Our best hope is that SpaceX simply shames or litigates the SLS into a quick retirement with the BFR and NASA has thouse funds freed up to purchase all transport services from SpaceX and develop actual mission hardware.
Quote from: Impaler on 08/14/2016 06:35 amOur best hope is that SpaceX simply shames or litigates the SLS into a quick retirement with the BFR and NASA has thouse funds freed up to purchase all transport services from SpaceX and develop actual mission hardware.Since it requires constant reinforcement...That's not how appropriations work. If SLS ends NASA does not keep the money.
Quote from: Proponent on 08/10/2016 04:08 pmQuote from: notsorandom on 08/10/2016 03:45 pm... back then a SDHLV appeared to be the best way to meet the lift needs of a BEO program.Can you point to an engineering study backing up that conclusion? Many appear to believe that Augustine reached this conclusion, but it did not.My understanding is that the Augustine Commission basically said there are some missions that could benefit a lot from a super-heavy LV, but that you should only do so if you have a really definite need for one. In other words, their recommendation (which we are currently almost exactly anti-observing) was that you should only build one if and when you need it, and only if it seems more economical to launch big pieces in fewer launches than launching a lot of pieces in a lot more launches. Please correct me if I'm wrong about their conclusions, but that was what I took away from reading the report....
Quote from: notsorandom on 08/10/2016 03:45 pm... back then a SDHLV appeared to be the best way to meet the lift needs of a BEO program.Can you point to an engineering study backing up that conclusion? Many appear to believe that Augustine reached this conclusion, but it did not.
... back then a SDHLV appeared to be the best way to meet the lift needs of a BEO program.
The Committee commissioned a detailed analysis of the reliability of missions that would require multiple launches of critical and less critical payloads. It found that achieving reasonable probability of mission success requires either 90+ days of on-orbit life for the EDS, or a depot, and that at most three critical launches should be employed. Since it is very constraining to balance mission components to always partition equally between launches, this strongly favors a minimum heavy-lift capacity of roughly 50 mt that allows the flexibility to lift two “dry” exploration elements on a single launch.
While there are technical differences between the two families [of launch vehicles: NASA-heritage and EELV], the Committee intended the principal difference to be programmatic. The EELV-heritage super heavy would represent a new way of doing business for NASA, which would have the benefit of potentially lowering development and operational costs. The Committee used the EELV-heritage super-heavy vehicle to investigate the possibility of an essentially commercial acquisition of the required heavy-launch capability by a small NASA organization similar to a system program office in the Department of Defense. It would eliminate somewhat the historic carrying cost of many Apollo- and Shuttle-era facilities and systems. This creates the possibility of substantially reduced operating costs, which may ultimately allow NASA to escape its conundrum of not having sufficient resources to both operate existing systems and build a new one.However, this efficiency of operations would require significant near-term realignment of NASA. Substantial reductions in workforce, facilities closures, and mothballing would be required. When the Committee asked NASA to assess the cost of this process, the estimates ranged from $3 billion to $11 billion over five years. Because of these realignment costs, the EELV-heritage super heavy does not become available significantly sooner than the Ares V or Shuttle-derived families of launchers. The transition to this way of doing business would come at the cost of cutting deeply into a the internal NASA capability to develop and operate launchers, both in terms of skills and facilities.In summary, the Committee considers the EELV-heritage super-heavy vehicle to be a way to significantly reduce the operating cost of the heavy lifter to NASA in the long run. It would be a less-capable vehicle, but probably sufficiently capable for the mission. Reaping the long-term cost benefits would require substantial disruption in NASA, and force the agency to adopt a new way of doing business. The choice between NASA and EELV heritage is driven by potential lower development and operations cost (favoring the EELV-heritage systems) vs. continuity of NASA’s system design, development and mission assurance knowledge and experience, which would provide higher probability of successful and predictable developments (favoring NASA systems). EELV-heritage launch systems, due to their lower payload performance, would require significantly greater launch and mission complexity to achieve the same total mass in orbit. The EELV option would also entail substantial reductions in the NASA workforce and closure of facilities necessary to obtain the expected cost reductions.
Quote from: Proponent on 08/10/2016 04:08 pmQuote from: notsorandom on 08/10/2016 03:45 pm... back then a SDHLV appeared to be the best way to meet the lift needs of a BEO program.Can you point to an engineering study backing up that conclusion? Many appear to believe that Augustine reached this conclusion, but it did not.We both can point to studies that show our respective views on HLV or not debate. I'm not really interested in rehashing that debate. The sentence that you cherry picked was referring to an SDHLV being the majority consensus of the space flight engineering and planning community at that time, not necessarily the best option.
Quote from: rayleighscatter on 08/14/2016 03:42 pmQuote from: Impaler on 08/14/2016 06:35 amOur best hope is that SpaceX simply shames or litigates the SLS into a quick retirement with the BFR and NASA has thouse funds freed up to purchase all transport services from SpaceX and develop actual mission hardware.Since it requires constant reinforcement...That's not how appropriations work. If SLS ends NASA does not keep the money.Sure, why not? Congress still wants jobs in those districts, NASA will just have to use the same workforce to build something different, like habs or asteroid grabbing robots or whathaveyou. SLS isn't the only thing that can provide that pork.
I think this is new, but if not remove:NASA's Marshall Center - Done in 60 seconds: See a Massive Rocket Fuel Tank Built in A Minute<snip>Not a fan of the music though - too "edgy"
I found this one that has also not been posted:<snip>
I was looking at doing a SLS animation one day, when I came across this video on YouTube:youtube.com/watch?v=bK1foInKm00Now, at first, I was inclined to think it was a fan-created animation, but several angles and elements are identical to the EM-1 video that NASA posted. To the level that I can't see it being done by anyone but the actual animation house that does the official NASA animations who has those scene setups already (one of them at least)...I suppose if nothing else, its a preview of what we might see.
Quote from: okan170 on 08/16/2016 09:02 pmI was looking at doing a SLS animation one day, when I came across this video on YouTube:youtube.com/watch?v=bK1foInKm00Now, at first, I was inclined to think it was a fan-created animation, but several angles and elements are identical to the EM-1 video that NASA posted. To the level that I can't see it being done by anyone but the actual animation house that does the official NASA animations who has those scene setups already (one of them at least)...I suppose if nothing else, its a preview of what we might see.One minor nit pick. The EUS should do a burn after core separation to get into LEO. The solar arrays then deploy, followed by TLI.
It makes me wonder which version of SLS will be utilized; there's only one flight of the Block 1 version scheduled, for EM-1. However, technically 2 Delta-derived upper stages were bought by NASA. Most Europa presentations mentioning the SLS refer to Block 1 launchers. I presume the Block 1B is the 'real' plan, but again I wonder if either version is possible.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 08/14/2016 07:00 pmQuote from: rayleighscatter on 08/14/2016 03:42 pmQuote from: Impaler on 08/14/2016 06:35 amOur best hope is that SpaceX simply shames or litigates the SLS into a quick retirement with the BFR and NASA has thouse funds freed up to purchase all transport services from SpaceX and develop actual mission hardware.Since it requires constant reinforcement...That's not how appropriations work. If SLS ends NASA does not keep the money.Sure, why not? Congress still wants jobs in those districts, NASA will just have to use the same workforce to build something different, like habs or asteroid grabbing robots or whathaveyou. SLS isn't the only thing that can provide that pork.It is in principle true that when one of its programs ends, NASA simply looses the money. In practice, though, NASA's inflation-adjusted budget has been approximately constant for decades, even as big programs have come and gone (e.g., Constellation, ISS, the Shuttle, X-33, Hubble, JWST). Though there is always a risk that next time will be different, in practice the forces that Robotbeat identifies seem to keep the cash flowing.And with a NASA-managed launch vehicle, there are funding risks as the program moves from one phase to the next, as Blackjax pointed out some time ago in what I thought was a very interesting post.
“My top number for Orion, SLS, and the ground systems that support it is $2 billion or less,” Hill told Ars. “I mean that’s my real ultimate goal. We were running at about three-plus, 3.6 billion [dollars] during the latter days of space shuttle. Of course, there again, we were flying six or seven missions. I think we’re actually going to have to get to less than that.”
During the space shuttle days, about 1,200 people worked at 40 stations to assemble the shuttle's external tank, which was a relatively simple design when compared to to the SLS core stage. Today, about 400 people with Boeing, the prime SLS contractor, work at a handful of stations to assemble the core stage. It represents a sign— a small but tangible one—that NASA might yet wrangle its big rocket and spacecraft costs into submission.
...In the end this is actually a good cost reduction accomplishment since lower build rate should have a higher manpower use per unit. So if the SLS core was manufactured at same rate as ETs, the manpower per SLS core should be less than an ET.
Build rate!Shuttle tank build rate was 6 per year. SLS build rate is 2 maybe. That is a factor of 3 difference and the main reason you see the 1200 personnel for Shuttle vs the 400 for SLS. Meaning the cost of the SLS core will be no more expensive "maybe" than the Shuttle ET.
In the end this is actually a good cost reduction accomplishment since lower build rate should have a higher manpower use per unit. So if the SLS core was manufactured at same rate as ETs, the manpower per SLS core should be less than an ET.