When Scott Pace says it’s time to throw in the towel, the end of SLS isn’t far off. I had lunch with a friend in Santa Monica yesterday who had just gotten off the phone with him, in anticipation of his testimony.
By “off ramp,” I assume he’s saying fly Artemis 2 and 3, but end the program after that. That would mean an immediate cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, and the ML-2 mobile platform, whose costs were beyond ridiculous, because they were only needed for Artemis 4. As I’ll note in my upcoming study for the Reason Foundation, that in itself would save almost a billion dollars per year. But cancellation of SLS itself will save a couple billion.
As I’ll note in my upcoming study for the Reason Foundation,…
Thanks for the hint on what you’re working on for the Reason Foundation.
Frankly, without a surface lander, what’s the point of Artemis II and III? Cancel it all. Focus on what’s needed to replace the ISS. In fact, I’m all for dropping the ‘I’ in ISS. There’s nothing wrong with building a USSS. If ‘I”s want to participate, fine, but we shouldn’t be reliant upon them.
I also don’t have an issue with a NASA return to the moon. But I don’t know the driving need there, other than national pride should China get there. Frankly the moon is a much easier destination than Mars. But what’s to be done once we get (back) there? Perhaps as a fuel resource should we find copious amounts of ice on the moon? There’s science to be done on the far side. But that could be easily addressed in an NGO/NASA science mission. All of this could use commercial launchers.
I’d really like to see more commercial demand for Crew Dragon missions as well.
I know Musk wants to drop it all to focus on Mars. I think that’d be a mistake. I’ll say so publicly. I have no issue with a Mars goal. I don’t see why it has to be an all or nothing proposition.
What I’d really like to see is a space station with enough propulsive capability (Nautilus-X) to be able to explore the solar system, esp. the outer planets. But hey, Elon wants to live on Mars, I’d like to explore the rings of Saturn. Or maybe even a balloon station floating in the Venusian atmosphere. To each his own…
“Frankly, without a surface lander, what’s the point of Artemis II and III? Cancel it all.”
Embrace the cognitive dissonance of the sunk cost fallacy. Reframe discomfort as excitement. Think how exciting it will be to watch the first and last Artemis launch during your lifetime perhaps.
“What I’d really like to see is a space station with enough propulsive capability (Nautilus-X) to be able to explore the solar system, esp. the outer planets.”
We need to go to the Moon to build a national park exhibit, Mars has a lot of benefits depending on other developments, and ultimately we need to go where the resources are, which is the not quite so outer planets. The robots might be able to do the belt, Jupiter, and Staturn for us but we should send people anyway. We don’t a spaceship like the Nautilus X, we need a class of spaceship like the Nautilus X, meaning we need like ten of those suckers.
Think how exciting it will be to watch the first and last Artemis launch during your lifetime perhaps.
I’ve already witnessed Apollo-11 in my lifetime. In fact most of those few weeks were spent glued to the TV thanks to it being summer vacation. Whatever SLS does, it will always pale in comparison to that…
That’s the spirit!
Artemis III has a lander, a SpaceX built Starship.
Which so far has yet to reach LEO. And frankly, even when the lunar lander version is built, doesn’t use or need SLS to get to the moon at all.
But you have to have a way to get back to the Earth’s surface. Starship is a ways from demonstrating a return from deep space, which will be far more challenging on a heat shield than LEO.
As we have seen with Orion.
It held together.
There’s a theoretical plan to load the crew in LEO and unload it on return to LEO. Probably a waste of time, and I bt Musk wants to redirect the Dragons to Haven-2 for the rest of their lifetime. Regarding direct return from Moon and Mars, I see IFT-8 is testing liquid cooling on the heat shield.
That’s wrong on a technicality. The Intergrated Flight Tests are launched into a LEO who perigee intersects the atmosphere as a safety measure. So, it’s a fractional orbit rather than suborbital. I wonder why New Glenn was allowed to go straight to orbit on its first flight. That was a hefty second stage, had it failed to relight, and probably would have exploded in LEO with that much fuel on board.
Slightly OT, Dr Metzger has a program out for simulating lunar egecta from lunar operations. I think he said it was free if that is what your company is working on.
That hopperbot mission should give him some good data to refine his work.
What I’ve seen of it seems to predict all the LMs should have crashed. I haven’t seen the source code (which I could easily unravel), but even if I did, I’m math deficient so my opinion doesn’t matter.
Continuing with Artimis II and III will allow Boeing and Lockheed to keep the grift going for several more years, with the costs being at least $2 billion a year. What will we get from all that that’s worth the expense?
Don’t forget spin-off benefits. Here’s a few.
#1, a new, incredibly adjustable version of the desktop calendar, where no longer will humankind be faced with the burden of deadlines; it’ll automatically keep shifting deadlines such as launch dates into the future.
#2, NASA will be able to retain the ability to design and manage utterly incompetent and impractical rocket designs.
#3, umm, sorry, that’s all I’ve got.
Years ago when this debate started, that was a large sum of money. It doesn’t even register now.
That’s how it all is, none of it matters but it all matters. The Dense Pack strategy applied to grifting the taxpayers. Take out any chunk of it and the rest survives and there are so many little things, that you can’t identify any one of them as being especially important to cut.
What benefit does flying Artemis 2 or 3 offer?
Just using up the hardware? Talk about sunken costs…
IMHO, it might, maybe, actually be worth looking at what could be done with already-built hardware. If there’s an existing SLS, it might be worth using it in some way, such as launching a deep space probe (assuming they’ve fixed the vibration issue) if the numbers make sense.
Other than that, I see no benefit in flying SLS at all.
It *should* let you fly missions while adapting the architecture to Starship and New Glenn. It might buy you time to beat China back.
And yes, I know we have already been. I would also prefer to not give them the propaganda win and have to deal with the inevitable’America in decline’ narrative.
Artemis 3 is a good break point. Most of the hardware is built, it eliminates the need for the new upper stage to be continued in development and eliminates the second MLP.
They could do another Skylab type mission and get a replacement for the ISS up immediately. One SLS for the main pressure vessel (wet lab?) and the second SLS for the accessories (docking modules, robot arms, heat sinks, solar panels, etc.).
Not going to happen because redesigning the hardware would take ten years and billions of dollars. By the time you’re done there are half a dozen commercial stations up there, some larger than ISS.
Dam, I think I hear the fat lady warming up…
SLS and all of its associated stuff (hardware, people, and talent) are not going anywhere. What would happen if the feds said they would stop wasting time, money and regulation (of the commercial side of space), and just let the chips fall? Elon wants to go to Mars. Get out of his way. You can’t do it better. I can’t do it better. Bezos wants to build space colonies. Get out of his way. You can’t do it better. I can’t do it better. See a pattern here?
I wonder what will happen to the VAB. High maintenance costs, enormous teardown costs, dangerous to just leave it for the ages as wit will fall down someday.
If neither Musk nor Bezos want the VAB then it should either be turned into a museum or torn down. If the museum alternative is chosen, the two crawler-transporters would make impressive indoor exhibits. If the VAB is of no further use, it should be taken down. NewSpace has radically transformed pretty much every other significant piece of infrastructure at KSC/Canaveral. The VAB can either swing with the times or become one with the beers of yesteryear.
I could get behind using remaining SLS vehicles as a heavy lifter for a new space station. However, I no longer have confidence in NASA’s ability to manage manned spaceflight programs.
ISS continues to operate only because SpaceX developed Dragon and a heavy stipend to Russia. Both lifelines to operations are considered evil now by the NASA’s civil servant corps, yet they would have nothing without them and have done nothing with success to remove their reliance on them. Can you imagine running a business while despising the supply chain that allows your business to exist?
SLS has had a decade, and they haven’t event accomplished using existing technology to build a successful program. Starship can fly monthly. New Sheppard has sent more people to space than Orion. So has Resilience. It may be unfair to compare joy rides, some that don’t even achieve orbit, to a program to get to the moon. But if you were making a bet today on who could get to the moon first, who would you take between NASA, Blue Origin, and SpaceX?
Even if we could get to the moon tomorrow, how would anyone get out and walk around? The only NASA program to create a new spacesuit by 2027 was cancelled last year. What’s the plan here? This isn’t only about SLS and Artemis, how would NASA maintain a space station after 2030, with out a means to go outside and make repairs?
No. Only one of NASA’s two spacecraft contracts was ended and that because Collins (formerly Hamilton Sundtrand) actually withdrew from the contract.
Axiom Space continues developing its spacesuit for LEO and lunar missions. It would also be suitable for use on Mars. They were originally only contracted for a lunar suit with a small option for LEO. That option was activated when Collins withdrew.