Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Return Of Falcon Heavy

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Eric Berger wonders if it was a mistake.

As he notes, it was just overtaken by events.

But this is a fundamental flaw in how NASA does planetary missions:

And yet the Falcon Heavy has not spurred the development of a rash of new science missions. NASA simply has not set up the science community to take advantage of a low-cost, heavy lift rocket, said Casey Dreier, space policy director for The Planetary Society. “The incentive is just not there for scientists,” he said.

Primarily, mission planners and scientists are concerned about keeping the cost of the spacecraft down, and controlling its mass. The decision on a launch vehicle is typically left to NASA and its Launch Services Program. The Falcon Heavy really has not been around long enough to shift that calculus. Dreier said there is a chance that the larger Starship vehicle—which will dramatically change mass and volume constraints for science missions—could eventually change how NASA selects science missions.

I think that in general they would be much better off if the program manager was simply allowed to choose their own launch system as part of the program within their budget, rather than having to work within the constraints of the one chosen for them by NASA. And of course, it would have paid off much sooner in the case of Europa, because no sane program manager would have chosen SLS for it, if they had to pay for it.

5 thoughts on “Return Of Falcon Heavy”

  1. …because no sane program manager would have chosen SLS for it, if they had to pay for it.

    The worst part is, they wouldn’t have chosen it even if they DIDN’T have to pay for it.

    Indeed, I recall reading that an SLS launch for Europa Clipper wouldn’t even have gone on the Science Mission Directorate budget. I’ve yet to confirm that, but if true, it underlines just how many OTHER good reasons there were for EC planners and SMD management to NOT want to use SLS:

    1) Lethal to payload: The torsional load study showed that SLS Block 1 would require substantial modifications to make it safe for Europa Clipper. And as Eric Berger has noted, those modifications would not have been cheap, or quick to undertake.

    2) Lack of availability: Given the 2024 launch window EC planners were aiming for, the high probability was that an SLS launcher would not even be available; or worse, even if it was, the launch window would be relatively short, and as we have seen, it is far from guaranteed that the tempermental SLS can actually *hit it*. The only things that delay Falcon launches now, with very rare exceptions, are payload readiness or weather.

    3) Lack of track record: In late 2024, Falcon Heavy will have as many as 8-10 launches under its belt, based on a first stage core that will have launched 300+ times, with a so far flawless record. SLS would have had, at most, a couple launches under its belt; at the time of the launcher decision, it had none. Which do you feel safer entrusting your $4 billion space probe with?

    Falcon Heavy will take longer to get Europa Clipper to Jupiter, it’s true. But SMD management understood well enough that it least it could be reliable in doing so.

  2. The Artemis SRBs have been stacked for 19 months.

    One of the reasons that the EGS and SLS Programs don’t want to stack the boosters early is a time limit carried over from the Shuttle-era on how long they can stand that way. The stacked boosters have an approximately 12-month life limit, so once they are built up on the Mobile Launcher, NASA has about a year to launch Artemis 1 before they would need disassembly, inspection, and possible maintenance.

    “Field Joint J-leg function and proper contact is the primary reason we have the 12 month stack life requirement,” Anderson said in an email. “The J-leg is a redundant sealing feature in the motor field joint molded into the insulation that depends on contact with the adjacent segment to create a seal when pressurized.”

    https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/06/artemis-1-launch-processing/

    The boosters were stacked in March 2021:
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56339708

  3. NASA could be leveraging Falcon 9s, Dragons and Falcon Heavy for doing all sorts of things if not for SLS being hung around their neck.

    I remember Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct plan that called for little more than what exists already at marginally increased cost. Not as cheap as Starship would get it done and there we issues around payload to Mars and return to Earth etc. But if the timeline for Starship is as short as promised, even without Mars Direct, perhaps we haven’t really missed out on much.

    In retrospect, perhaps SLS actually preventing NASA from ‘…this and doing the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard’ has allowed SpaceX to keep its focus on Starship for the win?

  5. Falcon heavy is no mistake. It flies and is proven. SLS and Starship are neither. And since the FAA can shut down Starship tests at any time, their success is far from certain.

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