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SLS Follies

19 Comments

Eric Berg has the latest on the Leaning Tower of not Pisa, but Launch.

[Late-morning update]

Good point in comments. This London skyscraper only cost half a billion dollars, in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world.

19 thoughts on “SLS Follies”

  1. Actually, the Shard cost £435 million – not dollars. In dollars, that’s a little over $600 million.

    Which, of course, is still a lot less than $912 million.

    BTW, doing some more digging, it might be more relevant to note that Trump Tower in Chicago, completed in 2009, cost less than $900 million, a fact which I am sure Donald Trump is extremely aware of. Perhaps someone could point this out to him. And then sit back to watch the ensuing Tweetstorm.

  3. The linked article has an error. The need to rebuild the launch tower for block 1b is not just the new second stage, but the core stretch as well.

    However, the point of the article is spot on, and it’s an insane boondoggle.

    There will be massive retooling and delays inherent in moving from block 1 to block 1b, and block 1 is slated to only fly once. There is no viable reason to have a block 1, plus they plan to put a crew on the first block1b, which is in many ways new hardware (a very different core, and an all new upper stage). They are also defying a key recommendation of the Augustine commission; separating crew from cargo.

    SLS never made sense, but it gets worse by the day.

      1. Thanks for the correction, and I agree it doesn’t make sense as a generic recommendation, but IMHO it very much makes sense in the case of SLS. The reason is that with SLS you get, at best, a massively low flight rate, plus a design with inherent risk exacerbations (such as segmented SRBs).

        However, my opinion of SLS is that it’s not suitable for two things; crew, or cargo. 🙂

          1. But the Saturn V displays at Huntsville and the Cape are getting old. A vertically mounted SLS would be awesome, and serve as testament to mankind’s something or other.

    2. Meanwhile over at pad 39a, SpaceX can launch F9, FH, and later BFR.

      Do they need to make some renovations for BFR or did they already implement those fixes when they renovated for FH? In any case, it wont cost a billion dollars. Maybe NASA should hire SpaceX to do their pad/mobile launcher renovations.

      2. They’ll need extensive pad work (or a new pad) for BFR.

        As for BFR/BFS development, my guess is it’ll cost double what they think, so almost as much as NASA will spend on launch gantries for SLS.

        2. “As for BFR/BFS development, my guess is it’ll cost double what they think,”

          I’m not so sure about that. Elon has admitted (long ago) that Tesla cost twice as much has he had thought. He’s not immune to learning from experience – far from it. Having now been through three launch vehicle type developments, SpaceX probably has a better grasp of the costs involved than anyone in history has ever had.

  4. Why do I get this picture in my mind’s eye, that on launch day, if and when it ever comes, the SLS stays on the ground and the launch tower heads off into orbit?

    1. Well, that launch tower is costing a lot more to develop that Falcon heavy plus its entire ground infrastructure, so I would hope it can fly. And indeed, depending on how the first launch of SLS goes, it may well do so, suborbitaly.

      As for SLS, my bet is it will successfully achieve not just one but numerous simultaneous divergent suborbital trajectories on that day.

  5. The BFR is still a major unknown in my mind. But the Falcon 9 alone kills the argument for franken rockets like SLS and now with the Falcon 9 Heavy there is absolutely no argument in favor of SLS left.

  7. Viewed from a higher figurative altitude, SpaceX threatens not just SLS, but the entire glacially slow government directed development worldview. Musk and Co. are inside the establishment’s decision loop. They can iterate much faster.

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