Continues ad infinitum at NASA Watch, with the usual illogic from the usual suspects. This is a good analogy:
SLS is like Columbus postponing his voyages to try to build the world’s largest ship, using all the funds available to him for many years to do so. Instead of outfitting three modestly-sized ships with the crew and provisions to set out as soon as he can, Columbus spends many years to build an enormous ship. Meanwhile, no exploration is done. And Columbus makes sure the shipbuilding employs lots of people in key cities in Spain for political reasons, instead of designing the ship as efficiently as possible. In the end, the English beat Columbus to the New World because by the time Columbus finishes his ship, he can’t afford the crew or provisions for it, and the costs of simply maintaining the ship while it sits in its harbor are too high.
It reminds me of the story of Don Miguel de Grifo.
This is another good analogy:
Building SLS is like re-creating Saturn V without doing the rest of the Apollo program at the same time. It would result in SLS being cancelled, just as Saturn V was, for cost reasons, but without ever flying anything useful, because we weren’t doing another Apollo at the same time.
The only programs that could possibly use SLS would be hugely expensive and take a long time to develop. So if we finished SLS without working on the programs that would use SLS at the same time, we’d end up with a hugely expensive SLS draining money for many years before the payloads could possibly be ready, even if by some miracle all that huge amount of money appeared from somewhere (the Apollo program budgets were far greater, as a share of GDP, than NASA’s current budgets).
But some people just can’t get it. I can understand why rent-seeking senators want to fund this jobs program, but I don’t understand why any sensible space enthusiast does. But then, I guess that question answers itself, doesn’t it?
but I don’t understand why any sensible space enthusiast does.
I think the non-sensible ones like SLS for the same reason they like monster trucks. Nothing wrong with that, but it is kind of hard to justify a government funded monster truck.
Actually people like SLS for the same reason why other people like 18 wheeler long haul trucks, super tankers, and jumbo jets. Big sometimes is better.
Mark,
Yeah, especially when there is sufficient demand to justify it. One to two flights per year? Not so much.
~Jon
Yeah, especially when there is sufficient demand to justify it. One to two flights per year? Not so much.
It also helps that it’s other peoples’ money (that we ran out of years ago) that pays for it.
Big sometimes is better.
But that’s not an argument. It is a type of heuristic thinking. Which can be useful when actual thinking is in short supply. He is sadly not alone.
Granted that we don’t need a heavy lifter, I still wonder why it is so bloody expensive – especially given that the basic shuttle stack is good for a S-V class payload into LEO. Replace the orbiter with a cargo carrier and 3 throwaway SSMEs or SSME-class engines and go fly.
Given that the rocket scientists and their management are unable to do that cheaply, I am forced to return to the old Tom Rogers observation that congress views NASA as simply another jobs program; this one for aero engineers. Cheers –
A big problem is that the stack isn’t a basic shuttle stack. The external tank has to be redesigned to be able to carry the payload on top and the engines on the bottom. Quite different load stresses/etc then what the shuttle would create.
Here’s your problem. The Shuttle stack flew, on the average, 4.5 times a year. On the last plan available to the public, the SDV will fly less than once a year.
The Shuttle system included the orbiter as payload, with development costs of the orbiter already paid for and written off.
For SDV, payloads are extra, on top of the fixed costs of the launcher. But the fixed cost of the launcher limit the money available to develop and build payloads: a vicious cycle.
Sidemount had none of those problems.. but they rejected that option for some reason which they never bothered to explain.
But I’m sure they would have still screwed it up.
Trent, Sidemount has the same core problem as SLS and Ares and DIRECT and Shuttle: the huge standing army in Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Florida.
Ed, no doubt.. but if that’s what they want, and it is what they want, sidemount would have been the fastest way to put everyone back to work. It is the cheapest, fastest shuttle derived option and has been since the Shuttle-C days. What they don’t like about it is that shoving a capsule on top of the boat tail looks dumb and human spaceflight is what they’re getting the funding to do. So, the heavy lift vehicle is really only good for cargo, which means you have to actually trust the commercial crew partners to deliver, etc.
Ed Minchau is right. All costs are ultimately labour costs. Lotsa labour, lotsa costs. And it’s the core function of all shuttle derived systems that they seek to preserve the workforce.
That is what NASA’s political masters, the politicians, want.
Preserve the workforce!
Save the jobs!
So son of Constellation costs about the same as it’s pappy.
Strange that.
Yup.. I’m not arguing with that. All I’m saying is that the $38B and insanely long schedule is a symptom of not picking the most expedient design.
Ten years of paychecks for voters in their districts is a feature, not a bug of the SLS design. I doubt they really don’t care if it ever flies just so long as the paychecks and votes keep flowing their way.
OT of SLS but related to the topic, this is the kind of thing that NASA should be doing instead of Orion and SLS. They need to go back to their NACA roots and push technology development that helps advance US aerospace instead of trying to operate a very expensive spaceline and hotel (ISS) for a handful of government employees.
The first in-space tests under NASA’s new advanced technology push will involve laser communications for high-data-rate links to deep-space probes, a space-qualified atomic clock to make the laser links even more efficient, and the largest solar sail yet flown.
The U.S. space agency plans to spend $175 million over the next four years, if Congress appropriates that amount, on the first three Technology Demonstration Missions (TDMs) funded under the Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT).
The space demos — all piggybacked on other spacecraft — were picked from 47 proposals of missions that hold promise for “infusing” technology that is not available today into government and commercial space missions anticipated in the near term.
“TDM matures advanced space technologies that are of benefit to multiple customers through flight-readiness and mission infusion,” says Bonnie James, TDM program executive in the office of NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun. “So the program really focuses on demonstrating and infusing new space technologies.”
All costs are ultimately labour costs.
I smell Marxism.
Cost is everything used to make a thing available, including things like storage, etc.