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NASA Approves Production of Most Powerful Rocket Ever
As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, NASA has given a green light to the production of a new motor, dubbed the Space Launch System, intended to enable deep space exploration. Boeing, prime contractor on the rocket, announced on Wednesday that it had completed a critical design review and finalized a $US2.8-billion contract with NASA. The last time the space agency made such an assessment of a deep-space rocket was the mighty Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon. ... Space Launch System's design called for the integration of existing hardware, spurring criticism that it's a "Frankenstein rocket," with much of it assembled from already developed technology. For instance, its two rocket boosters are advanced versions of the Space Shuttle boosters, and a cryogenic propulsion stage is based on the motor of a rocket often used by the Air Force. The Space Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group and frequent NASA critic, said Space Launch System was "built from rotting remnants of left over congressional pork. And its budgetary footprints will stamp out all the missions it is supposed to carry, kill our astronaut program and destroy science and technology projects throughout NASA."
. Space Launch System's design called for the integration of existing hardware, spurring criticism that it's a "Frankenstein rocket," with much of it assembled from already developed technology.
I would much rather them use existing tried tech and incrementally advance them rather than try a radical new design. A new design would take extra years of testing before it is ready for use but if we can tweak existing tech, and make it useful for deep space why not??
Based on the next sentence it tells me that they are more concerned with bringing home the bacon than making progress in space.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I cant wait to read about how this will get defunded in a year. Science is so exciting.
Like two Boeing 737 Fuselages that ened up in the river after a derailment.
http://www.kwch.com/news/local...
Oppss..... Someone is going to have to foot an awfully big bill for that one.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
From 10 miles away in Titusville, Fl. I will always remember the pounding of my chest form the rockets. Let's go to Mars.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
to the Saturn V
And whats this about shuttle rocket booster? Do we really want to use solid rockets? They may be good for ICBM's which have to be ready to launch in seconds, but have not been to great for manned missions like Challenger
as intended no doubt:
If I compare that amount to all the money wasted so far on useless "wars" by the U.S.A., it's not much.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The high cost and slow development of SLS will increasingly make it a loser in its political battle with the new commercial companies. Eventually legislators will recognize its impractically and unaffordability -- especially if the commercial companies continue to meet their milestones and achieve success, as they have been doing. When that happens, the influence of individual senators like Shelby to shovel pork to their particular states or districts will be outweighed by the overall political benefits for everyone in Congress to get American astronauts into space quickly and cheaply on an American-built spaceship.
Welcome to cost plus billing.
Hollywood studios aren't the only ones with creative accountants.
When calculating costs it is amazing how one can allocate money and still be within GAAP.
And of course the the billing for labor. Like a guy that costs you $30/hour (with taxes and benefits) gets billed out at $60/hour or more.
Get some engineer that's been out of work (not hard in this economy) and pay him low and you can still bill him out at pre-recession levels.
We could be living in space colonies for the cost of Iraq.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
So what is "deep" space supposed to mean? I came in thinking that it must be outside the solar system, but apparently "deep-space" rockets take you to the moon. Which really by my definition is hardly even space. On the moon you are still basically still at Earth, it is part of the system of the planet as much as the gasses that are trapped by its gravity (which we call its atmosphere).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I don't understand the criticism regarding the use of modified space shuttle engines and a coolant system from the Air Force. As far as I am aware, we never lost a shuttle due to main engine failure, and the Air Force is pretty good at not blowing things up. I have been following the SLS for awhile, and if they can manage to pull off the overall designs they have in mind without budget cuts or severe cost overruns ruining things, I believe it will be a fine rocket. Otherwise SpaceX is well on their way toward manned flight and their heavy lifter among other things, so I think were pretty well covered.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
we'd be in high cotton.
On Kepler-186f.
Is it bigger than the Rockomax!
Looks like getting the KSP dev team to talk to NASA was productive!
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Don't design it with o-rings this time
Why build a huge rocket when interplanetary probes could be assembled in orbit and given a relatively gentle nudge toward their target? An assembly station in orbit would eliminate the need to escape Earth's gravity and end this whole, "Mine is bigger than yours," contest. NASA needs a huge shift in its approach to space travel.
No one is likely to get to Mars on something as expensive and inefficient as the SLS. Even Constellation would have been better.
Actually, the space shuttle SRBs are very reliable hardware. Even though the problem that brought down Challenger originated in one of the SRBs, the reason it cascaded out of control was because the escaping gases damaged the external fuel tank (not part of the SRB itself). Even after the explosion of the external fuel tank (and most of the orbiter along with it), the SRBs themselves kept flying intact until ground control hit the self-destruct button.
This is old technology, and about to be walked all over by Skylon...
" ...its budgetary footprints will stamp out all the missions it is supposed to carry, kill our astronaut program and destroy science and technology projects throughout NASA."
I think he is confused, that was called the Space Shuttle - The single item that killed space exploration in the US forever.
The entire Manhattan Project, start to finish, including not just the basic science and hugely diverse intricate engineering, but all the civil engineering of building vast infrastructures, and employing 130,000 people, cost only $26 billion in 2014 dollars, and took less than four years.
This is just bolting together a bunch of decades-old parts, but will dwarf that expenditure. It is the swan song of what was once a daring and imposing nation, and clearly will never be completed. All the Congressmen who vote for this budgetary pork, and the President who signs off on it, should be tried for corruption. Those at the heart of championing and designing this abortion should be tried for conspiracy to bankrupt the nation.
Good grief...we had one of the best heavy lift rockets in the world, the Saturn V launch system. (The apollo was on top, not the lift part). Even after getting hit by lightning, Apollo 12 continued to go, Apollo 13, had a center engine cutout, continued to work. Only lift rocket that had a 100% success rate. It was a proven design, and, you can bet since it was made in the era of slide rules, it could be improved on to be even better, but no, can't do that...let's just spend a TON of money we don't have, design something new, that will of course have a few billion dollars of glitches & cost overruns, and come in way over budget. (Just look at the F-35). Sometimes, it's better to look at what worked, before going off on a new design.
I view this as one of those scenario's where a chunk of the money will actually towards other NASA projects, that get loosely tied in to this one.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
I thought Iraq was ~$1 trillion, and Afghanistan ~$0.5 trillion since 9/11/01.
Considering the entire federal budget is 3-3.75 trillion USD per annum over the last 10 years or so, your "war costs" may just be a tad (or several trillion USD) exaggerated.
Furthermore, if you are going to count multiple budget years for the entirety of the wars, then you need to count multiple budget years for the entirety of NASA. (1958 to the present)
Wanna do the comparative math now, adjusted for inflation?
Cogitate
In his 2010 budget proposal, President Obama essentially proposed the elimination of US Manned Spaceflight. He cancelled the Constellation program and replaced it with NOTHING. The ISS would have continued for a few years with Americans riding Russian rockets to and fro, and there was a nod to "commercial space" guys like SpaceX (who would have had ISS as their only actual destination for just a few years, but that was it - no PROGRAM, no PROJECT, no DESTINATION. This was no surprise, since early in his 2008 campaign, Obama had promised the teachers unions that he would stall NASA for at least 5 years and shift the money to "education".
In an act of nearly open rebellion rarely seen these days in Washington, Obama's proposal went down in bi-partisan flames. NOBODY in either party supported him. His NASA team then proposed continuing the Orion capsule but launching it unmanned (without a launch abort system) on an EELV to the space station only for use as a "lifeboat". That did not go over well in congress either. Obama agreed to extend the life of ISS as far as to 2028 (but Russia has thus far only agreeed to 2020) but that too was not enough to make the Senate happy. A bi-partisan group of senators led by Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison came up with the SLS plan and forced it upon the administration. THAT is why its bitter critics call it the "Senate Launch System".
Without this rocket, the future of NASA and its astronauts would be nil. Critics live in a fantasy world where cancelling SLS would mean the cash would flow to their fave fanboy rockets - SOME imagine piles of cash for waves of EELV launches, while others imagine Elon Musk getting the billions and building a Mars Colonial Transport rocket... NEITHER would happen; Once you take that cash from NASA, the political support for spending that money "in space" will go away because the congressional districs affected all around the country would collapse. in 2010 we nearly saw this, and NASA facilities in Florida and Texas are already practically "ghost towns" as a result. ONE more event like the 2010 fight could end it. Once NASA gets out of manned spaceflight, ISS ends - and then there's no destination for "commercial" spaceflight companies and no certainty of customers bying tickets. People who want Musk and SpaceX to thrive need NASA to be in the manned space business and SLS is in that path (it keeps the manned program going, but is too big to be practical for routine ISS crew rotations). As for the lie that it's so expensive that there's no money to develop payloads: it's been repeatedly debunked - Once SLS is flying, the development money will no longer be being spent and in subsequent years that part of the NASA budget will pay for payload developments. The real key to SLS is that it develops a hugely-capable rocket during years Obama intended to waste and where he had no space "vision", and that rocket will be available to future presidents who won't have to wait to develop it and can USE it if they HAVE a "vision thing"
for about the same amount of money as NASA spent putting a dummy upper stage on top of a shuttle SRB and launching it into the ocean.
Go NASA R&D!
That was R&D, thrust oscillations still have a lot of unpredictability to them. That test data will be important for any future rocket that uses a single, monolithic, solid rocket motor first stage. America already had rockets of power similar to the proposed Ares 1, so it was deemed redundant, and scrapped... I wonder how bad thrust oscillations are for the PSLV.
It's only a "rocket to nowhere" because the current idiot in the whitehouse has been unwilling to make any effort to select a destination - he did not even WANT nasa to own any rockets anymore (readt his damn 2010 budget proposal!!!!!). The previous guy (Bush43) HAD a proposed system (Constellation) and destinations (a permanent lunar outpost, followed by Mars) but proved to be a clone of his father - no follow-through when it came time to "pony-up" with the cash; he was so busy going after daddy's old nemesis Saddam that he had no money left-over for increasing NASA's budget.
The real sick joke that is distracting most geeks is: NASA continues spending essentially the same money it has had for years even though it's no longer flying shuttles. Budgeteers long hid the fact that flying shuttles was increadibly cheap by blaming the shuttle program for all the infrastructure costs of the entire agency - which led to the false idea that shuttle flights cost about $4 billion per year (no matter how many we flew, which was a clue to the dishonesty). Shuttle critics bleated about that price tag for DECADES and claimed that if we stopped flying it and went back to giant throw-away rockets we'd save money and be able to afford deep space missions. Amazingly (or NOT if you had been paying attention) as soon as shuttles retired, all those infrastructure costs had to be re-assigned to another program and so NOW we are told SLS will be "too expensive" and will prevent us being able to afford exploration. Cancel SLS, and I guarantee the EELV programs or anything else will get assigned the "burden" of all that overhead and will then be "too expensive".
Each SLS launch will consume essentially the same as a shuttle launch (the core stage is essentially shuttle ET re-shaped, the two SRBs are each a segment longer but benefit from many optimizations, the main engines are now throw-away BUT critics always insisted THAT would be cheaper than refurbing the orbiter's engines, and Orion is re-usable and with a MUCH smaller heat shield should be FAR cheaper to turn-around). There's simply NO REASON why we should not be able to fly SLS 4 times per year for about the same annual cost we used to pay for 6 annual shuttle flights. If the vendors try over-billing, there need to be congressional hearings to get the vendors to prove why.
I mean, 100% Africans, or 80% Africans, not the 5% 'African' who runs it.
Why aren't there many AFRICANS working for NASA? Is it 'racism', holding them back? In that case, why haven't AFRICAN countries got their own space programmes? You know, the AFRICAN countries where there are only AFRICANS? Perhaps they haven't got enough 'diversity', (LOL), since we all know that a 'diverse' organisation is better than a 'racist' - sorry - 'white' one. More LOLs.
There are about 196 countries in the world, why don't you ask your stupid question about the rest of the countries that don't have space programs?
Wtf are you talking about ? Some african countries have space programs.
See for example: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i...
Not sure it'd work ; too many people starts denying climate change... It would be easier if Martian threatened to sell their oil for Euro or Yuan instead of dollars. The USA military would be there in a couple years top, inventing whatever fable that satisfies the public to justify the war.
Everyone building a computer builds from off the shelf components so it only makes sense that Boeing does the same.
Interesting. Former Astronaut Chang Diaz says he can get us to Martian orbit in 39 days with a constant control burn (of argon) from a magnetic field chamber, and we're still putting our attention on Rockets? Really?!?. I know rockets are essential for getting into orbit & betond, but..... Please. "The VAZ" is supposed to be tested on ISS this year.
Rockets had their day, but we're missing a bigger pic here !