle was not originally intended to be continued past the last-80s, and was clearly a failure at its intended purpose by the mid-80s. In fact, it was clear even with public information that it was going to be a failure before the first launch:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835107/posts

The shuttle program was sold as a way to reduce costs and increase launch rates, but it wasn't planned or run that way. It was a massive fraud on the American taxpayer, just like SLS.

>>8556715
>(NASA gets several times more money every year than has ever passed through SpaceX's hands)
Also: they've been working on Orion and its launch vehicles since before SpaceX started work on Falcon 1. They've already spent more on it than everything SpaceX has ever got, plus everything SpaceX says they'll need for a ship to take 100 colonists at a time to Mars.

>>8557265
I don't even view it as a NASA vs. SpaceX thing.

I literally can't think of ANY public or private rocketry group that's as shitty as 21st century NASA

I think fucking Bigelow Airspace have accomplished more than them during this century

>>8557279
They blew all their money on Earth Science.

Then, since they are government run they must have diversity as mandatory. If you look at Blue Origin or SpaceX teams compared to NASA you can see which one is picking up all the deadweight. In fact, most people have already left to start working in private space companies.

NASA doesn't even serve a purpose anymore. It should be chopped into 2 with military purposes under the DoD and pure space science R&D with industry and university consortiums under a modest budget.