Senate Launch System critique

[Winston]

Huge amount of sunk costs make it a case of wasting all of that or wasting a bit more to get results. But if the cost is $2 billion per flight...

NASA vet George Abbey says SLS rocket should be reconsidered.

In a policy brief for the Biden Administration, Abbey, the former director of Johnson Space Center and influential, long time human spaceflight leader offered an overview of the Space Launch System rocket. The goal of the document was to provide decisionmakers "relevant and effective ideas" for supporting to nation's policy goals.

Launch costs should matter ... "In view of the current availability of a significant number of commercial launch vehicles with proven payload capabilities, as well as the industry’s progress in providing a launch vehicle with significantly greater lift capabilities, the Biden administration should reconsider the need for the SLS during its annual budget review," writes Abbey, who is now a senior fellow in space policy for Rice University.

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/1dca7677/bi-brief-021721-space-launch-system.pdf
Recent 60 Minutes segment - includes criticism of SLS which begins at 7:04:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moon-nasa-efforts-return-60-minutes-2021-03-07/

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Nothing we can do can reduce the Delta V needed to put something into orbit except perhaps launching from a lower latitude.

Currently we have hit a wall with the technologies we have as to how we can accomplish that Delta V and mostly what companies are doing these days is moving around the decimal point as to weight vs energy, the only two things we can really affect.
Make the rocket/payload weight less or make the motors produce more energy using the same amount of fuel.
Unless there is a "Quantum Leap" in science and technology that radically changes one or both of the above, the costs of putting pounds into orbit are going to remain close to what they are now.

Can anybody think what those "Breakthrough" technologies might be?

 

[Blast it Tom!]

No, I can't. It saddens me that we did better with slide rules, pencil and paper, and rudimentary (by today's standards) computers. For Pete's sake, we should have just kept building Saturn V's!

I've worked with advanced stress analysis (finite elements, ANSYS), fracture mechanics, and some CFD and such; even my "hand calcs" are so much easier with spreadsheets and applications like MATLAB and Mathcad. Our abilities to drown ourselves in way too much data, I mean, test at very high data rates with all sorts of sensors is unprecendented. Yet we can't out-do something created by Marshall Spaceflight Center's "Chicago Bridge and Iron Works" over 50 years ago!

ETA: Forgot to mention, every manufacturing technology has improved as well, from the foundry to welding, machining, and fabrications; we have 3D printing, you name it.

ETA II: Winston, I loved your thread title!

 

[Antares JS]

I honestly find the "We got to the moon with slide rules!" line annoying. It's not technical capability, but money that ended Apollo and has prevented us from going to the moon since. People have always been around who are willing to put in the work to do it, but we are stuck with a government that will happily fund bridges to nowhere while balking at the idea of giving NASA an extra billion dollars. Always remember that NASA can only do what Washington tells them to.

Nowadays, the two richest men in the world are putting their wealth towards their own space programs. The revolutionary technology can come later, that by itself is a huge boon. I keep saying the biggest advantage that SpaceX and other private companies have over NASA is that their priorities don't shift every four to eight years.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

I honestly find the "We got to the moon with slide rules!" line annoying. It's not technical capability, but money that ended Apollo and has prevented us from going to the moon since. People have always been around who are willing to put in the work to do it, but we are stuck with a government that will happily fund bridges to nowhere while balking at the idea of giving NASA an extra billion dollars. Always remember that NASA can only do what Washington tells them to.

Nowadays, the two richest men in the world are putting their wealth towards their own space programs. The revolutionary technology can come later, that by itself is a huge boon. I keep saying the biggest advantage that SpaceX and other private companies have over NASA is that their priorities don't shift every four to eight years.

You know, you have a very good point, as reflected in Winston's title. And I lived it - watched the craziness of the late 60's, early 70's, I've often felt like that was when we lost our way as a nation. But I'll let that whine for another day, I have to finish up a few things here. I could say more, though, about my experiences with the impact of computing on some of the people I've worked with.

 

[teepot]

I think that a better understanding of gravity would be a breakthrough technology. Anti-gravity and artificial gravity would be at the top of my list.

 

[Funkworks]

I think that a better understanding of gravity would be a breakthrough technology. Anti-gravity and artificial gravity would be at the top of my list.

The gravity experts are not holding their breath waiting for either, they need billions themselves to look for black holes and subatomic particles.

I think the private companies can show the way to lower costs.

 

[Peartree]

Can anybody think what those "Breakthrough" technologies might be?

The continue advancement of materials science may lead to a breakthrough of sorts. The idea of an elevator to orbit has been bandied about for decades but no material currently exists that could withstand the strain of being the cable that runs from the ground to Geosynchronous orbit (not to mentions other only slightly less difficult challenges). But, should such a thing become feasible, DeltaV to orbit can be powered by electricity and not chemistry with no wasted stages, fairings, etc. and the labor required to build them. With that kind of infrastructure in place, the emphasis would shift to orbital construction.

 

[mjennings]

No bucks no Buck Rogers!
The SLS does have it's flaws. My big issue having worked at KSC is how do you keep the processing team proficient and engaged with a launch rate of one every two years?
That being said we can't keep starting and stopping major devlipment programs with each change in administration. NASA needs some buffer from that if we are ever getting anything done.

 

[Alan15578]

a) Use cheap foreign labor and resources,
b) Build the space elevator. (A pipe dream folly.)
c) Just let rich dudes do it, and get out of the way.

 

[boomtube-mk2]

The continue advancement of materials science may lead to a breakthrough of sorts. The idea of an elevator to orbit has been bandied about for decades

There was a study done a while back about the "Space elevator" where they ran various models and the results were not encouraging.
It seems that with something that long you must have equal and opposite forces applied along its entirety or you start developing vibrations.
This means that for every ounce of mass sent up an equal mass must be sent down.
It even applies to energy, for every erg of energy sent up an equal amount must be sent down at exactly the same instant otherwise; "Galloping Gertie".

They even determined that long rotating cylinders will not remain stable and will begin to wobble until they torque themselves in half.
Notice you don't read anymore new science fiction that has O'Neill colonies as part of their plot.

 

[Peartree]

There was a study done a while back about the "Space elevator" where they ran various models and the results were not encouraging.
It seems that with something that long you must have equal and opposite forces applied along its entirety or you start developing vibrations.
This means that for every ounce of mass sent up an equal mass must be sent down.
It even applies to energy, for every erg of energy sent up an equal amount must be sent down at exactly the same instant otherwise; "Galloping Gertie".

They even determined that long rotating cylinders will not remain stable and will begin to wobble until they torque themselves in half.
Notice you don't read anymore new science fiction that has O'Neill colonies as part of their plot.

Interesting. I had to look up O'Neill colonies but once I saw what they were I have long been familiar with the idea. The discussion about them isn't dead though. Jeff Bezos was still proposing the idea rather than colonizing other planets (like Musk, I assume) in 2019. Wikipedia says that designers are trying to overcome the vibration problem by making them larger and shorter.

 

[afadeev]

Huge amount of sunk costs make it a case of wasting all of that or wasting a bit more to get results. But if the cost is $2 billion per flight...

Launch costs should matter ... "In view of the current availability of a significant number of commercial launch vehicles with proven payload capabilities, as well as the industry’s progress in providing a launch vehicle with significantly greater lift capabilities, the Biden administration should reconsider the need for the SLS during its annual budget review," writes Abbey, who is now a senior fellow in space policy for Rice University.

$2B/flight is chump change, when compared to DoD budget or the "tax cut" and "stimulus" bills of the past few years.
Since there are no functional lunar orbit-capable commercial launch vehicles on deck today. Any hand waiving about "potential" commercial alternatives is childish wishful thinking.

Having said that, Boeing's bloated budget and government's cost-plus pricing of NASA projects' is the reason for $2B/flight price tag.
Any cost-plus sourced alternatives will cost as much, if not more.

I think that a better understanding of gravity would be a breakthrough technology. Anti-gravity and artificial gravity would be at the top of my list.

That would certainly add a fun twist to this hobby!

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Anti-Gravity and by extension "Artificial Gravity", are two of those Science Fiction concepts, along the same lines as Time Travel and FTL, in that there's more Fiction in the concept than there is Science.

We don't really even know what Gravity is. We can measure it and we know it is somehow a property of mass and we "Techno-Babble" about it being some kind of "Warping of space", which just begs the question, what exactly is being warped?

But if gravity is a only a property of mass, then how can there be "Gravity waves" that propagate through the vacuum of space where there most certainly isn't any mass.
Unless "Dark Matter" is somehow involved, which opens up an entirely new "Can of worms".

 

[Blast it Tom!]

I know very little about cosmology and astrophysics, but find it interesting that space and time are inextricably linked. It's kind of interesting that the further you look away from earth (an ostensibly larger spherical surface in our way of thinking) is actually the event horizon of the universe when it was much smaller. But that's as far as I go - the "rubber sheet" analogy of mass warping space-time, a rudiemntary understanding of special relativity and the math for calcualting time dilation, relativistic mass etc, a real armchair astophysicist. And forget quantum mechanics... every time I try to observe something there, I just can't be certain about what I'm seeing....

 

[aerostadt]

For now the Biden Administration has been saying it is going along with the Artemis program put forward by the Trump Administration, but as the beginning of this thread suggests there are those that say the SLS is way to expensive. There is a story out today that states investigators are going to further into the cost of the SLS.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/nasa-has-begun-a-study-of-the-sls-rockets-affordability/

 

[Blast it Tom!]

I sympathize with @mjennings. You have to keep up an agenda to keep your people on board, engaged, and proficient. Start-stop and partisan bickering don't work here, ifd that's the cause - I don't know where the fault lies (I suspect Congress but that's an easy target...), but I know we've wasted a lot more money on a lot stupider things; I just wish we'd set some real goals and go.

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Billions upon billions spent and we're still using the same basic technology Robert Goddard first demonstrated in 1926, burn fuel, rocket go up^.
And this doesn't even take into account getting from Earth to Mars or farther where we don't even have a practical constant thrust engine available as of yet.
In essence we are attempting to cross the Pacific by straddling a log and paddling with our hands.

Sailing ships gave way to steam ships and steam locomotives gave way to the diesel electric. These were monumental shifts in those forms of transportation.
We desperately need something along those lines with regards to space travel first with Earth to orbit getting pounds into orbit for what we now pay for ounces, then orbit to elsewhere.
I remember reading somewhere that if a space vehicle could maintain a constant 1G acceleration, Mars is three DAYS away and Jupiter only three WEEKS.

I wonder if anybody, government, private enterprise, university, mad scientist etc., is doing any kind of basic research that might allow for that in the near future.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Yeah, energy ain't cheap, and speeding up/slowing down requires a lot of it. I don't know what sort of source other than nuclear fusion could get that kind of energy density out of any thing of a size to send to another planet; perhaps assembled in orbit, but we still don't have fusion tamed for earth-bound power generation, and the vessels needed to contain such a source are huge and heavy. I don't think even nuclear fission generates enough power in a small enough package, and again there are control and containment issues.

 

[mjennings]

Yup the rocket equation is a cruel mistress. More mass requires more energy which means adding more mass.

 

[Pete.D]

The STS isn't a reusable system, so the cost of the rocket is far more significant than the fuel cost. So, it's cheaper to use a proven technology, and get development out of the hands of government contractors as much as possible.

Develop new technology in parallel. Nuclear power will come, but not in the atmosphere anytime soon: too much paranoia relating to potential exposure to the tiniest amounts of radiation. Even assuming suitable solutions for a "space elevator" are resolved, paranoia would likely block its development too: can you imagine the concern about what could happen if it broke and fell back to the surface?

Science fiction based on known technology rather than fantasy? How about using a ground-based laser or particle beam for boost to an orbital transfer station? An ion drive or something similar from there to lunar orbit and beyond, with on-board nuclear or a solar array for power. Build it in orbit like O'Neill proposed; the habitat will evolve as it becomes financially feasible.

 

[afadeev]

Sailing ships gave way to steam ships and steam locomotives gave way to the diesel electric. These were monumental shifts in those forms of transportation.
We desperately need something along those lines with regards to space travel first with Earth to orbit getting pounds into orbit for what we now pay for ounces, then orbit to elsewhere.
I remember reading somewhere that if a space vehicle could maintain a constant 1G acceleration, Mars is three DAYS away and Jupiter only three WEEKS.

I wonder if anybody, government, private enterprise, university, mad scientist etc., is doing any kind of basic research that might allow for that in the near future.

How quaint of you to wish for improved methods of propulsion.
If we start day-dreaming, I say jump straight to teleporting, and be done with it!

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Yup the rocket equation is a cruel mistress. More mass requires more energy which means adding more mass.

Have you ever read; "The Tyranny of the Rocket"?
We Earthlings lucked out, what with our measly 9.81 meters per second^2 gravity field.
With that we can, barely, build chem-fueled rockets that can reach orbit.
Multiply that by just 15% to 11.3 m/s^2 and the math begins to fail. The rocket has to be built heavier just to hold up under the sitting G-force. This requires more fuel, which weighs more but doesn't produce any more energy for the same mass.
At 15m/s^2 it becomes hopeless. Nothing short of a series of controlled/channeled nuclear explosions (See Orion) would be able to put anything into orbit.
Maybe there's an intelligent race out there somewhere that's had the great misfortune to have evolved on a "Super-Earth" with a G-force high enough that it prevents even things such as powered heavier than air flight much less space flight.

 

[aerostadt]

It looks like the White House is going to tap former Florida Senator Bill Nelson to be the new NASA head. It also looks like Nelson will keep the Artemis program in the fore front of the American space program.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/18/22337787/biden-nasa-chief-choice-senator-bill-nelson

 

[mjennings]

Have you ever read; "The Tyranny of the Rocket"?

I have not interesting math there.

It looks like the White House is going to tap former Florida Senator Bill Nelson to be the new NASA head. It also looks like Nelson will keep the Artemis program in the fore front of the American space program.

Interesting

On space elevators. One of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books has an elevator cable failure. It's quite a disaster. The fallen cable winds up wrapped around Mars' equator.

Green run appears to have been a success yesterday.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Have you ever read; "The Tyranny of the Rocket"?
We Earthlings lucked out, what with our measly 9.81 meters per second^2 gravity field.
With that we can, barely, build chem-fueled rockets that can reach orbit.
Multiply that by just 15% to 11.3 m/s^2 and the math begins to fail. The rocket has to be built heavier just to hold up under the sitting G-force. This requires more fuel, which weighs more but doesn't produce any more energy for the same mass.
At 15m/s^2 it becomes hopeless. Nothing short of a series of controlled/channeled nuclear explosions (See Orion) would be able to put anything into orbit.
Maybe there's an intelligent race out there somewhere that's had the great misfortune to have evolved on a "Super-Earth" with a G-force high enough that it prevents even things such as powered heavier than air flight much less space flight.

That is a wonderful use of mathematics, I love calcs like that. I'll google it when I get a chance.