/sci/ - Science & Math

What could have been...

>>7554468
If only we had gone with DIRECT at that time - well, too bad DIRECT was shit until 3.0.

Even still, they took too far long because they didn't give NASA a certain amount of money to develop the entire thing - instead, they gave them a really weird limit per year to develop the rocket. All that does it makes it take a long time, but far longer than you'd think because they don't have the ability to increase the budget in case of unforeseen difficulties.

>>7506129
I don't think you understand that it would have been cheaper than the shuttle because we already had those parts in development. SLS would be quite cheap if it wasn't for the insane contracts they were able to convince congress to give them. That, and the production lines for a lot of components were goofed by the switch to the Ares V.

>
DIRECT was an incompetent "lego rocket" design and wouldn't have worked. If you look at their DIRECT v3, it is basically a slightly smaller SLS. It wouldn't have been much easier. Shuttle propulsion was highly optimized, and is difficult to rearrange. Furthermore, it was always designed around the assumption that the final orbital burn would be handled by the OMS. To expect to go to the final orbit with the SSMEs alone is not reasonable.

Are you making shit up? Literally I have never seen anyone say this. Do you have a source?

>>7506132
Indeed.