Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SLS/Orion

9 Comments

It’s official; it’s slipped into 2019. Just put it out of its (and our) misery.

[Update a couple minutes later]

[Update a few minutes later]

And in related news, the space-suit situation is as screwed up as ever. I was looking into thie problem 35 years ago for military man-in-space at the Aerospace Corporation, and we still don’t have a usable suit that doesn’t require pre-breathing.

[Update early afternoon]

A reminder, from the comments at the Berger piece:

This rocket is a colossal waste of NASA’s limited resources and valuable expertise. They are building it entirely at the micro-management of the Senate to make sure that certain districts get the jobs. Its going to end up costing around $2 billion per flight, has zero reuse built in, and this first model with the 70mt capacity and interim upper stage will only fly ONCE. Right now we have 3 US heavy/super heavy lift rockets in development: Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, and New Glenn. They are each a fraction of the cost per kg and they are all incorporating reusability and are all going to be ready to fly astronauts before this one does.

Yup. Well, maybe not Vulcan. That one’s funding constrained.

9 thoughts on “SLS/Orion”

  1. Rand, you stole the low-hanging fruit with the “this is my shocked face” comment. I think us space kaydets need to learn to live with the fact that little of NASA’s HSF effort is actually about exploring anything, and mostly about shoveling money to AL and FL and TX. We need to think about what can be done with the leftover scraps (e.g., commercial crew, commercial cargo, etc.) because that’s where anything really interesting is going to happen, I fear. I still figure 4 flights for SLS, max. Maybe 3, with the last flight vehicle ending up on its side at KSC.

    1. That sounds about right.

      The support still isn’t there to kill it.

      The support won’t be there to kill it even after Falcon Heavy takes flight late this year.

      But you can start to see the writing on the wall.

      I figure it probably will get EM-1, EM-2, the Europa probe, and maybe one more flight. But I can see it being wound down at that point, with FH and New Glenn (and possibly Vulcan) carry the heavy lift burden from there.

      1. If Falcon Heavy is successful, more people (including members of Congress from other states) are going to start asking questions about why we’re spending so much for SLS.

  2. and trump was saying goto mars sooner? If we continue this boondoggle at the traditional NASA burn rate it will need multiple billions in year increases.,..

  3. According to the law, Orion and SLS were meant to be *operational* to LEO by the end of 2016. That implies test flights before then. Assuming just one test flight and assuming a wildly optimistic launch rate of one per year, Orion/SLS should have flown in 2015. So a first flight in 2019 makes it *more* than 3 years late!

  4. You know what would be cool? If SpaceX launched a manned lunar fly by mission on a *Falcon 9*. You heard that right. A Falcon 9. I noticed only recently that Falcon 9 FT now has the exact same payload to LEO as a Proton rocket. While the Cape Canaveral launch site is much better for launches to higher orbits than Baikonour. That plus more modern capsule construction techniques and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could do it. Considering Soyuz 7K-L1 “Zond” existed.

    1. The only thing that will kill SLS is overkill. Which should happen in just a few more years when private industry makes fools of them. Their conceit is that they can do just enough to provide cover for continuing… but they are already showing desperation.

    2. A Falcon 9 just might be able to launch a Dragon 2 on a lunar flyby mission. Looking at their website, a Falcon 9 can launch 8,300 kg to GTO and 22,800 kg to LEO. You’d need quite a bit more acceleration to reach the moon, so that means you’d probably need to keep the Dragon weight below 7,500 kg. Wikipedia says the dry mass of a Dragon 1 capsule is 4,200 kg. I can’t find the numbers for the Dragon 2 but it’s probably higher due to abort propellant, life support, and other crew-related equipment. It’d be close but it just might be possible to fly that mission. A Falcon Heavy would have a much easier time of it.

  5. What’s really infuriating is that Congress robbed funding from Commercial Crew

    And yet Boeing and SpaceX have plenty of money to spend on other things. Maybe the lower funding hurt NASA’s bureaucracy ability to manage the program though? But when Boeing and SpaceX are shouldering the burden, that doesn’t look good for NASA.

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