Well its ready to fly as in, one test flight. It will take 2-4 years until it will fly a second time.
One of the biggest issues with SLS (besides cost) is the launch rate. It will limit the NASA for a long time.
One of the biggest issues with SLS (besides cost) is the launch rate. It will limit the NASA for a long time.
One of their single-use engines costs more than any SpaceX rocket… which are all reusable.
If history is any guide and they haven't missed any big blockers though, then they'll get there - but I think a 10 year horizon is probably a reasonable expectation.
Starship is a SpaceX rocket reasonably late in the development cycle, and is planned to land on the moon in an uncrewed demonstration flight no earlier than 2024, and with people during NASA's Artemis 3 mission no earlier than 2025. According to the plan this will be the first mission to land people on the moon since Apollo.
SLS at this point is not planning on launching a vehicle that lands on the moon, instead just a very very expensive taxi to a starship in lunar orbit which could have easily carried the astronauts there itself...
Pretty sure it's untried. Theoretically easy, just like launching starship is theoretically easy.
Of course it's more challenging.
And it does matter if there's more fuel, you have to have valves and pipes that won't freeze after lengthy contact with cryogenic fuel. And you need larger pressure vessels, which scale in volume differently from surface area. It's not at all the same whether you move one ton or a hundred.
Regardless of the dates, Artemis using starship as a lander seems practically guaranteed at this point, so SLS really is relegated to the role of unnecessary taxi...
Several Moon missions were launched on commercial rockets. Even tiny RocketLab launched one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPSTONE
I'm not saying there's room for improvement, but I think people neg Artemis way too hard for what it is. And people give Starship too much credit for what it is (so far). (And I DO like the idea of Starship and hope it succeeds). If it succeeds things will be awesome!
I’m hopeful it will meat here falcons success, but until then compare what’s actually possible today.
And if the SLS/Orion architecture wasn't so underperforming, Starship could waste less energy making up for it.
Now what is true that the further out you go, a hydrogen RL-10 based upper stage will win out better then a Falcon 9 based kerlox upper stage.
So while the payload to LEO between rockets can be pretty close, the payload to a moon orbit can be quite different.
But yeah, they’re on completely different levels.
When SLS finishes development, it will also hold the record for all 3.
The way SpaceX does programatic accounting, and the way NASA does programatic accounting are I suspect, wildly different.
NASA itself estimates costs of about 800m+ each (depending how you account for program overhead). Also, if SLS is used to launch stuff to LEO, its a cosmic waste of money. None of the Falcon rockets can really meet the program goals of SLS.
First of all, that 800m number is mostly a very optimistic estimate that might come true sometime around 2030 or later.
And even then its only true if you completely ignore amortization of development cost, something SpaceX can't really do.
Some of the items that are getting ordered now are for rockets in the late 2020s and if you look at those unit prices its not close to 800m yet.
1b will also need a new upper stage, the price of that is as of yet pure speculation and anybody that has watched the SLS program knows that will happen before its done. And the unit price will also not be there.
SLS will almost certainty be canceled before they reach anywhere close to 800m a launch.
> None of the Falcon rockets can really meet the program goals of SLS.
That is simply not true, or rather, its only true as so far as the whole Artemis program was designed to use SLS. When the NASA administrator suggest that Falcon Heavies could be used some in congress threatened him and seriously suggested he should resign. He shut up quite fast after that.
Many at NASA in the early 2010s didn't want SLS, simple because such a rocket is not required. And even today with a few changes and tweaks it wouldn't be required. But of course if you spend 45 billion into a specific solution it will be better then the solution you spend 0$ on.
But even so, its still not to late, even now canceling SLS and redesigning Artemis would be worth it. Artemis assumes that Starship will exist anyway, and human transport to LEO is fixed already. Starship is the lander already. So really, only thing you need is somehow to get humans from LEO to the moon. And guess what, Starship already has to fly that anyway.
Thats, speculation, one covered in the source article, that notes, because of the spread of the project - virtually every state makes something for it, its proven itself more or less immune to budget cuts because of this.
Beyond that, there is a dearth of heavy lift rockets out there, the idea of a single source from SpaceX is.. one, contrary to normal federal procurement rules, and two, not a sane idea - if for no there reason than it doesnt match the mission profile for a lunar mission.
I'll note, that even a Block I SLS launches 30t more into LEO than Falcon Heavy does, the numbers go up even higher for later blocks, presumably this advantage is even high for lunar missions.
Its speculation but informed speculation.
> more or less immune to budget cuts because of this
That is true so far but not a law of nature. There are many in congress who don't like it. It touches every state, but some state far more then others. And an alternative solution would also spend money.
SpaceX is in California, Texas, Florida and Washington. And other commercial providers like BlueOrigin are in Alabama and Florida.
Originally it was a Alabama and Florida Senator who pushed SLS. A Florida senator didn't want commercial space, he wanted SLS launching from Florida. However since then every Florida senator will understand that SpaceX aud Commercial launch is 1000x more important for Florida then a SLS launch every year.
So a state like Florida was incredibly pro SLS, now this is no longer true. Alabama and Utah will continue to be pro SLS. However Texas and California (slightly relevant stats) will certainty not be.
There are forces in congress that don't like the waste and Alabama/Utah dominance and when Starship fly's regularly before Artemis 2 even launches you will see some series attacks on SLS castle. And if SLS has any series issues it will be easy to topple. Even just delaying funding for the new upper stage can kill it.
Its a very long time from now until late 2020s. Consider the difference in the industry over the last 7 years. 7 years ago there were still influential voices who thought reusable rockets would never be real, now reusable rockets are so boring that even hard core space nerds don't watch all the launches anymore.
SLS already looks like a flying antique in a few years it will just be comical.
> one, contrary to normal federal procurement rules
Federal procurement rules don't really apply to large NASA missions. As SLS is single sourced right now.
> two, not a sane idea
So then by your own logic SLS is not a sane idea. I guess we agree.
> I'll note, that even a Block I SLS launches 30t more into LEO than Falcon Heavy does, the numbers go up even higher for later blocks, presumably this advantage is even high for lunar missions.
We are not talking about Apollo. This is not a single all-in-one launch architecture. Artemis already relies on multiple launches for all its missions. Anything but single launch payload comparison will come out much better using commercial rocket.
Falcon 9 heavy can launch literally 5-20 times as often while you can launch 20 of them for the price of single SLS launch. 20 Falcon Heavy rockets costing 140M a pop (likely would be less) cost would literally be cheaper then Artemis 1 launch cost alone.
You can also do the numbers for New Glenn, Vulcan, Terran R, Neutron and all the other commercial rockets. Going to a multi launch architecture designed for launch vehicles of current size is sensible, far more so then single source multi-billion SLS.
You could literally pay for 10 years of all launches required with the price of just the Artemis 1/Artemis 2. Its financial idiocy beyond rime or reason and nobody who seriously looks at the numbers can defend it.
There are so many other architecture that could make sense. Even dumb things like launching the Service Module and Orion separately would work and if you did, Falcon Heavy would be totally doable and far, far cheaper then the current architecture. But of course current Orion isn't designed to do that, no-no, we couldn't do sensible architectures like that.
If you actually gave space mission architects freedom from the the political milestones, not a single one of them would ever come up with the current Artemis program.
All of this is before we even consider the existence of Starship. SLS/Orion are terrible ideas BEFORE you even consider Starship. If you consider Starship (and Artemis already has a hard dependency on it) SLS/Orion go from terrible ideas to borderline insanity.
This is not accurate even according to the NASA administrators in the past. Falcon Heavy should be able to meet the vast majority of the goals if not all; many of which were arbitrarily defined to only fit SLS anyway.
Its literally just paper work, Falcon Heavy is already DESIGNED AND BUILT TO MEET human rating standards. They just didn't to the paper work.
NASA's crewed rating is one step farther, but not a huge step farther.
Next problem would be Crew Dragon itself. It's probably not able to return from the moon, the speed and thus the temperature is higher so you need a capsule designed for this. Which Orion is and Dragon isn't.
Human rating certification is more about paperwork, not technology demonstration.
Neither does the SLS/Orion stack. What are you even comparing here?
A lander is required anyway.
> Also Falcon Heavy only carries 26t into LEO
I assume you don't mean LEO.
> Next problem would be Crew Dragon itself. It's probably not able to return from the moon, the speed and thus the temperature is higher so you need a capsule designed for this. Which Orion is and Dragon isn't.
Actually, the Crew Dragon Heat Shield is designed for moon reentry. There might be a few updates for avionics but nothing to big.
SLS/Orion/Orion SM and Falcon Heavy/Dragon stack are both underpowered. There are solution to this is you were willing to invest the smallest amount of money.
Dragon could be extend by adding a extra fuel tank into the trunk. That would be a reasonably cheap solution. Alternatively a separately launched Service Module. That would likely cost a few 100M, but that is jump change compared to SLS/Orion.
Or even better, don't launch the capsule to moon orbit at all, switch to the moon lander in LEO. Then you can simply use commercial crew to get the astronauts up and down and the lander to go to the moon and back.
All of these idea would save 10s of billions.
No, you don't scale up the 26t by the factor of 4 in a heartbeat.
Yes, you need to take the capsule to lunar orbit because the lander wouldn't survive reentry and you don't want to take the transfer stage down to the lunar surface and back again.
SLS is ready to fly. There are no alternatives which can do the same thing which are ready to fly. This is a fact.
Its not like Orion has actually flown, Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy are more proven then SLS/Orion and would be easier to certify.
You don't have much aerospace and certification experience, do you?
Nobody denies its hard and would take singificant work.
But the fact is, all the individual subsystems are certified. The Falcon 9, a closely derived rocket is fully certified. The Dragon is fully crew certified for LEO. And both Falcon Heavy and Dragon are engineered from the ground up to be able to be certified if required.
If this was an argument about if it cost 5 million of 50 million then we could have a discussion.
BUT ITS LITERALLY ABOUT 10+ billion $. So unless you can make an argument that it somehow cost more to human certify Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon for moon then the complete Falcon 9 and Dragon program cost in the first place then you don't have an argument. Only smart-ass comments.
So please tell me, what do I not understand. Why would it cost 10 billion to do the things I suggest. In reality, we know that it wouldn't even cost 1 billion $.
Europa Clipper is not, and that's a pretty big tell.
That is literally why the Artemis program is designed as it is, the program is designed about the rocket and capsule, rather then the other way around.
Many at NASA wanted a different architecture after Shuttle, but congress had no interest in that.
EC cost estimates are currently about 4-5 billion for the whole program while a single SLS launch is ~2 billion.
The whole SLS/Orion program runs at few billion each year and it's already spent more than 10x the entire cost of Europa Clipper.
Go look at some of the studied NASA internally did, their result was the same, other approaches would have been better and cheaper in the long run.
The Shuttle derived architecture won because of politics.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...
Basically a Saturn V like clone was considered.
And those studies referenced also didn't consider many other viable options. Commercial providers were planed to be able to bid as well and SpaceX and ULA would have considered making bids.
Something NASA also didn't consider is using the Merlin engine, an engine that actually existed and was already going into mass production at that time. That would have been an alternative to F-1 and would have been ready sooner.
You also might be interested in this presentation from 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweLWCBHpUE%3Ft%3D0
What funny about that presentation is how much time he spends talking about cost and how cost control is the most important thing and if they can control cost NASA shouldn't even make its own rocket. And of course SLS did the exact opposite of controlling cost.
And even if you assume they fail, the bids were expected to be in the 2-5 billion $ range.
Not in the 20 billion+ $ range. And those bids would have been for a 130 ton rocket, not a 90 ton rocket like SLS is.
> I'd also question cost estimates based on nothing actually built or seriously planned through.
You can question it, but those kinds of estimates are what NASA bases it choices on. And NASA picked what their own estimations suggested was the worst thing.
8 years ago we had a long discussion after the Virgin Galactic crash.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279
Virgin Galactic still isn’t live but at the time people thought they would be by now.
Anyway, since then I’ve seen Steven Weinberg’s explain my point much better than I ever could.
Can’t find the entire article but here’s the first part. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/04/08/the-wrong-stuff/
Unmanned is much cheaper, and we can iterate much faster.
In fact, in the current situation we have exactly this issue. SLS/Orion is so absurdly expensive that there literally is no money for dual sourcing of moon landers. NASA was forced to select on Starship as the moon lander BECAUSE there isn't enough money.
If you actually read what smart pro-SpaceX analysts and journalist write, you will see that you can dual source literally every part of the architecture.
We already have (or soon will) have 2 ways to go from earth to LEO. If you build on top of that, and you are not forced to spend money on SLS/Orion you have easily enough money for 2 way to get form LEO to the moon.
Starhip is one of those ways, but other ways of doing the same thing could be designed if there was money for it in the budget, but that money isn't there because NASA was forced by uninformed politicians to use this architecture. Why so many people defend an architecture that is the direct result of clueless politicians I will never understand.
There is a reason every other modern NASA program is dual sourced, COTS, CommercialCrew, CLIPS, Lunar resupply, suits, but somehow Artemis isn't. Why might that be ...
Still, my point was primarily that there is a general heavy slant towards SpaceX on this site which, whatever successes, should be tempered.
But even fans of SpaceX agree that dual sourcing is important, it just so happens that the secondary bids are mostly not as good or inspiring. So they are talked about less.
Of the two rockets that resulted from the original COTS program, Falcon 9 and Antares, I think its pretty clear why when talking about those there is a heavy slant towards Falcon 9.
Had NASA not given SpaceX a chance for HR (as Bolten and others in the Obama administration wanted) the US would be reliant on Russia for ISS and that would be a literal disaster right now.
Success in the space industry is slanted towards SpaceX, and that why its the same on this sight.
Neutron is less capable then Falcon 9 and likely lower launch rate as well. Its really not comparable to Starship at al.
I love RocketLab but they are not really playing in the same league as of yet and will not for a many years to come.
First of all Virgin Galactic is a trash company that mostly been use to scam investors, they have shown nothing but incompetence using them as a reference point is just a terrible idea.
But there are many other issues with the concept of just not doing human space flight at all.
If you want to do real systematic science and exploration have humans is actually cheaper. Human on mars supported by serious equipment and local labs is simply more powerful. The best results you get when you have real human scientists directly on location.
And the cheap price for science missions is also partially a myth, despite being a second flight of the same architecture Perseverance cost over 2+ billion. We can't spend 2 billion every time we want to get a few rocket samples and then spend many more billions to pick them up. The complete cost of designing a lunar lander for NASA (that is capable of delivering 100x that weight of Perseverance) cost 2.9 billion.
If you want to do really serious science on a large scale on mars, you will have a human station with lab facilities resupply by reusable rockets and space craft, going on expeditions themselves or sending out robots that can bring back samples and be repaired.
In addition, the human component is quite simply politically incredibly relevant. Human rocket launches draw far larger audience, astronauts are the best ambassadors for space. In addition, the technology developed for human in space of has application for humans on earth as well so much of the technology to provide, air, radiation protection and so on is relevant.
Thats a reasonable description of how a lot of space launch companies turn out.
So I think while your statement is partly true, partly that inherent in space, and partly VG is worst of breed.
It is, yes. But why does that mean it isn't worth doing?
It's not controversial to say that manned space exploration is more expensive and complex than unmanned, but it also offers capabilities that unmanned currently can't match. Where I expect you will run into trouble is in trying to argue that those capabilities aren't worth the cost based on a view of the industry 20 years ago, and/or by extrapolating on deeply flawed analogues like Virgin Galactic while ignoring obvious, far more relevant counterexamples like Crew Dragon.
Official estimates are that if SLS flies 10x, its cost per flight will be $4.1 billion. These things have a way of ballooning, but let's say that is reasonable.
SpaceX does not say how much Starship is costing them to develop, but external estimates seem to be under $8 billion. So for the cost of 2 SLS flights, SpaceX is developing a rocket with a cost to LEO orbit of under $10 million, and that they are aiming to get down to $2 million. SpaceX is planning to build in quantity, and launch at an insane cadence. Once enough have been launched, they will have ironed out the bugs and have a safety record good enough to take people.
After that, human spaceflight will be cheap.
In fact SLS is entirely unnecessary for going to the Moon. The current plan is for SpaceX to launch Starship, fuel it in orbit from other Starships, send it to the Moon, and then have it be a ferry for astronauts who got to the Moon on Starship. Why not just send people on Starship the whole way?
Yeah, yeah. I know the answer. Politics. SLS is largely funded by porkbarrel politics. Its purpose is to get congresscritters re-elected and only incidentally get to the Moon. But in a sane world, we wouldn't build it.
But we are. We are even laying plans to send humans to Mars on SLS in 20 years or so.
Anyone want an even money bet that Elon lands people on Mars before NASA does?
Some of that sounds like unreasonable optimism.
Given the track record of SpaceX, it's safe to assume that Starship will eventually fly and that the lower stage will eventually be reusable. Getting the Starship itself to survive reentry and landing in good enough condition to fly again without major refurbishment is another story. Something like that has never been achieved before. It's plausible that SpaceX will make it happen, but it's also plausible that it won't work. Then Starship will be simply an expendable upper stage that's too big and too expensive for the purpose.
Didn't the space shuttle used to do that?
A non reusable Starship still beats SLS. So the discussion is kind of mute.
Do you have any idea how many firsts they've put up? The craziest was reusable boosters.
For this one the problems to solve are fairly well-known. There is no particular reason to believe that it will be harder than what they already do.
The RS-25E (non-reusable SSME) is incredibly complex, and you are not gone mass produce them anytime soon. Even starting a very limited production line cost billions.
So sure with infinite budget many things are possible, but they are simply not going the happen. The rocket is simply not designed for high launch rates.
Falcon 9 and Atlas 5 are two examples. NASA's safety advisory board has said very positive things about the safety aspects of using a frequently-launched rocket.