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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dam, I think I hear the fat lady warming up…