Should have launched in 2015 for the cost of 12 billion. Launched in 2022 for the cost of 23 billion. It costs 3 billion per launch. (As per Wikipedia) And it is recycled Space Shuttle design and material.
Compare that with Space X Falcon Heavy launch costs of 100-150 million per launch.
Some day Starship will have its moment as well.
Predicting decades when it took them only 3 years to go from "nothing" to on the pad is a bit much.
This isn't kerbal space program... Fluid's gonna fluid dynamics in a 0g environment...
I bet it won't take more than 5 tries to do a full tank Starship transfer. And SpaceX iterates quickly
Every single person I've heard say this hasn't given a reasonable reason why it's difficult other than "we've never done it before". Also on-orbit refueling has been done, just not with cryogenics. Additionally it's only been done in zero-G with bladders. A slight vehicle spin to settle tanks seems like it would be sufficient to feed some low speed pumps without bladders.
If in 2014, when this was said, NASA asked and funded SpaceX to human rate Heavy, they’d have launched already.
But there is; gold standard for human rated missions is 98% reliability rate. This means testing every single component, and making sure that Product(Px) > 0.98 where Px is the probability failure of component x. This drives the cost up exponentially. E.g. if the rocket has Px = 0.99 and the crew capsule has Pcapsule = 0.99, then Psystem = 0.98, barely clearing the threshold.
Falcon 9 had 3.5 failures out of 185 launches, giving it a Pfalcon9 = 0.98; PfalconHeavy then is,at most, 0.98^3 = 0.84, way too low to make it human-rateabale.
The difference between Procket 0.84 and P0.99 is exponential cost.
Falcon Heavy has never had a launch failure. It's 4/4
If you're arguing it's had a failure because it shares heritage then SLS was 133/135 before the launch which is worse and so shouldn't fly crew until it does way more than just one flight.
Second, I am talking about design goals, not track records. You don't evaluate the safety of a large system by running it a lot of times and see what happens - you design the thing towards a goal of safety. So this involves designing each component to the specific failure rate, and testing individually, then then testing together, documenting every step, to provide traceability of every change on every component.
The comparison to historical data on Falcon is not entirely valid, because we don't know the design goals of Falcon, etc. Just because Falcon 9 is human rated, doesn't mean Falcon Heavy is human rated, etc.
The quiet secret is that CCP can bypass a ton of requirements that NASA can’t. That is, until they do something like lose an astronaut and then I suspect they will get much more oversight.
The Orion capsule launched today did not include the ECLSS system.
For example, human-rated system usually are a no-go with a single point of failure that can cause a loss of crew. If that does exist, they either need to redesign or get everyone to agree to the new risk assessment.
To me, that seems to be the worst of both worlds: all the cost and headaches of developing an effectively new launch system, but doing so shackled to a launch vehicle design that's dominated by ideas from the late 60s.
So what started out as a grand idea to reuse old Shuttle hardware ends up with Aerojet Rocketdyne charging $146 million per engine. Each. And there are four of them.
These taxpayer dollars aren't gone, they flow back into the economy. It makes tens of thousands of jobs possible.
People reacted the same over the price of the Perseverance (2.75bn) project, as if somehow all that money was now on the surface of Mars.
Or you could spend it on education. Or research.
It's good in my opinion to have the conversation.
As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal. Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
Lots of the money went into the pockets of tens of thousands of tradesmen and tradeswomen -- welders, fabricators, machinists, NDT technicians, etc -- who further developed their skills, passed it onto newer generations of workers, and ensured manufacturing skills don't become lost to time. The same manufacturing skills that will be used to make the technology and infrastructure we need to continue to live dignified, modern lives.
It went into the pockets of engineers -- who continue on a tradition of engineering established since the first space race. Some of them would have taught and mentored the ones who would go on to make rockets at all the New Space startups, including SpaceX. Others will take their skills to other fields.
It went into the pockets of hundreds of small businesses who contract with the makers of the SLS.
Could we have been wiser with the money? Can we be more effective? Sure. But it is not all for naught and quite frankly if we are to continue as a modern first world society, making sure the skills and tech that go into making a rocket stay alive is just as important as funding healthcare, education and research.
And tonight, there will be some kids inspired by the footage of the most powerful rocket ever made by humans to pursue careers in manufacturing and engineering.
This is not just "creating jobs." This is making sure another piece of a cornerstone of American technological dominance stays alive so we can continue to maintain the standard of living we have now.
$23 billion is a small price to pay. Social media sites have been sold for much more.
There's something deeply disturbing in this passage. I hope I'm not the only one seeing it. It sounds like you think the global stage is a zero sum game, and the only way to maintain the current standard of living is to assert dominance.
To clarify with an example: in a group stranded on a desert island, without enough food for the whole group, I think a good strategy would be:
* share the available food fairly
* work to get more food
The mindset of the passage I quoted would probably lead people in this situation to, instead, try to get as much food as possible for themselves.
Yes. This "disturbing thing" is, unfortunately, the cold, hard reality of the world.
> In a group stranded on a desert island, without enough food for the whole group, I think a good strategy would be: \n\n* share the available food fairly\n\n* work to get more food
Yes. Unfortunately, the entire recorded history and everything you see happening every day provides an unending stream of hard evidence that this strategy is not naturally possible for humans to take. The entire enterprise of society and civilization is, in a sense, about making it so that people take your strategy more often than the obvious one, which is for groups and individuals to hoard enough to minimize perceived risk to their own survival.
Additionally, the idea behind a competitive, free market, is that this very nature can be exploited for good of all, if the effort can be directed towards methods of hoarding that actually grow the pie.
I'm not an American, but I do recognize that "American technological dominance" in this technology is a big part of what kept my neighborhood (Europe) in peace for the past few decades. Americans would be wise to recognize that this is a big part of what makes your country rich.
I don't think GP sees space industry, or the economy, as zero-sum game in an absolute sense. But it obviously is in the relative sense, and it's the relative sense that also translates into geopolitical importance.
(And FWIW, I suspect bringing this up is another kind of "make people complaining about space industry funding go away", because again, this kind of argument typically resonates with them. Commercial and scientific space sectors, as well as enthusiasts, tend to lean towards cooperation, "citizens of the world" kind of thinking. Space exploration is actually one of those things that encourage this view.)
Is how to use seventies-era parts to build a new rocket really a field of research?
Or military. Or political campaigns. Or grift.
> It's good in my opinion to have the conversation.
This conversation has been had to death. NASA gets table scraps anyway. Also this whole program is research, and of the quite practical kind.
> As an aside, I believe "creating jobs" should not be a societal goal.
It's not. It's just something that's being brought up to make the people saying to gut NASA "because education! healthcare!" go away, because it usually resonates with them.
> Making sure everyone can live a dignified life is.
Yes, that's the long-term point of the whole endeavor, and of possible line items on the Federal budget, space historically had quite a good ROI here.
I was not aware of how the NASA budget compares to US military spending, so I just looked it up.
In Fiscal year 2022 the DoD had $1.94 Trillion allocated to it. Or $1,940 billions. NASA's budget in FY 2022 is $30.62 Billion.
So reducing military spending by 1/64th will free up as many resources as closing NASA altogether.
In such conversation, it's also important to look at the return of investment, note the diminishing returns of large endeavors, and consider the exploration-exploitation dilemma[0].
The way I see it:
1. Americans would definitely want to cut down the military spending a bit, because of diminishing returns/waste and how it perverts the US politics (once you have all that combat hardware and trained warriors, you feel the itch to use them). But, despite popular opinion, I think it's important to remember that this military spending is buying relative calm and peace for the entire Western world, so it's not all wasted. Unfortunate reality of human condition is that, until we invent some new, surprising technologies (including social technologies), militaries will be needed to maintain peace.
2. Healthcare and education in the US arguably has more than enough money. The problem isn't the funds, it's their allocation, and the corruption.
3. NASA is, for the most part, your most high-tech part of the "exploration" arm of the exploration/exploitation tradeoff (whereas education, healthcare, and anything you could describe related to maintaining a standard of life, is on the "exploitation" side). US is already (IMO) spending too much on the exploitation side relative to exploration, compared to optimum, so if you want to rebalance the budget, I'd focus on cutting some exploitation spending (but, for your own self-preservation, add some more money to infrastructure maintenance).
--
I get the whole monopoly of violence logic here but remember your clarifying, end point. "the entire Western world".
Because go ask anyone from the middle east if they think the US military is buying calm and peace.
So all points still stand: money goes into the economy and jobs, but the workforce becomes more competent, cost aware and sharp.
The issue here is that a lot of what NASA does is not driven by current market needs. They're doing speculative, curiosity-driven R&D, on the extreme end of the "exploration" arm of exploration/exploitation tradeoff. Even though evidence to date tells us NASA spending (and space exploration in general) has a huge RoI, and there's good reason to suspect it'll continue to be huge indefinitely, it's not easy to quantify in terms and on time horizons the market understands[0]. NASA having less money just means less R&D being done.
Now, I agree the way they go about things could be improved in terms of efficiency. But, unlike with for-profit companies, budget is the wrong knob to turn. Something else must be changed. I have no idea what[1].
Also, one has to be careful comparing e.g. SpaceX and NASA in terms of costs, because for the former, rocketry is a service they sell. NASA isn't there to be in the business of affordable rocket launches, it's there to be in the business of expanding what's possible.
--
[0] - In particular, the market has a really hard time dealing with the idea of work that enriches the society at large - which, from company/investor point of view, is just enriching random third parties.
[1] - In a sense, using money for this in the market economy is a way to side-step figuring out what the problem is - the threat of running out of money makes the companies individually try and do something, and either it works or they die. Obviously, this approach can't work in non-profit R&D.
In the grand scheme of things, I don't care about 11 billion as much as I care that it's done and moving.
Also, I cannot find a wikipedia citation for $3 billion/launch. I found one for $2.3 billion/year for SLS launches.
> We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch at a cadence of approximately one mission per year.
> The cost per launch was calculated as follows: $1 billion for the Orion based on information provided by ESD officials and NASA OIG analysis; $300 million for the ESA’s Service Module based on the value of a barter agreement between ESA and the United States in which ESA provides the service modules in exchange for offsetting its ISS responsibilities; $2.2 billion for the SLS based on program budget submissions and analysis of contracts; and $568 million for EGS costs related to the SLS/Orion launch as provided by ESD officials.
Gonna need a source for that.
Not to mention you’re comparing apples to oranges. I suppose a decade from now after NASA has done all the work to lay the foundation when Musk comes in and brags about how much cheaper his version is we’ll see a similar narrative.
This decision was entirely due to doctrine. STS was designed as a mostly reusable product and failed costs-wise, so the government basically forced NASA to go with something expendable instead. It is genuinely impressive that SpaceX proved that reusable launch vehicles can be made cost-effective, but it's nowhere near the kind of massive quantum leap that SpaceX's legion of hardcore followers seems to be convinced it is. Everything on a Falcon or a Dragon is public domain 60s technology besides the code and guidance hardware (based on COTS components). The same is likely be true of Starship, which explains a lot of the significant teething issues it has suffered over the past several flight tests.
What a nice way to belittle the enormous significance of their achievements.
Reliability, total mass to LEO/GEO/TLI/Whatever, and $/kg in each of these cases, coupled with an amazing launch cadence, are where you can see the magnitude of the progress they've enabled. Whether you do it with expendable or reusable vehicles, burning RP-1, methane or a custom mixture of concentrated Jack Daniels and dog hair, doesn't really matter. They do it reliably, often and amazingly cheaply. SLS does none of that, and neither do any of the other launch systems.
Also if you value their improvements so little over "public domain 60s technology", how come nobody else did it in 50 years?
Come on, Elon is immensely questionable, but SpaceX is awesome (thanks in no small part to Gwynne Shotwell!) and SLS is... not, but at least it finally launched and didn't even blow up, so let's celebrate that instead of turning this into an opportunity to disparage them.
> As of 2019, only three full-flow staged combustion rocket engines had ever progressed sufficiently to be tested on test stands; the Soviet Energomash RD-270 project in the 1960s, the US government-funded Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated powerhead demonstration project in the mid-2000s,[6] and SpaceX's flight capable Raptor engine first test-fired in February 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle
If you want to learn more
However it is a question what SLS will do when they run out of these engines that's cost is in the same ballpark per piece as a full Falcon heavy. Or something like that. And those are just the engines. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...
Bare-skin stainless steel rockets?
I will personally be surprised if SLS still exists in a decade.
Just remember I am saying “if Starship development goes according to plan” which I think is reasonably likely but of course not guaranteed.
And this comparison always comes up in the context of "evil inefficient gubmint stealing our tax dollars versus awesome private corporation showing how it should be done".
As far as government spending, I’m far from a free market advocate. But I would rather see the government spend money effectively. If SLS will cost, say, ten billion dollars over the next decade to complete three more flights, I’d rather see the government buy $1B in services from SpaceX to ensure they finish development of Starship, securing rides on a rocket which is 1/30th the launch costs, and then spend the other $9 billion on social housing programs to alleviate homelessness in the country.
My point is not that I believe free markets will magically solve any problem we can imagine, but that a specific solution to the problem of heavy lift space vehicles that shows real promise is already nearly complete. I simply believe it would be a better use of funds to invest in that system than to continue to burn money on SLS. And the government understands this as it has awarded some money to SpaceX for moon missions with Starship. So they’re finding the much cheaper private option and the very expensive NASA option. And I just think that’s a poor use of funds given what each project promises.
Just to be perfectly clear, are you saying SLS development also results in a lot of engineering knowledge? If so can you highlight what that knowledge would be -- propulsion, material, efficiency, avionics, manufacturing?
The cost and the tendency of its launch being scrubbed makes it a risk for any time sensitive mission, as shown by NASA decision to switch Europa Clipper to Falcon Heavy:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/325106-europa-clipper-di...
The only figure for the development cost i can find online is “more than $500 million.”
From https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-o...
They've received around $10B[0] in funding. About 3.2B [1] in fed payment, with about $13B, in appropriated funding. I would say they've launched a number of private missions as well that made them a profit.
[0]https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... [1]https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?q=spacex+UEI_NAME%3A...
This is not just inflated, it’s 100% bogus - this is not a reasonable way to estimate development costs for a launch vehicle.
>Now do the cost for SLS based on the total cost to date for NASA and all contractors since inception, including the costs for Apollo and the shuttle.
But I would agree with that sentiment if you only included rocket development. It's not just the cost of that vehicle but also the total cost of the institutional knowledge to get there. Starship might cost _X_, but it's because you already developed reusability and the ability to land the boosters.
Also, the biggest difference between spaceX and nasa is spaceX is verticly integrated where NASA avoids the development of alot of manufacturing capability.
Sarcasm, but not too much.