/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7514446
literally blame obama

NASA lied about its capabilities, costs, flight cadence, and performance from the very beginning to get it approved. The commission that overlooked the shuttle program and chose to end it said we could have had 2 apollo missions and 6 other manned flights a year had we continued with the apollo applications program instead.


The shuttle was the worse thing to happen to the American space program.

>>7514448
You're a stupid person, Bush cancelled it and it was the best thing he did in his presidency. Probably the only good thing he did.

>>7514461
thanks obama

>>7514446
The govt kept choking NASA's budget because they think space is a waste of time even though humanity's future is in space.

>>7514463

>>7514461
well he did kill a bunch of foreigners so we could have cheaper gas

>kills as many astronauts as an unemployed white person kills innocent bystanders

Sorry boy, we have to put you down.

>>7514472
That's not why it was cancelled though, it got cancelled because it killed people again and it was an ineffecient fucking piece of shit.

>>7514476
That didn't fucking work, that made gas prices fucking stupid expensive. You're too young to remember.

>>7514454
It might not have been perfect, sure.

But it was the first real step to delivering a reusable launch vehicle. Now we are back to 1960s, except with slightly better rocket engines and electronics. Nothing has really changed, no big revolution in over 50 years.

>>7514484
> Now we are back to 1960s

In the 60s and 70s we actually went to the moon and had our own space station

The space shuttle set us back. At least the SLS will be capable of going to the moon again.

The shuttle is largely to blame for nothing exciting happening in manned space. It was a seriously overhyped piece of shit.

>>7514484
Reusability is only valuable if it actually means a cheaper system. We can manufacture rockets more cheaply than having to do overhaul on something that is larger and more complex than it would otherwise need to be.

>>7514480
>Instead we spent all that money on LBJ's welfare schemes that didn't work

>>7514489
>instead we spent it on a war we didn't win

Fucking god damn LBJ

>>7514488
Cheap is a relative term. It was cheaper to use kerosene to power lamps, than use light bulbs for quite a period of time.

The space shuttle program was sabotaged by the Air Force and Military that wanted all these unnecessary requirements because they wanted hypersonic planes to carry weapons and mass carry satellites in case they were shot down in war.

>>7514496
Not only that, but they had the stupid idea to make it deliver payloads as well. It might have worked better had it been a pure person transport, but that doesn't make sense to make that reusable unless it also had the engines, and a small craft with those huge engines is just stupid too.

The entire system was stupid. Apollo Applications would have been a better choice.

>>7514501
The Apollo Applications program simply cost too much.

The individual launch cost of each rocket was simply far too great.

What NASA should have done was create an unmanned shuttle variant that could have delivered satellite payloads very cheaply, perhaps using a scamjet type engine. We had plenty of opportunity to make NASA the cheapest commercial option for launching space satellites (instead of Russia), and this would have given them far more funds to work with. And then create a larger and more complex version designed for human spaceflight travel, with setting up a Lunar base as a main point of focus.

>>7514507
You're making shit up.

http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html

In particular, NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin argued in a 2007 paper that the Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year — two of them to the moon — at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions:

If we had done all this, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for “the next 50 years.” We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon.

>>7514472
Much more important to spend all of our $$$ on killing people and taking their shit.

>>7514511
Saturn V was rated at 3.2 Billion a launch when cost-adjusted to the present day.

>http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_Budget_Appropriations.htm

We have more efficient designs sure, but nothing to suggest that we could have afforded 6 manned launches a year, 2 of which could have gone to the moon, particularly with infrastructure payloads.

Nobody will pay attention to space until it becomes commercially viable and NASA starts making large revenue from commercial launches. Otherwise, politicians will always view NASA as a money pit.

>>7514523
So you know better than the director of NASA at that time of the report at the end of the shuttle program?

I didn't know that. Thanks for letting me know you know better!

>>7514461
No, the best thing Bush did while in the oval office was to have that nice parquet hardwood floor installed.

>>7514544

SPACE SHUTTLE IS GAY

LOW EARTH ORBIT IS GAY

NASA should of built something like the Delta Glider spaceplanes from Orbiter.

>SSTO
>hover thrusters for VTOL
>ability to land on moon and planets
>scramjet capability
>no payload capability
>nosecone doubles as airlock for docking

Probably in order for it to work in real life, it would need to be airlaunched from a large jet and it would need to be attached to an additional centaur drive for lunar and interplanetary flight.

>>7514446
outdated '70's tech + outdated '80's upgrades

>>7514507
>opportunity to make NASA the cheapest commercial option ... and this would have given them far more funds to work with

That's not how government budgets work.

>>7514454
>NASA lied about its capabilities, costs, flight cadence, and performance from the very beginning to get it approved.
Steve Jobs told one lie after another from the beginning of his career to his death, but somehow it resulted in the Apple II, the Macintosh, Pixar, the iPod, OS X, and the iPhone.

Bullshitting to get things done is a time-honored approach, especially in fast-moving fields where nobody can know how things are going to work out.

The shuttle program was a compromise between too many interests: hard-nosed practical thinkers with a real interest in space development had their say, but then came the tech fanboys, the NASA glory cheerleaders, the manned spaceflight nuts who saw astronauts as an end rather than a means, the corporate profiteers, the easy-lifers who wanted to draw a comfortable salary and not think too hard, the bureaucractic empire-builders who wanted the status of commanding large budgets which would allow them be seen to be of sufficient importance to be eligible for other grand positions in government or industry, the pork-winners in Congress who bought votes with government money, and the other sort of hard-nosed practical thinker who was only interested in satisfying near-term launch needs.

>>7514472
IMHO Government Controls Science in the USA by drawing high tech & STEM Industries into Government Contracts. Most of US Tech is now centered on Weapons and how Tech can control people.

Think Government people Classifying UFO Information and Controlling the Press.

The Apollo Program caused Monopoly Energy, Drugs, Chemical, Agriculture, Transportation Monopolies to take hits in control, Revenue & Market Share.

Here is a video where Neil Tyson makes an over the top case for Investment in the Space Program. The Spin-Offs, the Vision and Expectations of the Future, the Interest of Kids, the Excitement in STEM.

But TPTB and the Wealthy have over plans about Control over the peoples, growth into new Trilateral Commission Regions of the World, World Government, more power for themselves as they expand leadership positions and of course suppress wages and innovation in weapons and technology that threatens the Old World Order. We know AT&T, the Telecoms, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft are in partnership with Federal Government.

This of it like Feudalism. Governments all want control.

>>7515201
NASA knew all of the truth about its costs and capabilities in the 70s, but lied to get it approved. It was a hard sell even with the lies.

It's not an excuse, nor was it a positive thing. Pretty much everyone in the field agrees we would have been better off using some expendable program like we were.

>>7514480
holy smokes is that real and accurate? look at what we did with 5% funding, we went from nothing to the god damn moon in 5 years. then a sharp decline and lucky to have 1% since then. how stupid am i to wonder what could have been if we had stayed at 5%? could we be on mars by now?

>>7515555
>NASA knew all of the truth about its costs and capabilities in the 70s, but lied to get it approved.
That's funny, considering that they were taken by surprise by the Challenger disaster, and had been ramping up the flight rate until then:
1981 - 2 flights
1982 - 3 flights
1983 - 4 flights
1984 - 5 flights
1985 - 9 flights
1986 - 2 flights in *January alone*, the second of which was the Challenger disaster

It was at this point that they lost all ambition to operate a cost-effective launch platform. Any cost-cutting measure became politically impossible. They never again flew 9 times in a year.

There were various plans to upgrade it. The boosters, for instance, were less expensive to manufacture as new units (and not given names publicly) and therefore easier to upgrade, while the external fuel tanks were not recovered at all, and had to be replaced on every flight anyway. The external fuel tank was substantially improved to reduce empty mass, but the boosters were only modified to improve safety after 1986.

Repair of the heat shields might have been automated, or otherwise streamlined. Improvements might have prevented the loss of tiles, or they might have chosen to tolerate the re-entry wear and tear for multiple flights before refurbishment. Or the entire heat shield might have been replaced with something easier to maintain. The reliability of engines and other components could have been improved to the point that they could be reused without elaborate maintenance after most flights, as intended.

However, nobody wanted to be the guy who caused another Challenger. Any change was a risk. To propose any cost-cutting measure was career suicide.

There were flaws in the design, but it was not all predetermined that the shuttle would get mired at a low flight rate.

>What went wrong?

>>7515201
>Steve Jobs
Nigga plz.

But you are right someone needs to cheat the system time to time.

>>7515669
No, we could have had a fucking outpost on Mars and been to one of Jupiter's moons by now I'm sure.

Keep in mind even with the lower amount we could have sustained lunar missions because the Saturn platform would have become cheaper and cheaper.

>>7515766
How does that have anything to do with the fact NASA exaggerated its payload capacity, it's flightrate (they said they could do a launch every other week), and costs?

>>7515669
Never mind the amount of money that was actually spent. The whole attitude was shifted away from real accomplishments toward symbolism, careerism, and pork.

They didn't need any more money than was spent to be able to set up a moon base in the 70s and go to Mars in the 80s. The funding in the 60s was to go from not being able to put people in space at all to doing moon landings. They solved all the hard stuff then.

Practical people like von Braun got pushed out.

>>7515798
>>explanation of how the Challenger disaster stopped all attempts at progress toward higher flight rates, lower costs, and payload increases
>How does that have anything to do with the fact NASA exaggerated its payload capacity, it's flightrate (they said they could do a launch every other week), and costs?
srsly?

NASA did not know how the space shuttle program was going to work out.

>>7515827
They couldn't even live up to their quoted 24 launches per year. The michoud plant couldn't build more than 12 external tanks at max per year.

NASA knew, it's in the fucking Augustine report you idiot. These are established facts that NASA knew it couldn't lift the payload in its cargo bay they said it could, nor could they achieve a proper launch cadence, and they knew the shuttle would need extensive refurbs after each return. They needed at least 9-10 orbiters with a launch rate of one every other week to achieve cost effectiveness of just the fucking overhead of the facilities.

Even at that, it could never compete in cost with the Atlas 2A, Titan IV or Delta II

>>7515835
>They couldn't even live up to their quoted 24 launches per year.
In 1985 they got as far as 9, nearly doubling the previous year's launch rate, and intended to keep improving.

>The michoud plant couldn't build more than 12 external tanks at max per year.
So you think it was impossible to set up another plant? No point in expanding external tank production before they could use it.

If 1986 had worked out well, they probably would have expanded external tank production capacity in 1987.

Have you noticed how much lower the Falcon 9's flight rate has been than SpaceX's goals for it?

>Augustine report
That was written in 2009, and it was a very political document.

You have to understand that the things NASA knew at the time of the first shuttle flight, and the things it knew when it was trying to get approval for the shuttle funding, were different. Remember that the office of the president directly interfered with the technical details of the shuttle's design, mandating the solid boosters which made booster performance upgrades difficult and ultimately caused the Challenger disaster.

NASA insiders didn't work some swindle on an unsuspecting nation.

>>7515896
The Augustine report said that NASA was never capable of more than that many launches and many other studies done by NASA showed the same thing.

Just build another plant eh? So with these magical 24 tanks a year, what orbiters would you use? Who are you going to convince to hire more people to refurbish those shitty shuttle main engines? Where are you going to come up with even more funds in an attempt to make a system that could not compete with expendable systems still not compete even if it had a full optimized launch cadence?

>>7516040
I've already talked about this. The space shuttle was not designed for major refurbishments between flights.

After the first flights, they were surprised to learn that the main engines lost blades from their turbines, and essentially the back half of the shuttle needed to be dismantled so they could be overhauled. This was slow because it wasn't designed for such maintenance. Eventually, improvements of the main engine made this unnecessary, however the safety focus after the loss of Challenger would not allow any maintenance cutbacks. The shuttles had to be sent back up always in not just serviceable, but pristine condition.

The thermal protection system should similarly have been fixable, but the potential of losing a crew in re-entry if they changed anything was a powerful talking point, and an addiction developed to the wages paid for this refurbishment. Enough people worked on the shuttle, in jobs originally intended to be temporary, that their incomes became an important issue for their elected representatives. A serious engineering effort to eliminate their jobs couldn't survive opposition from Congress.

It should have been possible to get the shuttle working as intended, but the political ground shifted again under NASA's feet between the early 70s and mid-80s, as it had between the 60s and 70s.

I've pointed out the trouble SpaceX has been having getting their launch rates up to the ones they've claimed they can meet. Do you think they're a pack of frauds as well? It can take time for a complex project to reach maturity. Years of unexpected delay are common in aerospace.

>>7514446
Do you have several dozen million dollars laying around to fund it with?

>>7516133
What, with even more money? Just throwing more and more money at an inherently inefficient system?

It was always going to be more efficient to use systems dedicated to cargo launching, or systems dedicated to sending crew up. It weighed more than it had to for any one purpose, and weight is everything when it comes to space travel.

You are straight up delusional, especially if you think that you know better then the experts who were critical of the system all these years and even NASA itself that concluded it was a failure in retrospect.

SpaceX will likely get their launch cadence right back up once they make sure they've found the problem. ULA has a pretty good cadence, and even they had an early failure of the Atlas V. Same with all popular launch systems. The Shuttle was something else entirely. It tried to be too many things, and many of those things are their own were retarded ideas that were always criticized.

>>7515669
Was it 1959 for sputnik? No 1957 is when the Dog was sent up.

Anyway, military application are part of this and the Cold War and Fear of Communism even before the 20th Century.

Satelite Programs may have been Military Black programs from early on.

We have no idea how much money is spent on Space Weapons, DARPA, Statelites, Propulsion. Could be an old boy network passes technology from the Military side to Commercial Contractors since the Apolo Era.

Star Wars might be an example. How much was shown in costs to the Public. Reagan was shocked at the low level of GDP Boost to the Economy after he raised Federal Budgets so High. Reagan actually trimmed his budget. Then G. H. W. Bush OUTSPENT HIM IN 4 Years. But that is only the Public Info.

Also Military Programs are gamed by Contractor to increase the revenue and profits with a boat load of techniques.

Contracts and Federal Privatization are hugely expensive. For the Military it is know as 3 Times the cost to privatize and the scope of work is narrowed by the contractor meaning you still end up with government workers and military people in the same function or in management. Telecommunications, IT and Computers are obviously 3 times as expensive too.

>>7516142
Nice Grab.

>>7515772
Quality Control is constant work.

Maybe they needed one more kind of Testing for those foam pieces.

1990s was a time of Government Cuts to programs and Operations and Maintenance. This included Labs, and Quality Assurance/Quality Control Representatives, but I don't know anything about NASA in this regard.

The older Rockets got very reliable. I'm not sure if it was Jupiter Solid Fuel. Looks like I am thinking of Jupiter Rocket. So my point is Politics my be involved in all our Space programs. Plus they can do some intelligence gathering on Russia while working with them and seeing how they operate and at cheaper costs.

Saturn V was the Liquid Fuel for Apollo. We probably lost the technology & skills to actually restart an Apollo program. So whatever we do it will help the Economy, Student Skills, Engineering Industry, and spread education, but have to start from scratch.

Accept for a few Lifers who work on this in their spare time.

>>7516142
>/pol/
go back there

>>7516188
Do you even know how to speak english? WTF

>>7516189
>d-d-don't use logic and reason here on /sci/!
>w-w-w-we'll pay for the space stuff w-w-with our magic pixie dust!
>g-g-g-go back to /pol/

>>7516152
>What, with even more money? Just throwing more and more money at an inherently inefficient system?
The vehicle wasn't "inherently inefficient". It had addressable flaws, which should have been corrected as a matter of course.

If you want an "inherently inefficient" system to point out that was involved in this case, you need to widen your focus to include the meddling of the president's office, the pentagon, and especially congress. There is no limit on the apparent inefficiency of a system which is being treated as a means of distributing money under the guise of productive work.

>SpaceX will likely get their launch cadence right back up once they make sure they've found the problem.
>right back up
"Back up"? The most launches they've done in a year was 6, last year, which would have been a pretty typical year for the space shuttle. The space shuttle did 9 in the year before the Challenger disaster (which, incidentally, was their 25th launch).

SpaceX certainly isn't ramping up the flight rate any faster than the shuttle program did. We'll see whether they properly recover from this vehicle loss and eventually reach their goals, but if they do, it will be because of a purity of purpose that NASA was not able to maintain, as a political entity.

If you nationalized SpaceX and subjected its internal operations to the usual congressional meddling, you could expect costs to skyrocket and the will to develop things like cost-effective reusability to evaporate. It's not about the fucking base design.

>>7516241
Yes, it was.

It did the following to make it that way:

1. Larger wings that necessary because of the Air Force's dumb ideas.

2. Required you to carry a shit ton of extra weight to orbit just to visit a space station

3. Required you to lift all that extra weight to launch the smallest of satellites

4. Required you to bring that extra weight AND humans just to do cargo/satellite

5. Required you to bring extra engine weight because of the extra dead-weight

6. Burned extra fuel and even more weight lifting all that useless weight up

7. tried to be reusable but in the end cost far more than expendable platforms that could launch the same

8. Was far more dangerous to crew than a simple capsule

9. Required huge term around time to do anything at all

In the case of the shuttle, it was a shitty idea from first conception just made worse through NASA's idiot political wrangling after it was turned into a circus in the late 60s/ early 70s.

I always thought the idea was to commit to a long-term expenditure so each president wouldn't have to justify a whole new rocket for every launch.
Instead, they wre pre-commited because the shuttle was "reusable"

>>7516220
>Do you even know how to speak english? WTF

Mr. Helper is that you?

I don't see your Creds listed here. At least I had a career to report on. Look after you have a career, you can get up late after sleeping in and drinking all night and your mommy won't get to say anything to you.

So you have that to look forward to, Mr. Helper.

Oh thanks for the Links, Data, charts, and Detailed Response, Retard.

Fuck You.

>>7516300

>>7516233
Who Told you that Space Exploration, Trips to Mars or the Moon had to do with Federal Budgets?

It is not logic, it is many things:

1) Power, Status, Control, and Money
2) Agendas of the worlds most powerful and Wealthiest
3) Keeping Monopolies, Revenue Streams, Wealth
4) Politics of the One Party USA
5) Influence of Money on National Politics
6) Keeping US Labor Rates Down, Household Debt High, Using International Slave Labor Rates for US Trade & Industry
7) Using Demographic Trends to the Advantage of the US Elites
8) Controlling the US Narrative, US Press & MSM, Exploiting Technology in Propaganda, and preventing the collecting of certain kinds of Information/Data about War, the Economy, and Wealth Inequality

>>7516304
Yeah. Where are your facts, figures, and info on Program Management.?

You know Program Management is actually a big field with classes, university studies, career fields.

Check it out after you get out of Jr. High.

>>7516315
How many drugs are you on right now?

>>7516259
>7. tried to be reusable but in the end cost far more than expendable platforms that could launch the same
I've explained this already: the technical issues which kept the labor costs high and flight rates low were never corrected due to political factors, not least of which was the population of voters who received their incomes directly or indirectly from the multi-billion-dollar-per-year industry which was the shuttle program.

In the end, around $200 billion, in today's dollars, was spent on the shuttle. Think about that. Think about the political pressures involved in determining where such a sum of money ends up. Have you noticed that the shuttle is no longer flying, but there are still billions of dollars per year being spent on the same employees and contractors?

It was not a problem with the basic design or technical approach.

>9. Required huge term around time to do anything at all
>term around time
It's "turnaround time", and you're obviously just repeating things that you've heard and don't understand.


All of this other stuff boils down to, "The reusability was not efficient!" More mass to orbit wouldn't matter, if you could just refuel and fly back up like an airliner. The cost of the propellant was a rounding error in the budget. The additional cost of propellant to fly a larger vehicle would be minor if efficient reusability could have been achieved.

If they had been able to efficiently reuse the orbiter, they could have improved the booster reusability, perhaps replacing the solids with liquid-fueled flyback boosters, like the Russians were planning for Energia. They might even have added fuel tank recovery. In any case, the success of the design would have led to a next-generation vehicle.

But progress toward efficiency stopped with the Challenger disaster. When that happened, the will to change things and take chances was lost.

>>7516382
It's obvious you're just parroting dreams and fluffs about the shuttle because you believed in it and have an unhealthy attachment to that piece of shit.

> the technical issues which kept the labor costs high and flight rates low were never corrected due to political factors

Right, the same factors that forced the creation of this steaming pile of shit in the first place

>It was not a problem with the basic design or technical approach.

That's just the giant cock in your ass of the post apollo jobs program NASA rapefest

>It's "turnaround time", and you're obviously just repeating things that you've heard and don't understand.

It's called mobile autocorrect, and you're the one spewing wild dreams

>All of this other stuff boils down to "actual problems i like to ignore and I know better than the experts"

No, the mass of that shit isn't trivial, using more propellant than you need to means your entire vehicle design was too heavy in the first place.

>>7516382
>>7516382
> liquid-fueled flyback boosters,

Too much acceleration for the crew, NASA has already ruled out liquid boosters for the SLS because of this.

You are still ignoring the fact that carrying all that extra mass to orbit is still wasteful, and our current level of technology is nowhere near close enough to achieve short-refurb times on any of the equipment.

The closest we could get to now would be quite different, the STS system had it all wrong.

In an ideal world, the shuttles main engines would have been methalox fueled to make re-usability easier. Ferrying people to orbit should have been done via a fly back main stage with reusable solids, and used a reusable capsule. For cargo, you'd use the same system but not carry fucking people with you everytime.

Even still, APOLLO APPLICATIONS WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME SHIT FOR CHEAPER AND WE COULD HAVE DONE MORE DURING THE SAME TIME PERIOD

We'd like today be using an evolution of the Saturn V of some sort, and a vastly improved LEO transport system and also have done more science in the wasted 70s and 80s.

>>7516382
>believing throwing more money at the STS would have made it make sense

>>7514446
>We cancelled this useless, overhyped monstrosity which sucked nasa dollars down by the tens of billions.
>We thought, for a while, that funding was at last free for actual space science and exploration missions.
>We now build an even more useless and overhyped monstrosity that will suck even more tens of billions of nasa dollars down.
What the fuck is happening to our space program

>>7516423
Actually the SLS will cost quite a bit less per mission, only problem is that when you have a launcher that can do so much you need unique payloads that will cost a ton to make each time. There's no way around that.

At least Congress is giving NASA more funding than they requested for it, then also insisted they do a mission that NASA had never dared to ask for funding for - the Europa clipper


Also, unlike the shuttle, it's not a super stupid idea based on wet dreams

>>7516414
>> liquid-fueled flyback boosters,
>Too much acceleration for the crew, NASA has already ruled out liquid boosters for the SLS because of this.
Okay, you obviously have no understanding of this stuff.

NASA has ruled out a specific proposed expendable liquid booster design (based on a variant of the F1 engine used for the Apollo moon landings) for the SLS, supposedly because its claimed performance advantage over the SRBs relied on burning to depletion at near-full thrust, which would result in excessive acceleration. This could be fixed by using an engine which could throttle more deeply, by using a larger number of engines so that some of them could be shut down near staging, or by leaving additional mass on the boosters, such as wings and propellant for flyback recovery.

Setting aside the reasonable possibility that this is a bullshit excuse to continue funneling money to the company that provides the SRBs, do you really think that liquid-fueled first stages in general produce accelerations too high for crew?

Energia-Buran used liquid-fueled boosters without issue. Until Nixon's office imposed the solid-fueled design of a favored contractor on NASA, the space shuttle was intended to use liquid-fueled boosters.

>>7516448
I'd honestly be really surprised if anyone was able to achieve liquid fly back boosters even at this point. Just sounds like more weight to me to add to an already flawed system.

>>7516437
>Actually the SLS will cost quite a bit less per mission
No, it won't. The most reasonable and consistent estimate I've heard is that the program will cost $35 billion and produce a total of four flights, two of which will be test flights.

In 2011, they estimated that the development cost would be $18 billion. It is, of course, now behind schedule and over original estimated costs.

Also: they pulled some truly epic bullshit when they changed the name from "Constellation" and pretended that it was a new program that hadn't spent any money yet, despite the fact that many of the same people continued the same work.

Basically, if the $18 billion development figure is true (it wasn't), and you add the renaming-shell-game money back in, you're looking at about $30 billion before the first flight. If the SLS flew a total of 20 times, they would all have to be free before it came down to the shuttle's cost per mission. But even the most wildly optimistic SLS enthusiast doesn't expect more than one or two flights per year, or a program cost under a billion dollars per year after SLS development is complete. Oh, and NASA's declared intention, once the "$18 billion" SLS is developed, is to develop a larger, more powerful and expensive SLS.

SLS/Orion is basically a large, expensive development project to get to what the shuttle program would have been if they built a new shuttle and threw it away after each mission. When people tell you that the shuttle program's reusability didn't save money, they don't mean it would be cheaper to throw the shuttle away after every flight. They mean it would be cheaper to build a much smaller expendable vehicle, especially for the unmanned flights.

Going from the shuttle to SLS, the boosters are bigger and more expensive, the SSMEs aren't any cheaper, there's an additional costly stage added, the large Orion capsule with its service module certainly isn't any cheaper than the shuttle's crew cabin and orbital propulsion.

>>7516494
>including development costs for SLS but not for the shuttle when comparing the two

kek

>>7516456
>I'd honestly be really surprised if anyone was able to achieve liquid fly back boosters even at this point.
Do you understand that the reusable Falcon 9 first stage is a "liquid fly back booster"?

>>7516307
I remember when I was young and idealistic too

Grow up kid

>>7516502
I'm supposed to believe NASA would have achieved that where SpaceX hasn't?

>>7516342
Jr. High School?

Hey check out Jim Marrs books. He has a great voice on videos on Youtube and is a life long Journalist.

>>7516510
Dude nothing you post is making any sense at all, it's literally random sentences, capitalization, and grammar

>>7516509
Hey Tesla has $200 Million in subsidies at least.

Probably took up 20% of subsidies from more than 3 Agencies per year.

Does SpaceX Take of Crony Federal Subsidies??

Every heard of Corporate Socialism?

Ever heard of the Riches of DoD Budgets and Black Programs starting wars like WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Kosovo War, Panama War, Iraqi War, Axis of Evil, Global War on Terror??

>>7516521
Dude your english is so bad, it's like I'm on /r/subredditsimulator

>>7516510
What are the Main Tools of Propaganda and Disinformation?

1) Ad Hominim Attacks to the Person
2) Distraction
3) Changing the Subject
4) Being a Jr. High School Kid
5) Everything but the kitchen sink
6) Making everything Black and White, not seeing Gray issues (like Politics & Power)

You're welcome.

>>7516513
What are the Main Tools of Propaganda and Disinformation?

1) Ad Hominim Attacks to the Person
2) Distraction
3) Changing the Subject
4) Being a Jr. High School Kid
5) Everything but the kitchen sink
6) Making everything Black and White, not seeing Gray issues (like Politics & Power)

>>7516523
Why didn't you place a comma after Dude?

>>7516538
Because I didn't pause after I said dude in my head

>>7516501
What are you talking about?

That comparison includes the shuttle development costs. Much of the ~$1.5 billion/launch total space shuttle program cost comes from the development, as well as the idle years when the program was active but no shuttles were flying, after the crew loss incidents.

The *incremental* cost of a shuttle flight was about $450 million. That's the amount that could be saved by deciding not to fly the shuttle once, when the program allows the possibility of a launch. This is also what they're talking about when people try to claim the SLS could fly for as little as $500 million per launch. That's also the incremental cost. It does not pay for the development, it does not pay for the facilities maintenance, it does not pay the permanent staff's salaries, etc.

And the SLS figure is completely made-up and silly, based on la-la land logic, where some senator heard that the shuttle reusability doesn't save money, and therefore concluded the SLS and Orion shouldn't cost any more to build and fly and throw away than the shuttle cost to fly once. It's not a realistic cost estimate for a huge super-heavy done on a cost-plus basis.

If you really want to be fair, you'll also take into account the amount of stuff that's reused from the shuttle program in SLS. The basic idea of SLS is to take the shuttle and simply move the main engines to the bottom of the external fuel tank and put the payload on top. It shouldn't have cost anything like the development of a real new vehicle, or taken time like one. In a sane world, they would have been able to put it together in a year. Practically all of the necessary development and infrastructure work was done by the shuttle program, which the SLS is a continuation of.

>>7516561
Sounds like a good deal to me - can do far more than the shuttle could ever do and barely costs more? That's fucking fantastic.

>>7516541
U shud like Joe Walsh Album:

You can't argue with a sick Mind.

Likely you are War Monger, DoD Shill, NeoZio, a delusional Ideologue that doesn't understand that money has taken over politic since at least 1913.

U know exactly what I am talking about with a web-search. The wealthy commit treason and sedition to fulfill obligation to University Associates who are controlled by older associations.

Superpower status is many things including a strong central government with a big federal budget, it is also a marriage between the biggest most powerful corporations we have with the national government/budget/central bank.

But the fact remains that transnationals have no patriotism, no borders, no restrains, they have all the power of wealth to do what they please and to take power when they want.

It is a sad day my immature and inexperienced fascist friend. A very sad day.

Enjoy the cum in your mouth from self stimming while it lasts.

Here is an idea. Research the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

>>7516597

>>7516509
I'm as big a fan of SpaceX as anyone. They do impressive things for the small budgets they work with. They are certainly better able to control costs than NASA is, particularly NASA on a high-profile project that attracts the interest of higher levels of government.

...but you can't seriously suggest that SpaceX has more technical proficiency than NASA. For one thing, NASA does things through contractors like SpaceX. Aside from Falcon 1, SpaceX's achievements *are* NASA's achievements. Falcon 9 and Dragon were developed under contract for NASA, just like Antares and Cygnus.

When NASA wants to build something, they put it out for bid. Different contractors bring them proposals. The basic design proposal of the space shuttle, for instance, was brought to them by North American Rockwell, and the details were hammered out collaboratively with them.

The difference of Falcon/Dragon from something like SLS/Orion is the firm fixed price, as opposed to cost-plus, and the fact that SpaceX operates its vehicles with its own employees, rather than just developing and building them and handing them over to NASA to operate.

NASA has done an actual, working reusable launch vehicle, recovering and reusing both boosters and orbital stage. It has used propulsive landing on the moon, and it has demonstrated it on Earth in the form of the Delta Clipper.

SpaceX thus far has basically recreated the four-decade-old technology of the Soyuz launch vehicle and capsule, with NASA money, using engine technology developed by NASA (Fastrac), a heat shield technology developed by NASA (PICA), rocket structural technology developed by NASA (aluminum-lithium fuselage, used in the later versions of the space shuttle external tank), and with a great deal of helpful advice and information from NASA personnel.

>>7514446

>mfw we're just lucky enough to live on a planet where the gravity is just weak enough to escape via chemical propulsion and we don't have to have advance technology 100 fold to build a space elevator to escape from a planet with significantly higher gravity

>>7515520
>>7516157
>>7516188
>>7516300
>>7516307
>>7516521
>>7516531
>>7516534
>>7516597
Why do tinfoils and schizophrenics all type exactly the same? Every sentence is it's own fucking paragraph and random words get capitalized. It automatically makes everyone take your posts as a joke.

>>7514485
Huh, I've never heard this idea before, but it makes a lot of sense.

Thanks for the insight anon.

>>7514446
Money used in Nasa is better spent helping africans or the syrian crisis
we gotta solve our problems here first

>>7516561
That's not really fair though, because there are a lot of new development costs -

* Different booster type
* Redesigning the engines to work in groups of 4 and also to not have to be reusable
* New upper stages
* Enchanced boosters down the line
* Different machining and modern equipment to make this all, it's not the 70s anymore

That and this rocket is so much more capable of what the shuttle could deliver to orbit. It's more fair to compare the cost of the shuttle to the cost of things that can do it's job.

A Falcon heavy + Falcon 9 could do the job of the shuttle for far less and far better.

>>7516625
Do you ever notice how those try-hard white trash types that have had some mild success (like making decent money via a trade) tend to do similar things? Either that or they end every sentence or half sentence with "..."

>>7516625
>tinfoils
foils are aluminum now, Grandpa

>>7516589
>Sounds like a good deal to me - can do far more than the shuttle could ever do and barely costs more?
Uh... no. Do you have a problem with basic reading comprehension?

It does not "barely cost more". The $450 million vs. $500 million is:
a) bullshit, and
b) only the incremental cost, which is a small part of the per-flight program cost.

The SLS program is likely to work out to about $20 billion per working flight: $40 billion program costs, two test flights, two working flights, cancellation. Or, like Constellation, it may be cancelled without any working flights after billions of dollars are spent.

Also, the things it can do aren't all that interesting. SLS is considerably less powerful than Saturn V, while Orion is considerably more massive than the Apollo capsule. It just doesn't take crews anywhere more interesting than LEO. It can't do a moon landing. It can't do a Mars landing. It can't do a mission to a comet or an asteroid, unless it's first brought to the Earth-moon system (in which case, it's easier and more sensible to bring it to LEO than to send people out to it).

Since the Falcon Heavy is likely to be available for many more flights, at far lower cost than the SLS, it's hard to imagine any mission that should be done with the SLS rather than the Falcon Heavy. While the Falcon Heavy is less capable, its lower cost and higher availability should make it possible to assemble multiple-launch missions, which work by delivering a number of propulsive modules full of space-storable propellant, so they can make orbital rendezvous with the payload, and propel it to the desired velocity. SpaceX has already demonstrated competence with orbital rendezvous and space storage of hypergolic propellant (Dragon), as well as more powerful hypergolic engines (SuperDraco), so development of these propulsive modules should be quite simple and fast for them.

>>7516676
Lol space shuttle fanboy getting blown the fuck out

>$20 billion a flight

LOL talk about some wild numbers there!

>>7516676
Nothing you said is true except that the FH is cheaper and less capable

>>7516646
>That's not really fair though, because there are a lot of new development costs
The ostensible purpose of doing the SLS with shuttle parts was to save development money by using the stuff developed for the shuttle. Redesigning everything just goes to show that there is no sanity in the SLS design.

>>7516687
I'm not a "shuttle fanboy". I have corrected misconceptions of why it failed and why it was so expensive. I am certainly no fan of the original design or the program as it continued after Challenger. But the factors that made the shuttle bad were not some fundamental technical incompetence at NASA, but the political pressures which are still alive and well in the SLS program, which continues all the worst stupidity of the shuttle program.

The claim that SLS/Orion can do manned moon landings is total bullshit. They have no plans of doing so, and the combination is plainly incapable. Saturn V was considerably more powerful than SLS, and Orion is considerably more heavy than the Apollo capsule was. If SLS sends Orion to the moon, there is no room left in the payload for a lander or ascent vehicle, nor is there the propellant to get to a low lunar orbit and back to Earth.

The dry mass of Orion is over 21 tons, while the propellant mass is under 8 tons. The dry mass of the Apollo CSM was under 12 tons, while the propellant mass was ~17 tons.

Saturn V could throw 48.5 tons to TLI. The dry mass of the CSM, the basic vehicle, was under 12 tons, leaving 36.5 tons for propellant, landing vehicle, and surface equipment.

SLS Block 1B is supposed to be able to throw 40 tons to TLI. Dry Orion would take up 21 tons, over half of the mass, leaving only 19 tons for everything else, including the propellant to get Orion from TLI to low-lunar orbit, and then back to Earth. Basically, all you could do is add propellant to get it to low-lunar orbit and back, and there's nothing left for the lander.

>>7516625
If you take the first letter of every capitalized word it spells out a secret alien code

>>7516729

They wouldn't be using Block 1B for a lunar mission, they'd be using Block II.

>>7516729
You've not corrected really misconceptions, you've simply explained why you think things are non-problems when even NASA itself doesn't agree with your reasons.

>>7514461
This is the Budget Workup for 2012 article by Winslow Wheeler for DoD including Other Categories.

If you compare NASA Budget to the average $3.5 Trillion in Spending Each Year, then you know the NASA Budget was gutted.

It could be overlap with Black Programs and Technology they (TPTB) don't want spread.

Total Outlays for NASA 2014 = $17.1 Billion Dollars.

See Sept 30, 2014, Monthly Treasury Report, Table 5, near the bottom.

>>7517128
Right, we spend more on AC in the war in Iraq each year than we spent on NASA. It's fucking stupid.

>>7516687
NASA Budget 1998 = $14.2 Billion
NASA Budget 2002 = $14.4 Billion
NASA Budget 2014 = $17.1 Billion

See Sept 30, 2014, Monthly Treasury Report, Table 5, near the bottom.

>>7517131
It is a One Party Government. We get War and Status Quo Each year, except for bigger monopolies and bigger transnationals backed by even wealthier Global Elites.

They have things the way they like them (US Congress), they like downward pressure on Wages and a War on the Middle Class Wealth.

>>7514485
we dont go to space because the aliums said no. Buzz Aldrin said so and he's one of the few people on earth that I feel is qualified to say something like that. But then again he could be shilling for the gobment.

>>7517142
No one is going to Take You Seriously if you Capitalize random Words. You're Worse Than Twelve Year Old That Capitalize Every Word, At Least They Are Consistent.

>>7516690
$14.2 billion in 1998 is the equivalent of $20,789,320,000 today.
so the budget did in fact shrink... quite a bit.

>>7517114
>They wouldn't be using Block 1B for a lunar mission, they'd be using Block II.
Block II is not SLS, it's a hypothetical future SLS-derived vehicle, which was not included in the original $18 billion development estimate, and is not expected to fly before 2030, if ever.

Frankly, I think it's a NASA fairy tale that they tell to pretend that they're in compliance with legislation (!) requiring that the SLS be more capable than Saturn V. Of course, that same legislation also required that SLS launch by 2016 and SLS/Orion be capable of crew rotations to the ISS, neither of which has been seriously pursued or treated as a requirement in the management of the project.

If you're ever curious about why congress is trying to starve the Commercial Crew program, it might have something to do with NASA under Obama blithely disregarding the policy set out in law.

Anyway, saying that "SLS" can do what the Block II specs say is like saying that the "space shuttle" could do whatever was planned for Constellation. It's a derived vehicle, not the same vehicle, which might fly at some unspecified point in the future, or might never.

>>7516437
>that massive upper stage engine bell
oh baby

>>7516687
>>$20 billion a flight
>LOL talk about some wild numbers there!
Based on NASA's own estimates.

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/08/05/report-estimates-slsmpcv-cost-at-up-to-38-billion-through-2021/

In 2011 they expected to need another $38 billion to launch the first two flights, an unmanned test in 2017 and a manned test in 2021, not counting the billions already spent under the Constellation banner, despite the fact that most of the Constellation work simply continued, unchanged, under the SLS/Orion name. They are actually behind that schedule and over those cost estimates.

Note that these are *test* flights, not working flights, and therefore would not even count toward the program cost per working flight figure I was talking about. Add in the Constellation spending and overruns, and we're talking about spending over $50 billion before the first working flight, of a system which is likely to offer no advantages whatsoever, in availability, safety, cost, or capabilities, over commercial alternatives by the time it is ready for routine use.

The entire shuttle program cost around $200 billion, and that was for 135 launches, most of which were successful, working launches (the first four flights were considered R&D launches, although the fourth launched a useful payload.), over the four decades of the program (and the three decades of launches).

More is being spent on SLS/Orion development than was spent on shuttle development, despite that fact that it is largely a rearrangement of shuttle components to produce a conventional expendable system, rather than a clean-sheet design of an RLV. No one is projecting a launch rate nearly as high, annual program costs that are significantly lower, or a continuation of the program with the original vehicle for nearly as long.

The near-certain fate of SLS/Orion is cancellation after doing no signficant work, after tens of billions of dollars, making even the shuttle program look good by comparison.

>>7517683
God damn fucking pork project. This thing will never fly. It's sure to be cancelled, wasting all that money yet again.

>>7517683
Where is all this fucking money going? Are we essentially paying hundreds, if not thousands of Boeing and NASA employees to fucking around all day after dev is done?

Who is pocketing all these extra costs?

It's looking like the SLS will be beaten by the Falcon Heavy 15 times over. Seriously, what the fuck.

Didn't NASA stylize this whole SLS as a "competition" and say that it's "privately" built, yet it gets its shit beat in by the Atlas V and even more so by SpaceX for costs in every single way?

I fucking hope SpaceX can get the BFR as a viable option, because NASA is leading us to fucking nowhere. It's just become an arm of the military industrial complex and is reaching all time crazy levels of pork fudge packing.

>>7517764
>SLS will be beaten by the Falcon Heavy 15 times over
This is a joke, right?
You are aware that spaceX has lost 4/25 of their rockets, right?
You are aware that falcon heavy is 4 years behind schedule, right?

>military industrial complex
SLS has nothing to do with the military. That would be ULA, who blow spaceXplosion out of the water in terms of reliability and in schedule keeping

>>7517773
Oh wow, a new company blew up some early rockets and had an early accident. Why don't we compare that to NASA or ULA?

It happens with all of them, you fucking imbecile. SpaceX is our only hope with US space exploration.

Falcon Heavy may be 4 years behind Elon time, but most people expected a 2015 launch or so.

SLS has everything to do with the military. The Air Force and their industrial cronies - Boeing, Lockheed, and many many others own many members of congress and in no way would let anything they do not be a giant pork project if they can help it.

>ULA blowing SpaceX out of the water

Only if you ignore the failures from before ULA was a thing, especially Boeing in the 80s. They had some nice explosions back then.

>>7517773
>>military industrial complex
>SLS has nothing to do with the military.
What pool of contractors do you suppose is being used for the SLS work?

Boeing is doing SLS, with engines and motors from Aerojet Rocketdyne and ATK, Lockheed Martin is doing Orion. Same companies that do the ULA rockets.

>You are aware that spaceX has lost 4/25 of their rockets, right?
No point in counting the first three, which were basically experimental flights of Falcon 1 rockets, used to learn how to get to space.

>You are aware that falcon heavy is 4 years behind schedule, right?
4 years behind the schedule of the Heavy variant of Falcon 9 1.0, which would have had about half the payload and no flyback booster capability. Those 4 years have been accepted in the pursuit of major improvements in capabilities and cost effectiveness.

Compare this to Constellation/SLS, which was supposed to start carrying crew in 2010 and provide two-launch missions (crew launched separately from a superheavy cargo) with a total LEO mass of over 200 tons, enabling a return to manned moon landings by 2020, reduced to one-launch missions with a total LEO mass around 100 tons.

So it's at least eleven years behind schedule (first crewed launch no earlier than 2021) with capabilities downgraded to a level that leave it with no reason to exist.

>>7517780
>>7517828
By your logic, NASA is in the deathgrip of the 'commercial airliner industrial complex' simply because they contract to boeing

SLS is a pork project, it has nothing to do with the military and you're both dumbass retard redditors for thinking otherwise.

>used to learn how to get to space.
We've been able to "get to space" for 60 years

>motors
>Aerojet Rocketdyne
dumbass

>>7517828
>Compare this to Constellation/SLS
They are completely different programs
You only put them in the same bucket because you're too literally retarded to tell the difference between rocket architectures aside from looks. The only component they share is the Orion capsule, even the service module is different.

>Only if you ignore the failures from before ULA was a thing
The Atlas V and Delta IV have never had a launch failure.

>elon time
Since when was this place infested with redditors?

>>7515669
>could we be on mars by now?
If Mars was a goal to work against your enemies, yes.
Otherwise, i doubt it.

>>7517854
Also, the Saturn V 1st stage was built by Boeing

Was the Saturn V a product of muh evul military industrial cumplex!!! too?

>>7514446
CIA meddling

>>7517854
The Atlas V has had a failure, and the Delta IV is such a piece of shit that it's rarely used

>>7517874
Boeing bought everyone who did space, they've never actually done space stuff until Delta IV

Difference is the Saturn V was a lot cheaper even in inflated adjusted dollars to develop and build than the SLS

BTW the first stage of the Saturn V used rocketdyne engines

>>7516625

Hey
I type like that sometimes it makes sense for what you want to do

Name a better way of separating your thoughts
also

>not capitalizing important nouns in your research
what the fuck is wrong with you

>>7517854
>>Compare this to Constellation/SLS
>They are completely different programs
Yeah man, that's why the same people are continuing the same work.

>The only component they share is the Orion capsule
The only real differences between SLS and Ares V are scale and being man-rated. Both were supposed to use 5-segment SRBs. Ares V was supposed to use 6 RS-68s or 5 SSMEs on a scaled-up External Fuel Tank, SLS is supposed to use 4 SSMEs on a scaled up External Fuel Tank. Ares V was supposed to use an Earth Departure Stage powered by the J-2 or J-2X, SLS is supposed to use a couple of different interim upper stages before eventually arriving at an Earth Departure Stage powered by the J-2X.

SLS is no more and no less than the finalized Ares V design. The 5-segment SRBs, designed for the space shuttle and tested in 2003, were not powerful enough to support a 5-SSME core stage, and the RS-68 was found to not be compatible with the SRBs. Furthermore, the J-2X is overpowered for the size of the upper stages which can be launched by the 4-SSME version, unless the boosters can be upgraded, however J-2X development continued into 2014, years after the Constellation-SLS changeover.

Basically, Ares V couldn't be done without replacing the SRBs with something much better (such as liquid-fueled boosters), which was not politically possible due to ATK's lobbying power. SLS is the Ares V as they could actually build it. The Ares V's design could not be finalized in any greater form by NASA. Any descriptions of Ares V as a larger, more powerful vehicle were merely notional.

>>7514488
This. The reusability of the shuttle is wasted weight, making it incapable of long range space flight. Meanwhile in not so Soviet Russia, they are still using time tested rockets.

>>7517941
You should look at the system the space shuttle was originally supposed to be a part of.

The shuttle was just the link between the Earth surface and Low Earth Orbit. Then there was supposed to be a nuclear thermal rocket tug between LEO and LLO (Low Lunar Orbit), and another reusable shuttle between LLO and the moon's surface (the RL-10 hydrogen/oxygen engine so common on American upper stages was actually designed as lunar lander engine, as demonstrated in the Delta Clipper).

The LEO/LLO tug could also have been used between LEO and Mars, with the lunar surface shuttle a very good start for a Mars lander/ascent vehicle (thanks to aerobraking, the delta-V requirements for landing on Mars and then returning to Mars orbit are similar to those for landing on the moon and returning to orbit, although the thrust requirements are higher).

>>7514546

Huh. The man has some taste. Color me surprised.

>>7517959
So instead, we wasted time creating infrastructure that was never completed, instead of just doing the missions.

>Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

>>7517934
If they can actually build the EUS, and ATK can deliver on the Black Knights, we will have a formidable rocket - that costs a fucking fortune and will never be launched.

>>7517854
The Atlas was an evolution of rockets going back decades. All they did from Atlas IIA (only rocket I've seen launch in person heh) to the first Atlas IV was change the first stage to use an engine that was already proven and not even built by them.

Also, there was the Atlas III in between that was even more like the Atlas V - matter of fact, it used the same first stage engine and the same upper stage. Lockheed had plenty of failures back in the early Atlas days, but when you have a lot of practice you eventually become quite good at things. Comparing SpaceX now to ULA now isn't a fair comparison when it comes to reliability.

>>7517994
>we wasted time creating infrastructure that was never completed, instead of just doing the missions.
...without infrastructure?

Lowering launch costs with a more cost-effective vehicle was the right place to start. The problem was that NASA's exploration activities weren't taken seriously after the Soviets were "defeated" with the first moon landing, so all of its efforts were subverted into pork programs.

Look at what's happening now, ten years after a firm goal of returning to the moon by 2020 was declared. It doesn't matter whether NASA is given a clear mission or not, unless the president and congress are both determined to use NASA to accomplish that mission, and not as a way to give money to their friends and buy votes.

>>7518018
There was no Atlas IV.

Great editorial from 1980, before the first shuttle flew:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835107/posts

>"Oh, the shuttle will definitely cost more than equivalent expendable rockets," said Kaplan plainly.

>There is something noteworthy a rocket can do that the shuttle cannot. A rocket can be permitted to fail. What if a billion dollar spaceship wipes out on a "routine" mission "commuting" to space with some puny little satellite? Cooper fears it might drive a stake through the heart of the manned space program. Would the public stand to lose a quarter of the fleet in a single day?

>Here's the plan. Suppose one of the solid-fueled boosters fails. The plan is, you die.

>Once you get into space, you check to see if any tiles are damaged. If enough are, you have a choice between Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is hope they can get a rescue shuttle up in time. Plan B is burn up coming back.

>The external fuel tank, for instance, is full of oxygen and hydrogen cooled to -400°F. to make the gases flow as liquids. Ice will form on the tank. When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia. So insulation was added to the tank.

>>7517157
Is that an attack to the Man?

Why should I conform?

My career is over, I made a few Bullet Charts before the retirment,

What is 4chan /SCI but bullshit bullet charts.

You take yourself so serious, I don't have to prove govt service I'm retired.

You can compete like it makes a difference, the USA is finished & the US Constitution that was formed has been pushed aside for the Military Republic/Superpower Status that demand huge federal budgets, marriage to banks, financial & political superpower status, and huge US Corporate Monopolies.

Yeah I'm a cynic, but you are asleep.

Beware the Elite Predators Scheming at the International Level.

But I'm not serious, I'm retired and have nothing to prove. How can I take people like you that gave up the USA in the previous generations. U can make a difference. I can't help. Love it or leave it.

Thanks for you're participation in National Security.

>>7516437

>At least Congress is giving NASA more funding than they requested for it,

At the expense of other activities in NASA's budget, not an increase in total budget or any significant increase. It reflects their prioritization of SLS within NASA's budget.

>then also insisted they do a mission that NASA had never dared to ask for funding for - the Europa Clipper

That's because NASA has a process with which it determines what it does in its science program and a Europa mission would have to first determined to be a priority within that framework. Pushing Europa now would displace their other determined objectives. Europa Clipper itself was part of that process independent of SLS and prior to forcing it onto SLS: it is a downsized Europa mission that was being developed as a more affordable option among other determinable candidates.

SLS was completely a stupid idea based upon the wet dreams of Shuttle program huggers and HLV fanatics.

>There's no way around that.

Pick an architecture that defrays launch costs so you have great allocation to payload side expenditures, which need focus and are immature compared to launch tech. If you want a HLV based program ULA and SpaceX are there to competitively bid on one. The world of launch isn't exclusively composed of the noncompetitive space shuttle industry from which to fashion vehicles; there is a wider industry with more competitive technology. Lower cost launch would also allow greater expenditure on the payload side.

>>7515520
Feels like I'm playing Deus Ex again

nasa fakes space walks and moon landings. space is not real and there is a glass sky.

/thread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBL98p0wZ7g

>>7514446
Nerve gas

>>7518091
>without infrastructure?

I'm not talking about the essential infrastructure for these missions, I'm talking about the infrastructure that would make these missions easier at the cost of large initial overhead.

>>7514446
The only reason NASA built these things in the first place was reduce the cost of a launch, but oh boy were they wrong.
The new orion capsule seems cool. But the SLS rocket is breaking new ground in the field of retardation.

>>7514881
the fuel and engines do not exist in real life at the TWR that that things gets, might as well be playing KSP.

>>7517959

>You should look at the system the space shuttle was originally supposed to be a part of.

It is still a dumb idea because we do not need manned vehicles to launch station modules or other cargo. Shuttle like spaceships only makes sense when it is something like Dream Chaser, a small vehicle to carry crew. Otherwise it is dead weight and needlessly increases complexity. If it wasnt for Shuttle, we could have a station composed of 100 ton modules, like Skylab, not those tin cans ISS is made of, limited by shuttle cargo bay. And probably have it both cheaper and sooner.

>>7519381
>It is still a dumb idea because we do not need manned vehicles to launch station modules or other cargo.

A manned vehicle is still needed to repair and retrieve damaged or malfunctioning satellites, in the case of the Hubble incident. That was one of the Shuttle Program's few successes.

A little off topic, but I figure this is the space thread of the moment.

Check it out, AJR wants to buy ULA!
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/09/08/report-aerojet-rocketdyne-bids-2-billion-ula/

I'm actually excited for this. I think this is likely to happen. This makes ULA's talk with Blue Origin and XCOR finally make sense, as a bargaining tactic. That was Boeing and LM threatening to destroy AJR.

An AJR-owned ULA is a credible competitor for SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Orbital-ATK as a vertically-integrated company that can produce full vehicles, including their own propulsion. Four real, soup-to-nuts, full-scale independent commercial rocket companies in the USA!

>>7516765
I?

>>7519381
>It is still a dumb idea because we do not need manned vehicles to launch station modules or other cargo.
This was the early 70s. They didn't know how to land a winged vehicle without a human pilot.

As demonstrated by Buran, the shuttle could have been converted to unmanned landing fairly easily, once the technology arrived.

>>7519457
I bet if AJR is its own customer, they can suddenly discover a lot of ways to make their engines MUCH cheaper.

They own basically all of the USA's rocket engine tech. If they bought ULA, they'd have basically all of its launch vehicle tech. They could build a Saturn V, an Atlas/Centaur, a Delta Clipper, or something essentially indistinguishable from an Energia.

The RL-10 was designed as a quick-throttling landing rocket, and demonstrated capable of serving this purpose on Earth with the Delta Clipper. AJR/ULA could leapfrog SpaceX's VTVL tech very quickly.

>>7514446
She was a dirty whore.

>>7519570
I bet they could put together something really good from J-2Xs and RL-10s.

J-2X does more thrust than Merlin 1D, while RL-10 is more throttleable, and of course they both have much higher specific impulse.

They could do a 5-J-2X booster stage, with RL-10 landing engines, and a similar upper stage with only 1-J-2X, and for really big payloads, sit the whole thing on top of a F-1B booster stage with RL-10-powered landing pods.

Saturn Vr - a fully reusable Saturn V.

>>7519570

I see Aerojet as having made a bad acquisition in buying Rocketdyne, with their engine concern getting fucked by ULA eventually possibly switching to a complete non-AR liquid engine rocket in the future amid declining market share to SpaceX. This buyout of ULA is a desperate move to "rescue" the previous bad acquisition and force ULA to keep using AR engines; you would still have the reality of declining marketshare to SpaceX and a declining market. Buying ULA is so expensive for Aerojet that it will probably kill Vulcan development under an Aerojet owned ULA. Certainly I don't think any more expensive advanced project would be then undertaken. This is more of a way of keeping their engine selling business going on than stopping completely, with a decline from present good times still inevitable.

>>7519742
>Certainly I don't think any more expensive advanced project would be then undertaken.
After spending $2 billion to buy a rocket company, you think they'd just stand by and let it be outcompeted in the next few years?