Stewart Money has some thoughts on SpaceX’s recent announcement:
The initial success of the Falcon 9 and the introduction of the Falcon Heavy are revolutionary enough. If over the coming years, however, SpaceX is able to successfully transition the Falcon to a fully reusable launch vehicle, then the stage on which the entire arena of space exploration is cast would be radically redrawn. Simply put, with the advent of a fully reusable Falcon series of rockets, a heretofore unforeseen level of space exploration becomes not simply more affordable, but in all likelihood, unavoidable. Once a permanent human presence on Mars is within practical reach, failure to pursue it, many will argue, becomes a moral transgression against humanity itself. To be sure, Musk’s vision of thousands of émigrés to a new world will have to wait on new, even larger rockets, but his company has a plan for that as well, beginning with a large staged combustion engine it wants to begin building next year.
While “within reach” does not mean “within grasp”, it certainly bears serious consideration from a space establishment about to consume the better part of a decade and plow, at an absolute minimum, the equivalent cost of 144 Falcon Heavy flights at 53 tons each into a single 70-ton launch by 2017. With a projected launch rate of no more than once per year, and the 130-ton super-heavy version of the SLS expected no earlier than 2032 and sporting a price tag almost certain to exceed $40 billion, it is not a stretch to believe that SpaceX has a better chance of achieving reusability with the Falcon than the Senate has of achieving orbit with the heavy version of its “monster” rocket.
Of course, they could both fail (it’s likely in the Senate’s case), but as he points out, even without reusability, SpaceX will be commercially dominant.
It’s also worth asking the question: how much payload could be flown by FH if the SLS development funds were used to buy launches. The answer is on the order of 10,000 tons.
Of course, that doesn’t benefit NASA MSFC.
You know one thing that Congress has been really good at is creating an ever increasing set of requirements and timelines. When all said and done we could very well have an agreement for a SLS rocket by 2100 that’s able to carry 10,000 tons.
It could benefit MSFC if some of that money went to develop actual payloads instead of all of it going for either developing the SLS Albatross or buying FH launches. After all, what’s the point of developing the Honking Big Booster (or buying a bunch of launches) if you have nothing to carry? It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to make the case that you would employ a lot more NASA engineers developing the payloads than the SLS.
When FH exists that might be an argument.. the politicians are capitalizing on their window.
employ a lot more NASA engineers developing the payloads
Larry, you’ve got something there. Something politicians could get behind.
the equivalent cost of 144 Falcon Heavy flights
Trent, even if only on paper it’s a huge argument. We should be slapping them silly with this… constantly and without letup.
a moral transgression against humanity itself
That point was past a long time ago and at current costs. It gives me hope that reduced costs will emphasize the point.
Let’s accept for the moment the SLS price tag of $40 billion for R&D and at least $1 billion per launch. Given that expense, there’s nothing left over for the SLS to carry except for the very expensive Orion capsule, a very undersized payload for the rocket.
Now, what I propose is to split that money between buying launches from commercial boosters like FH and developing payloads. For now, let’s say the cut is 50/50.
At a quoted price of about $110 million per FH launch, $20 billion would buy 181 launches. You wouldn’t have to pay for them until you’re ready to need them. Maybe that’s too many launches for the missions you envision, so how about a 75/25 cut, with 75% ($30 billion) going for payload development and $10 billion for launch services.
Hmmm, what could you do with $30 billion? Well, if you want to return to the moon, you’ll need lunar landers, rovers, habitat modules, scientific equipment, etc. You’d need similar equipment for a Mars journey only it’d have to be tailored for the very different environment. How many people do you think it’d take to develop and build all that stuff? Off hand, I’d guess it’d be far more than the number you’d need to develop the SLS. If SLS is a jobs program, it’s a very expensive and inefficient one.
Now we just need to give politicians some light bulbs.
OT: It looks like SpaceX could have more competition from Boeing.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/secret-space-plane/
Capsules, being more streamlined, must shed just 5 percent as much energy as a winged transport while re-entering the atmosphere. That makes them safer.
That’s safer before you add an escape system.
That sentence doesn’t make a lick of sense. The amount of energy to be shed per mass is the same, equal to the kinetic energy at orbital velocity plus the potential energy at orbital altitude, or E=1/2mv^2 + mgh.
Capsules, having high form drag, shed a larger portion of energy on reentry to surrounding atmosphere, and have less heat reaching the skin to dissipate.
A winged spaceship, with less form drag, dissipates more energy with skin drag, heating the spacecraft.
To me this smells like the closest we’re going to come to a public announcement that the X-37 program is over. The contractor is looking for other ways to keep the money flowing.
That would be too bad. It has a lot of potential and the tests had the Russians and Chinese claim they had their own spaceplanes in the works.