Defense News has a hit and a miss. First, the hit:
…And after SpaceX unveils the manned version of its previously unmanned Dragon spacecraft this week, NASA should accelerate development of the project
Yes, though unlike me, they don’t actually propose how to do that.
Here’s the miss, and it’s a big one:
and revive the Space Launch System to put super heavy payloads into orbit.
What does “revive” the SLS mean? I thought it was ahead of schedule? That’s what its proponents keep telling me.
And what “super heavy payloads” are there that need to be put into orbit? What does this have to do with dependence on the Russians? This recommendation seems to be a complete non sequitur.
SLS is “ahead of schedule” in a very narrow definition only. They have not even closed on the selection of engines for the full thing, their cost accounting is a mess as per GAO, the milestones keep getting redefined ( EM-2 will probaly be unmanned now ) they wasted more than a billion dollars on J-2X ahead of schedule and then shelved it etc.
Well, it’s certainly ahead of everyone else’s schedule when it comes to wasting money.
Not too odd they tossed in a pro-SLS reference when several of their biggest advertisers are contractors on SLS. They needed something to balance the boost for rationality in mentioning DragonRider.
Pretty good editorial, overall. Yeah, the single sentence about SLS was probably pro forma pandering to major advertisers, but I used to edit a trade pub myself so I understand how that sort of thing works.
I think “revive”, in this context, means “throw even more money at it”.
sarc
Let’s face it, we need SLS to match the Russians in heavy lift. They don’t currently have a heavy lifter (Delta IV medium outlifts Proton) but they used to have Energia. Energia stopped production with the fall of the Soviet Union, but restarting it has been floated several times, only to run into fiscal reality (it costs too much). So therefor, we must spend billions on SLS to ensure that we don’t have a viable heavy lifter (one we can afford to use) either, and thus match the Russians in this non-capability.
/sarc
Well, actually, I think one very interesting new development in SLS is that they’ve decided to ditch the advanced booster program and focus on building a real second stage (the block one was absurdly small, due to being basically a Delta IV upper stage). One of the things this means is they can kiss that 130 tons claim (originally claimed to be available by 2032!) goodby.
Oh, it also looks like the first two flights of SLS will be unmanned, so it won’t carry crew until the 2020’s. And, given the schedule slips that are endemic in the industry (as in most R&D projects in any industry) that’s looking like the mid 2020’s.
If, and it’s a mighty big if, they can coax the same performance out of the RS-25 E as they got out of the RS-25D (the SSME) they still aren’t going to be able to break 100 tons to LEO using the 5 segment SRB boosters (Block 2 performance estimates assumed the advanced boosters).
The most likely scenario as near as I can tell; block one performance will be around 65 tons to LEO. (Barely more than Falcon Heavy’s predicted Leo capacity) but it’ll be more capable than FH beyond LEO due to the high ISP SLS upper stage. For example, two FH launches could put more than one SLS launch into lunar orbit, but only about 40% more (and you’d lose half that 40% by going reusable with the FH side cores). So, you end up spending 200 million (non recovery price) to get the same payload into lunar orbit, compared to a billion plus for SLS, and a billion is less than 200 million (I’m using congressional math here). But, the SLS defenders love to point out that you’d be facing a multi-launch scenario to do a lunar landing based on FH. They’re right about that. What they don’t bother to mention is that with SLS , you’d also need multiple launches (Per NASA, it couldn’t do a single-launch lunar landing).