As Dr. Bingham states in his first sentence, "...it is imperative that our decision-makers and the public are able to distinguish fact from fiction." It is not an opinion piece.
In any case, unless a lot changes, it seems the effect of FH on SLS will be nothing. The author does a good job explaining why that's the case. You may think it's bunk, but that's how these decisions are made by the people who make these decisions.
would be nice to read pieces where they go through pro's and cons of sls and address the issues.. rather than..this is a great rocket..or this rocket should be cancelled. I'd probably would hate the article but would be nice to see. discussion of distributed launch HAS to be involved in the article or pointless to write/read it.
Can we just storify Jon Goff's tweets and call it a day?
discussion of distributed launch HAS to be involved in the article or pointless to write/read it.
Quote from: jabe on 02/22/2018 10:01 pmdiscussion of distributed launch HAS to be involved in the article or pointless to write/read it.You might feel that way but until someone actually demonstrates distributed launch I don't know why you'd expect it to be considered on par with more traditional solutions. As with reuse, it may take someone doing it to really bring credibility to that solution.
.@rocketrepreneur @jabe8 Practical distributed launch will be a capability unique to Vulcan-ACES. ACES the primary enabler & a decade+ ahead
Jon Goff got me thinking about it years ago..and makes more sense as I read about it...even Tory Bruno said that nasty word considering who his "parents" are... so it is a real solution..
I agree it's a real solution, and hopefully it does get demonstrated in the next 5+ years (probably by SpaceX before ULA). I just think the establishment might still view it as an immature technology.
Mission planners currently are limited by the mass rockets can launch to the desired destination. Mir and the International Space Station (ISS) have bypassed this limitation by transporting hardware into orbit across numerous launches. So far this tact has not been employed for destinations beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This paper describes the use of multiple launches (potentially of different rockets) and propellant transfer to enable missions that are impossible today...
So if I'm interpreting that correctly, ULA is stating that distributed lift has been demonstrated for applications in LEO, but not yet for BEO applications.
Falcon Heavy does not need separate human rating. The Emergency Detection System that a human rated launch vehicle must have is already part of the vehicle; it is intrinsically woven into the basic design......the Falcon 9 that will carry it is already human rated. Falcon Heavy is (3) Falcon-9 cores plus the upper stage, all of which are, by design, human rated. It's part of the base design. It can only be "designed out".......
We do not need SLS to do the heavy lifting. We can use FH and distributed lift. FH is real and SLS only exists on paper. NASA should be designing missions to FH specs and not a rocket that will never fly more than three or four times.