NASA is trying to make the Space Launch System rocket more affordable

[Winston]

Ha! Good luck with that...

NASA is trying to make the Space Launch System rocket more affordable
15 Dec 2017

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...e-space-launch-system-rocket-more-affordable/

NASA has said that one of the strengths of its Space Launch System rocket is that the massive booster, in part, uses legacy hardware. These proven technologies, such as the space shuttle's main engines and the side-mounted rocket boosters, provide the agency with confidence that when it finally flies, the SLS will be reliable.

However, one problem with legacy hardware, built by traditional contractors such as Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne, is that it's expensive. And while NASA has not released per-flight estimates of the expendable SLS rocket's cost, conservative estimates peg it at $1.5 to $2.5 billion per launch. The cost is so high that it effectively precludes more than one to two SLS launches per year.

The space agency recognizes this problem with its rocket, and in the past it has solicited ideas on how best to cut the production and operations costs for its SLS rocket. Now, the agency appears to be actively considering alternative hardware, including the use of potentially lower-cost engines from a new space rocket company, Blue Origin.

How about multiple F9 launches (not even depending upon Falcon Heavy) with assembly/docking in orbit of your otherwise too heavy to launch whatever? $1.5 BILLION would buy 24 F9 launches.

The stupidity... it hurts! Well, that's what you get when you have a government mandated antique hardware infrastructure jobs continuation program.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

SpaceX isn't forced to use certified components. Even airlines are forced by FAA regulations to used certified aircraft that had to test to certain standards before your butt sits in one as a paying passenger. Now NASA can't compete. Glad you find it funny. Price difference is ten fold between certified and experimental planes. All the major experimental kits and companies recommend certified motors with certified avionics for tested measureable durability and reliability. Lightning strike/hours of operation under harsh settings. Even the hobbyist starting buying certified components engines/avionics to put in airframes at a tenth of cost of a certified airplane airframe, despite the increased overall build cost for personal safety. It's so screwed up a certified jet engine manufacturer will not sell to a experimental jet kit manufacturer by regulations someone else made. Those experimental jet kit manufacturers went belly up. They the jet kit companies REALLY wanted to buy the certified engine product, it was clearly superior in fuel efficiency and safer compared to experimental jet engines from warbirds as military surplus. Nothing prevent amateurs from buying a $40,000 certified Lycoming piston motor to stuff in a $30,000 kit airplane for improving safety. ODD how regulations work. Starts costing someone else a bunch of money. Sometimes people wanted to pay the extra costs for certified, and more rules elsewhere said no.

Would yah like cars to not require DOT crash tests????? LOL... Bet the price would plummet so fast. Funny how rockets and companies get away with stuff now. NASA has all these regulations to meet within itself. It likely can't move mountains of paperwork fast enough to certify new technology to reduce costs. Meanwhile the private companies are expanding with few restrictions. A couple of craters here and there and they too will hit mountains of paperwork. I'm fine with companies putting cargo into space no certified parts. What happens when they want to put live humans "for profit" into space? On experimental brand new design hardware. Loss of life, increases. Unless the private companies use best judgment to test fly components before putting passenger onto their rockets. Still doesn't carry the decades of success in track record as certified would. Otherwise the standards may be so obsolete that it is too tedious and expensive process wise to maintain. Why is NASA trying to compete? They shouldn't have to. They will fail trying too. They need to offer a service the private companies can't do for the government. Usually NASA tries to get its astronauts back. They still lost astronauts. They learned some hard lessons these companies haven't faced yet.

TRA/NAR could always let L-0's bring EX-motors to a launch site. They don't. Even if they did... I think most people would prefer bringing certified motors for new flights of hey gee this actually works. Worst case is the certified motor companies would go bankrupt and complain they couldn't compete. So how does a model rocket have a certified motor regulation. Yet a private company can lob something into orbital flight without a certified motor? I don't hate private spaceflight. But there's a real reason why certified components in other industries exists, they aren't always better, the costs skyrocketed, but they had a proven aspect attached.

 

[aerostadt]

I would think that splitting non-man-rated vehicles from man-rated vehicles would be good. It does not seem that NASA has pursued this approach. The certification for non man-rated vehicles could be lower.

 

[XolveJohn]

Focus on Lightning strike. There is a guy who does EMI/transient testing of aerostructures for many co, his lab has giant Tesla coils and evil looking Frankenstine high voltage stuff. He pointed out what savvy engineers know:

The trend toward carbon fiber fuselages is DANGEROUS. Sure they embed fine wires in them to drain off charge, but the bottom line is a strike will take out the fly by wire controls, and you will crash. He points out aluminum planes are Faraday cages, and provide good protection. I think it is the old trade off thing, they will permit more people to get dead so they can save fuel.

NASA is under pressure from Musk. He made them look bad with the returnable booster. 60 years of flying rockets and they never even tried it. Their new system is a rehashed Apollo, but not as good. Same boring capsule. They should just fire themselves and let Industry lead us into the future. Build autonomous spacecraft like the cars and trucks that are coming, killing more jobs and people when they malfunction. :lol:

 

[Andrew_ASC]

I would think that splitting non-man-rated vehicles from man-rated vehicles would be good. It does not seem that NASA has pursued this approach. The certification for non man-rated vehicles could be lower.

Yeah... And I don't want to make it uneconomical for private companies to even start up or let alone compete with each other. Too many regulations and it becomes a burden to even start. Right now aviation enjoys the protection of the certified aircraft are used for hire. You could put certified engine and avionics components into an experimental kit, and it doesn't get that kind of privileged access to the for hire operations. Even flight schools were using recycled old certified airplanes for flight instruction, and not experimental which raised operating costs on them. Some flight schools went under during recessions. In certain cases regulations are bad.

If you gave Airline A access to experimental aircraft and engines no regulations, airline A would have a massive profit margin assuming it worked as planned no loss of life.
Airline B paying 10x what airline A pays for basically everything it would go bankrupt to meet certification regulations imposed on it again assuming it all worked as planned no loss of life.
I looked into costs of starting a Part 121 airline. The lawyers in ink have made it so it took millions upon millions to cover the insurance costs incase of loss of life per passenger once you went over 19 passenger or so on airplanes, the scrutiny of every little OCD detail came out of the woodworks in full fledge operational standards blah must be met or you don't operate by blah regulations. It allowed anyone with like a million to start a charter service. It kept the serious airlines out with the super serious regulation safety standards away until a hundred million or more. You can go to Africa for example and said airline is flying an out of airworthiness expired Antonov Russian freighter converted to passenger role, without adequate spare parts, and still in service (COMPLETE deregulation) example. You might pay a quarter of price for ticket. Would you guys and gals pay that price? Antonov wanted to re-airworthy its products but that Ukraine war thing really irked up its support of foreign airline maintenance services. Some countries banned Antonov operations. A bunch were flying from ex-soviet union era pre 70's and no records of support on maintenance. Just real wacked up standards compared to modern certified aircraft that operate as 121 airliners. Africa is like legit 1920's American aviation style of unregulated just wing it bro!

Personally I don't know if its worth it to regulate as harshly non-man rated rockets. Airlines today are regulated so toughly that most do not start in the US today at a large size. You know its just so expensive. Safety standards are met with certified engines and avionics. What I would like to see is NASA or another agency help certify these companies engines and avionics once the private spacecraft companies decide to do man-rated missions on a for hire process. I'm cool with letting them de-regulate the cargo ops, they gotta start somewhere, and at most let them get their engines certified after a few test flights. Some of the best certified light general aviation planes started as experimental composite construction designs. The Cessna 400 was nearly a Lancair kit plane design that started as a hobby aircraft kit. Granted Lancairs had a horrid NTSB reputation with a few blood splats of pilots stepping into some REALLY high performance light aircraft with low time. It didn't recover like trainers from spins and was harder to get control of again. FAA stepped up improving a safety training program from the factory. It had some airfoil and instability issues with certain configurations especially the turboprop variant which was stretched with high horsepower.

I just got alarmed seeing SLS vs private space company costs thinking oh my god... We may see less regulated private sector spaceflights go manned with unproven tech for better or worse and no one cares to regulate it just a tad. Meanwhile NASA is all snail mode with so much regulations SLS hasn't moved in over four years, I saw pieces years ago of it, no launch since. Heck I'd love to see L-3 multistage amateur rockets get a chance at small suborbital cubesat cargos for university research launches for slight profits but I doubt that would pass at all.

How do you regulate something to ensure a quality standard without winding up like NASA current projects??? Or so deregulated its like Africa Airline ops? Or is it better to leave it alone? IDK... I'd hate to see NASA lose it all. They very well might depending on how regulations are done for private companies if the government gets tired of NASA and its lack of process compared to what offers the private companies are claiming they can do for a 20th or less of prices.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

Focus on Lightning strike. There is a guy who does EMI/transient testing of aerostructures for many co, his lab has giant Tesla coils and evil looking Frankenstine high voltage stuff. He pointed out what savvy engineers know:

The trend toward carbon fiber fuselages is DANGEROUS. Sure they embed fine wires in them to drain off charge, but the bottom line is a strike will take out the fly by wire controls, and you will crash. He points out aluminum planes are Faraday cages, and provide good protection. I think it is the old trade off thing, they will permit more people to get dead so they can save fuel.

NASA is under pressure from Musk. He made them look bad with the returnable booster. 60 years of flying rockets and they never even tried it. Their new system is a rehashed Apollo, but not as good. Same boring capsule. They should just fire themselves and let Industry lead us into the future. Build autonomous spacecraft like the cars and trucks that are coming, killing more jobs and people when they malfunction. :lol:

RV kit aircraft are real popular among experimental airplanes. They straight up say they aren't the best performing kit airplanes, but they were all we use these specific NACA airfoils proven in X many certified airplanes with traditional aluminum rib and spar construction. Guy in garage tried a all CF kit as startup and goes bankrupt. No one wanted a wing spar less aircraft, it scared everyone in experimental world. And people are buying the old school proven tech, in day and age of modern iPhone. Hahahahhaaaaaaaa....... People building planes for self: F*** fuel savings, gimme somethin' that works cheaper than certified please and is proven. Dad flying a army national guard C-12 Huron (King Air Beechcraft) hit by a lightning bolt and the airframe aluminum had a hole burnt in it. Avionics never blinked once. They had no idea it was hit until a maintenance guy pointed a hole with burn mark. Many other pilots similar stories. Then NTSB reports of uncertified avionics stuff getting fried on one lightning hit and crashing in bad weather, lol. And that's without robots... In simple airplanes... Of archaic past technologies...

In many cases the experimental airframes weren't bad at all. Avionics and engine wise a bunch of pilots get real darn stubborn about what they buy new or used. Kinda like rocket flyers sticking to certain brands of products. Funny how new stuff is sometimes rejected by target market and users.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

I don't see how SLS can compete and I think the pricing reflects the regulations applied to SLS in ways we don't see. I'm real dull and dim on the spacecraft regulation side for commercial ops.

 

[Zeus-cat]

I used to work for an aerospace company and we had some parts on the new Boeing tanker. We were making some of the parts for the tanker that only the military would use and the amount of prototypes and paperwork was freaking unbelievable. And it wasn't even paperwork that added value, just paperwork for the sake of paperwork. I would assume NASA components would be at least as bad as military stuff when it comes to paperwork, testing, etc. And all that paperwork adds huge costs.

 

[XolveJohn]

I am afraid to fly on airliners, let alone a kit or homebuilt. FLYING IS DANGEROUS. Someone prangs everyday, somewhere.

Lightning hits are weird, can act different ways. If you have a faraday cage type construction, the charge should dissipate over the whole surface. The carbon fiber ones with little wires will be less secure.

I saw the lab where they hit B61 bombs with 12' lightning bolts. No problem. Hardened electronics is better, the final trick after MOV's, zener clamps, and shielding is just a little inductance to slow the rate of rise of the current. Got to prevent those pesky unwanted fusion fireballs!

 

[boatgeek]

I think this is the best example in a long time of how engineering goal at the start of a design process affect the outcomes. SLS basically went in and said that they wanted to re-use legacy hardware to get to Mars orbit. Whether the hardware was still in production (ie relatively cheap to build one more) or not wasn't asked. SpaceX went in and said that they wanted to minimize cost to orbit and eventually cost to Mars. Those different design briefs lead to wildly different costs. Just one example--the RS25 is a great engine, and tremendously efficient. However, if you look at cost to orbit, it's more expensive because it uses expensive fuel (LH2) vs. the RP-1 in the Falcon 9. Even though you burn less fuel, it costs a lot more.

If you still have all the tooling and production lines open, it can be cheaper to re-use legacy hardware. If not, there's no savings. SpaceX also has the luxury of having a full launch manifest so they can try stuff out when someone else is paying for the hardware and the fuel. That gives them a lot of freedom to experiment with different landing and control approaches and to take a "it'll blow up for a different reason next time" attitude.

FWIW, the SpaceX design brief document on the Falcon 9 thread says that the F9 is designed to man-rated standards, which makes sense since they plan to send astronauts to the ISS on them. So there's no difference in design standards between F9/FH and SLS. I'm also 100% sure that SpaceX, Blue Origin, and UA are all talking to NASA and getting advice and design reviews. They may not take all of the advice NASA offers, but they certainly want to benefit from the experience.

Also FWIW, the most dangerous part of a commercial airline trip is the drive to the airport.