I'd like to point out that when you make a solid rocket motor longer, you increase its power, not its burn time. burn time is a function of the diameter and geometry of the fuel. thrust is determined by length because it increases the internal surface area of the exposed propellant. yes, it has 25% more fuel, but due to its geometry, it gives more power than duration. In the case of SLS, the motors are lit from the top, and the fire burns down through a central hole. instead of being round, it's star shape I believe, because it has more surface area to burn. if you lit it from the bottom, you would only have the area of a 12' ish circle. by lighting it down the center, you can get infinitely more surface area (if you had a never-ending tube) Fun fact, the SLS boosters have a geometry where they actually "throttle down" and start producing less power as they burn (I'm assuming they either change internal geometry or fuel composition) but this is so that they don't keep pushing harder and harder as they get lighter, leading to extremely excessive maximum aerodynamic loads. they are way more complicated than an end-burning motor like in fireworks also, the reason they, along with so, so much else that is built in this country, are 12 feet wide, is because that is the largest thing you can move on the highways without needing special routing to clear bridges and such. the central core of SLS needs to be moved down the Mississippi river by barge, and around the tip of Florida because it just won't fit on our infrastructure. Edit, if you want to see what an SRB can look like inside, google "solid rocket propellant grain geometry" and you will see plenty of diagrams alongside thrust profile graphs
Can you explain how length increases the internal surface area but not diameter? What determines if propellant is exposed or not? Edit: thx for the answers that helped a bunch. So I guess diameter DOES increase the fuel contact surface area, but only marginally compared to length and the geometry of the bore.
@@charleyssss an srb isn't a solid cylinder of fuel, it has a hole in the middle, and inside of the hole is where the combustion occurs. This means that adding length also makes the hole longer, so there is more combustion, but the burn time is the same
@@charleyssss There is a hole in the center of a solid rocket motor. When you increase the length, the hole is longer, therefore more surface area. When you increase the diameter there is more fuel to burn for the same amount of surface area of the center hole.
@@charleyssss In very simplified terms, the fuel in the SRBs consists of stacks of solid fuel shaped like toilet rolls. The tubular shape helps increase the effective surface area that is being burn at a given time, versus trying to burn a solid cylinder from the bottom. While the latter would effectively increase burn time, it also reduces the output thrust at a given moment (or impulse). The former design on the other hand helps to increase thrust as more fuel is burnt at a given time. Now back to the original question. A longer tube would effectively mean more surface area to burn, hence the increase in thrust. Burn time will not increase as the additional fuel is being burnt at the same rate parallel to the rest of the fuel.
I remember being really excited about the Orion Program and the SLS during the Orion test flight in 2012 and completely forgot all about it for the next 10 years. A couple months ago I was like “wait they STILL haven’t launched yet???”
To put it into perspective, it's taken longer since the first test luanch of Orion, to the first flight of the SLS, than it took for JFK's moon speech, to when we first landed on the moon. Think about that.
@@TheStuntman81 No, the Saturn V (50 Billion) cost double the amount the SLS project cost (23 Billion). (Inflation adjusted) But with the Saturn V, NASA still had to lay the groundwork. When the project started, NASA had just sent the first person to space. There was no 60-year history of spaceflights to look back on. For SLS they have the experience of regularly flying people and objects to space for over 40 years. So how come that you have 40 years of groundwork to build on, extreme advances in computing power, material science, chemistry, physics, ... And you produce a worse product than the one built 50 years ago?
The reason the SRBs are not being recovered, is because this does not save much cost for SRBs, where the main cost is putting the fuel in in the correct manner. To recover them, you would need to clean the casing etc., which is basically just a steel tube where the only fancy part is the nozzle. If I recall correctly, recovering the SRBs was approximately as costly as making new ones for Shuttle, though I'm not sure on the exact numbers.
Also, the SRB's being used for the first missions are built from previous hardware. There is no need to keep those, as the Block-II SLS will use a brand new upgraded design. "why not just use those now?"... because there are still leftover part they are obligated to use first.
@@the_senate8050 they are most definitely not obsolescent, they still are some of the most efficient engines in the world going to waste in the SLS lauches
I was 10 years old when Armstrong walked on the moon. The real difference, compared to learning about it later, is that when it is live you do not know how it will turn out. Would the ascent stage of the Lunar Module engine fire properly? Would they be stuck on the moon and die there? It was not just an exciting time, but also very tense. During Apollo 13, we did not know if the astronauts would survive. But if you missed it, hopefully you will watch us go to Mars.
The fact the SLS is ready to go and it’s *checks notes* one and only competitor is not ready to go definitionally demonstrates SLS is not out of date. SLS might not be the future, but is absolutely the present.
The competition will catch up unlike NASA the private companies are profit driven which means it won't take that long for someone to eventually make something better than the outdated SLS for a cheaper price
@@thomashayhurst6547 Starship is literally operational. They just suceeded in doing far more then Artemis ever has, and they build them for about 0.05% of the cost of a single SLS launch. It is legendary levels of comedic, how outdated and awful SLS is compared to the now fully proven Starship program, which is about to start assembling a Mars colony at the end of the Decade (Next Trans-Martian Injection windows are 2026 and late 2028)
"Could the SLS money have been better spent elsewhere? Absolutely." "Would NASA have been given that money if it went elsewhere? Probably not."" That second part is what people miss when they say "SLS money could have funded X commercial launches."
Yeah. Also little bit similar is the LOP-G station. "But wouldn't it be cheaper to just do direct route and just dropping the space station all together". Maybe for couple flights, but for longevity one needs something to anchor the program. Permanent on lunar orbit space station.... is pretty permanent in nature. Plus the station has international partners. Which bulletproofs program against whims of political administrations. Administrations might unceremoniously end NASA only moon program. However if they now go to cancel Artemis.... They have to explain to Europe, Canada and Japan "yeah, right, we are scrapping the space station *you are already building your own modules for* ". awkward international diplomatic incident and would make USA lose face internationally. Whole Artemis program is a master class in NASA managing "this country changes it's plans every 4 years or at longest every 8 years and well moon program takes decade to make happen".
No, NASA would not have gotten the same funds if SLS didn't exist. That's because they wouldn't need the estimated $6 FUCKING BILLION dollars per SLS launch just so the Orion can meet up with a FUCKING SPACEX STARSHIP that's already at the moon. Why in the cinnamon toast fuck do we need to send a crew capsule to meet up with a much nicer and reusable crew capsule (that's also cheaper).
@@aritakalo8011 a permanent lunar station might be a very high maintenance idea, if in a low orbit Lunar orbital decay is a mad headache If I recall right, this is the reason many people propose a station at L1 Lagrange as an alternative (though it comes with its own set of headaches)
The part that I miss is why we tolerate a political system that is so corrupt. And if trends continue, soon it won't be a question of how we tolerate it but how we survive it.
Exactly. Space X is a commercial partner of NASA and the only reason they have been able to make such rapid advancements is because of NASAs funding and scientific aid.
I worked at Rocketdyne when it was still part of Rockwell, and several years after it was bought by Boeing. Then it was sold to Pratt and Whitney, and then sold again to Aerojet. All that should really tell you something. It was the worst companies I've ever worked for, with the lowest average skill level among the engineers, the lowest rate of innovation, and the most incompetent management I've ever seen. So how have they stayed in business so long? Lobbying, and a bunch of stupid stunts to please congress. I remember once, soon after someone in congress complained about the lack of innovation, they made me get up in front of a crowd to accept an award for some stupid invention I had never heard of until I read it off the plaque they gave me. I was completely blind sighted by this. And they gave out plaques to a lot of people that day. Then there was another time when they forced all employees to buy US savings bonds to appease some other member of congress.
it exists because its flying now when starship still hasn't. sometimes good enough tech is good enough. We'll get to use starship when its ready but it won't be soon.
When you made this comment, Starship had already flown. Now im here to tell you that its flown 4 times, and should have flight 10 done by the end of this year. Its launching at a rate that will have it at 100+ yearly launches in 2-3 years. You look like a fool. The starship program is a stunning world changing sucess!
@@truegrit1860No it's not. It has less payload capacity to LEO than a Falcon Heavy and it requires an indefinite amount of refueling flights to get beyond that (which completely negates the cost savings of reusability). It has no reason to exist. It's an Elon vanity project that his fanboys lap up uncritically just like all the rest of his bullshit. SpaceX found a niche innovating LEO access, but no one who knows anything about aerospace believes all of Elon's hype. Especially when he (and all of his cheerleaders on the Internet) seems to honestly believe he invented iterative design. lmao
Its weird - from the stories I've heard about Apollo, it was this major event world wide. By the time of Apollo 11, you had tv series, stuff in newspapers etc...but for Artemis, the first I head of it was news that Artemis 1 was being launched in the local news. And its not like I'm some space pillock - I watched launch and landing of STS-135 live, I've followed SpaceX developing their landing tech, watched the end of Cassini and the landing of Curiosity...how did this program fly under the radar so much? I heard more about the JWST before it launched than Artemis. The other thing that shocks me is I remember the Orion program being cancelled, but, from you're saying, politics basically revived it, and we ended up with another lunar program...by accident??? (If this is correct, it's gotta be one of the most epic accidents ever...)
Yeah, you are right, at the time NASA was news almost every night on TV, not just Apollo but Mercury and Gemini programs before them too. I skipped school for each launch of the Mercury and Gemini program, and it became "an issue for me" at the time with my teachers. "Way way too much science" they said!! LOL. Is that the same today I wonder? LOL ;D
That's because they had only a single launch (back in 2014 on delta iv heavy). There was nothing that people would be interested in until we actually would launch stuff. It got coverage during the Artemis 1 launch, and i imagine it will get MUCH more coverage during the Artemis 2 launch next year.
I'm surprised this video didn't mention the mobile launch tower fiasco. IIRC it was made by a ton of subcontractors that didn't really communicate with one another, cost a fortune, and won't fit the upcoming more powerful version of SLS so we won't even get much use of it.
@@EinChris75 Hmm they are going to be launching Orion with the current configuration. I don't know if the humans and their supplies can add so much weight that the rocket won't be able to lift it, but it seems unlikely to me.
@@EinChris75 SLS Block 1 is expected to be used for Artemis 2 and 3, which are currently defined as a "crewed lunar flyby" and "crewed lunar rendezvous [with HLS] and landing". BUT, Block 1b is needed to transport the Lunar Gateway's I-HAB and ESPIRT modules on Artemis 4 and 5.
You can have a 100% reusable rocket and that's fine but the thing is this thing can launch payloads faster to the outer solar system. Therefore it's not outdated yet.
In high school, we went on a field trip to watch one of the shuttle's boosters being tested. (Sideways, strapped to the hill, probably the same hill as in this video). I don't remember the exact noise, but it was certainly an experience I'll never forget.
@iabboc I remember that school field trip. I'll NEVER FORGOT that highway ride. We Saw a car in front of us throw a puppy in a garbage bag out the window. I don't remember the exact noise, but it was certainly an experience I'll never forget.
Here is an interesting comment on the history of SLS, explaining that it wasn't just politics that lead to SLS. It was posted as a comment to the piece "The SLS rocket is the worst thing to happen to NASA-but maybe also the best?" which was written by Eric Berger for Ars Technica. Here it goes: Good article. I think Eric somewhat oversells the angle that Congress and the defense contractors imposed SLS/Orion on NASA. This was very much a two-way street, and although Boeing doesn't deserve any sympathy from anybody, at least one of the other defense contractors had the right idea. It's really important to the history of Ares/SLS to note that the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) program came before any of that. Sean O'Keefe was NASA Administrator, and he called for a fly-off competition in which multiple providers would fly an LEO demonstration mission before selecting a single winner. This precluded the use of launch vehicles that didn't exist. Lockheed Martin's CEV proposal was far more innovative than the Northrop/Boeing proposal. They called for a reusable lifting body reentry vehicle with a captive abort system that could be launched on Atlas V. This was their LEO solution. For exploration missions, a pressurized mission module and a long-duration cryogenic propulsion stage (ACES) would be launched on two Atlas V or Delta IV rockets before the crew launch, and the three modules would dock in LEO prior to departure. Wonderful! That's exactly what we should have done! How did it go wrong? Well, Michael Griffin was appointed NASA Administrator, and he thought the fly-off competition was silly. He also didn't like either of proposals because they were different from what he proposed in a whitepaper he authored a year before his appointment. So he canceled the fly-off, declared Lockheed the winner, and issued a gigantic change request transforming their proposal into the Apollo On Steroids we know as Orion. Michael Griffin was the originator of the "1.5-launch architecture" in which a super-heavy Shuttle-derived rocket (Ares V) launches the lunar lander and a medium Shuttle-derived rocket (Ares I) launches the crew vehicle. Griffin argued that ULA's rockets suffered from a lack of commercial demand which would make them more expensive than if NASA developed their own rockets -- if you can believe that. This became NASA's official position as part of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) he commissioned. And the ESAS report made it easy to cultivate the support of Richard Shelby, Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and others in Congress. ULA was advocating for distributed launch of commercial vehicles and even using the verboten D-word through 2009, when they published this gem that is still proudly hosted on their website: www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/exploration/affordable-exploration-architecture-2009.pdf This was around the time that Richard Shelby flipped out and said he'd pull the funding if ULA or its parents kept talking about propellant depots. NASA sold Congress on the expensive approach, and when big bad industry suggested there's a better way, Congress told them to shut their filthy mouths. Not long after, SLS was enshrined as the spiritual successor to Ares V, and at that point Boeing really started to dig in their heels to protect their cash cow from potential competition. We could have had Lockheed's modular CEV, and we could have had a depot-based distributed launch architecture from ULA. The "dinosaur" industrial base was not opposed to delivering those solutions. There was a period in time when the big defense contractors were reading the tea leaves, and they were basically told to get their eyes checked and fall in line. So they did. Still doesn't excuse Boeing's poor performance. Nothing does.
The original Lockheed Lifting body proposal began life as a high Mach number escape/survival pod for aircraft use. It would have reentered aerodynamically, and had a lot more control, then landed by parachute.
Or they could have used falcon heavy to launch ULA or NASA designed systems which could have cost 1/100 or even 1/1000 of ANY of this bullshit. But Elon musk disagreed with people on Twitter so we can't have that either can we.
@@blink182bfsftw No, that is exactly not what the comment argues. Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin pushed SLS. He was not a member of Congress. Also, ULA, an "Old Space" company, was against SLS.
I’m so excited that Artemis has fully come to fruition (potentially speaking) as I’m completing my aerospace degree. The fact I could some day work on projects that are for direct purposes on the lunar surface is so exciting. I hope the next president doesn’t cancel Artemis because it is doing critical work that no private industry would do: setting up infrastructure to invite more companies to do business. That is what the public sector should be for. This is space being done right.
Not just into orbit, but on an extended (and previously untested) "distant retrograde" Lunar orbit. Thus far, the Orion herself has exceeded even the most optimistic projections, not only on Artemis 1, but on the previous EFT-1 as well. I remember waking up before dawn (both days) to watch that launch on the Delta-4 Heavy
@@michelmilaneh8963 That's what testing is for. The Space Shuttle orbiter had tiles just falling off during its flight test, making years of delays,... and then once it flew with people on board (with no abort options by the way), it was ALSO missing tiles when it reached orbit. So yeah, Orion still performed better
There are several legitimate staring points for Artemis. The concept for a heavy lift vehicle based on Shuttle components dates back before the first Shuttle flight, the concept was being evolved in the 1980s and looked pretty similar to the various legacy programs, without any hardware being flown. In the 1980s such a vehicle would have made perfect sense. By the end of the 1990s software was developed to allow for fly back boosters to be a possibility. By 2000s the shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle concept was essentially redundant, old tech.
It's always amusing when people complain about using "old space shuttle tech". The RS-25 SSME is essentially the best rocket engine that can and ever will be developed, approaching the theoretical limit for chemical rocket engine efficiency with a specific impulse of ~450s. What is the specific impulse of a new "state of the art engine", say Space X Raptor? ~350s. It doesn't make sense to NOT use space shuttle tech. Do you complain about "old tech" when you buy a new car that still uses wheels? No, because it still makes perfect sense to use wheels.
@@Kanglar okay. But have you considered why no one uses hydrogen engines anymore? Leaks, boiling point, required insulation, etc. The engine has a great ISP, but it causes the rest of the rocket to necessarily be far heavier.
@@Kanglar Just using ISP as a metric without adding anything else into context is just plain wrong. The RS-25s are amazing engines. No question about it. But they don't have the highest ISP nor is that the whole story. The RL10 gets 465isp using the same fuel. Others have been tested up to around 540isp using other fuels. Further, the RS-25 even with 4 engines, isn't powerful enough to get the SLS off the ground. They need massive solid rocket boosters to do so, each getting an ISP of only 242. And since it uses Hydrogen, it requires much larger fuel tanks and heavier components to support it. Other fuels lower ISP since they don't burn as well as hydrogen, but they output more power and get more into orbit at a similar dry mass as a hydrogen rocket. Very high ISP makes more since on upper stages than first stages, since the longer burn times benefit more from high ISP.
The other thing to remember is that many of these parts were already "human rated" whereas ships such as Starship is not and won't be for a while still.
True, but that's intentional, they're designed using very different philosophies. Starship will likely get human rated after flying enough times just like Falcon 9. Honestly I'd feel safer flying on a rocket that got the human rating after proving itself many times than a rocket that was designed to be human rated in theory but hasn't flown much or at all.
“Human rated” in the sense that someone has predicted it should work. I prefer “human rated” being demonstrated rather than predicted. The SLS is so expensive that we can barely build one every few years, let alone test them prior to use.
@@limiv5272 , based on that, you're not appreciating how man-rated systems are designed and built. The necessary tolerances and checks of key indicators are built into the procedure, not designed into it after enough data points are generated. If you change subsystem components downstream, it becomes a new, untested configuration again, many components of which representing a single point failure.
The trick with "outdated" with respect to rocketry, is that we were capable of 95% of what is possible when Saturn flew. The J-2 hydrogen-oxygen engines of the Saturn had a specific impulse of 428s, compared to the 452s of the Space Shuttle RS-25 or 470s of the most efficient RL-10s we've ever flown. RL-10s in the 450s range were flying at the time as well. Compare to the best kerosene engines at ~340s or projected best methane at ~380s. On the other side of the world, the Soviets were building NK-33/43 engines, some of the most efficient and best thrust to mass ratio kerosene-oxygen engines ever flown. All our big advances in rocket design have been and will come from materials and structures, and even there the gains will be noticeable but small. Additionally, there is no commercial vehicle that comes anywhere close to the capability of SLS. Starship is unproven and will not be crew-rated any time in the near future. Additionally, its mass to the moon is limited and it will work best as a low-earth orbit launch vehicle; methane doesn't work well for high energy missions, which is basically anything outside LEO. Falcon Heavy doesn't have the structure to lift 50 tons to LEO, even if you had a payload that would fit inside the fairing or had its own fairing. New Glenn hasn't flown yet and I haven't seen any evidence of flight hardware besides the BE-4 engines, but its BE-3 powered upper stage would likely work well for moon missions. Finally, if you don't think a hydrogen-oxygen stage is the way to go, think of it this way. SLS Block II cargo is slated to carry 46 metric tons to trans-lunar injection in its cargo iteration. If you assume an equivalent engine and structures mass and replace the hydrolox fuel with an equivalent mass of methane-oxygen fuel, then assume it has the best projected efficiency at 380s isp, SLS would only be able to get 27 metric tons to the moon.
During the USA manned space flight days, Lockheed was blacklisted after the agena failure. Then came Hubble, what a mess. Lockheed has alway had some crippling flaws in their products. Now Orion sits on top, made by Lockheed who has never built a manned capsule, what could go wrong.
Not entirely sure what you mean that Lockheed was “blacklisted”, or the “Agena failure”. The Agena was a rocket upper stage that was used very successfully from 1962 through 1987, with several different versions being built and successfully used by both NASA and the DOD. It was used during the Gemini program, and also on Atlas, Thor, Thorad and Titan IIIB rockets for several decades, with WELL OVER 300 of them built and successfully launched into space. So what do you mean when you say the “Agena failure”? I’m just curious.
As one of the folks who lost his job when Constellation was cancelled and finally got it back 8 years later to work on SLS, I appreciate the delicacy with which you handled the subject. Yes, it's a jobs program, but it's also a fantastic rocket. I have to give Jim Bridenstine credit for the name Artemis and for focusing the SLS AND commercial partners on working toward a moon base and a deep space station in NRHO. I'm now working habitation design for both, which is the exciting future we have in store!
Since you are in the know................how is it that NASA spent "billions and billions" on this rocket and Musk is hammering out pipe into rockets on the beach in South Texas for cheaper, bigger and better? And this rocket appears to be an updated Saturn V...............
@@pyrholorange Possibly. Right now we’re focused on just having enough living space and limiting other hazards like radiation, micrometeoroids, and lunar dust. Also, we don’t have much data on how low gravity effects humans. All our experience is near-zero-G, so figuring out how the body handles 1/6 G on the moon will help inform whether a low-gravity space station would be beneficial. In the meantime, we’ve learned to somewhat mitigate the long-term effects of microgravity during the 20 years of continuous human habitation on the ISS.
I am curious to learn about what NASA is doing to work towards a moon base, since none of their plans seriously mention it and none of their architecture appears suitable for it. And since congress appears uninterested in funding it.
You are quite right about those shuttle engines and boosters. Experiencing a nighttime shuttle launch was one of the most thrilling things I’ve ever experienced.
I think you’re missing some very very key aspects regarding the Constellation and Artemis programs, like the fact that even though Artemis (rather sls) has gone 2x over budget at roughly $23B it’s still 10x less than constellation... who’s budget was $230B. On top of that there’s still some political aspects that ‘helped’ shut down constellation and actually helped Artemis.
I've followed the space exploration only slightly, but this video just seems *wrong*. As if using old parts is some kind of *gotcha!*. I could be completely wrong, but something just made my spider sense tingle. Maybe when Scott Manley bashes the SLS program I'll believe it :)
Yes, he also said Constellation was “resurrected as Artemis,” while the Artemis program didn’t actually exist until 2017. It was a nameless SLS + Orion program without a clear target from 2011 to 2016. Constellation was a very different program, especially with respect to how the Ares rockets (Ares I and V) would have been used. The biggest similarity, which he correctly points out, is in the design architecture of Ares V/SLS, with both leaning heavily on the existing Shuttle infrastructure and workforce.
Yeah, but starship really meet the goals of what NASA wants so I find the whole thing a waste of money. If you want to put a base on the moon you can't use that Artemis program. All that does is get you people on the moon with very limited amount of equipment. You could launch two starship missions and everything is there. While starship might not be the best way to explore, it's by far the best way to move equipment and people.
@@johndoh5182 Starship still has a LOT (I repeat-A LOT) of work to undergo to be usable. It's got potential, but that potential has yet to be realized. SLS is necessary for the next 10 years at least. Tomorrow's launch will tell us whether SLS is mature enough. If it is, we should use it. As much as I love it, Starship is still far from being mature.
the one thing SLS brings over SpaceX is that theoretically it can launch substantially wider payloads which is more of a constraint than people realize, and Gateway almost requires it
All future blocks of SLS (which include the cargo versions) have been cancelled. Starship is actually able to lift more to orbit and has a larger payload area.
I love it when people act like Space X is this completely separate thing when it is entirely dependent on organizations like NASA not only in terms of infrastructure like launch pads and stuff but in terms of all the technology and innovation made by space programs in the past half century.
Don't get sentimental about the shuttle. That was a disaster in itself that should be left behind. The Saturn V is objectively better if there were no commercial options.
I grew up through all of that. I'm 68 years old. I got to meet some amazing people and ended up working Shuttles ET project from start to finish and then was part of the Orion capsule design team. I somehow survived till retirement and am loving it. I'll be watching tomorrow with chills as always.
I too worked the Shuttle program 20 years until retirement. 10 years as a pad tech (pad rat) and ten years in the LCC as an analyst and test conductor. The best job I have ever missed. Very exciting and fulfilling. Still keep up with all the launches.
@@veroncia5218 Absolute BS. Re-use doesn't mean it is free. The whole rocket needs to be checked, repaired and retested. It's a myth that it should be cheaper then a on-off. NASA used many parts in the last 80 years for reuse as with the space-shuttle, and there are many reasons re-use is not always better. The assumption of this channel that the SLS rocket is outdated without bringing any arguments besides the rocket is not "re-usable" is therefor reason enough for me to block this channel from now on. I detest information channels with hidden agenda's.
If SLS is outdated, what do you think Soyuz should be called? ;) Soyuz is basically R7 ballistic missile variant with updated engine design from 1950's. It's been in wide use to this day.
I work in the engineering field and there are far too many stupid engineers that think because something is not "cutting edge" that it is outdated or obsolete. This is false. Moreover, when someone is building new equipment that is cutting edge, it is common to find a lot of "legacy" parts with proven track records to limit risk. Videos like this guy's are normally content paid for by market competition. SLS competition includes SpaceX which is behind SLS but very much nipping at its heels. In distant third is Blue Origin that is so far behind that they can't even really be seen. It is likely this content is paid for or contributed to by SpaceX.
@Charles Something that is about to hit its maiden voyage cannot be considered obsolete to something that has never flown. Kids. I get this kind of mental deficiency a lot from the younger engineers I employ.
@Charles You can't really compare these engines, since SpaceX design is full flown type leading to lower chamber pressures, hence giving it chance to be reusable. Soyuz uses oxidizer rich engines that are cheap, but they are not light. This design ensures fully utilizing fuel energy but it potentially damages engine beyond repair. And you can't re ignite those engines. SLS/shuttle engines are fuel rich type that ensures maximum durability but delivers suboptimal performance. We don't have proper information available about exact cost of each of these systems. All we know that each engine model is optimized for different scenario and that leads to different characteristics, pros and cons. Elon Musk tried to buy RD171 or 180 type engines but never got those. Lockheed Martin and Boeing use that type of engine, and Musk has said that Russian engines used in Atlas V are great. Take it for what it's worth.
I know many are on the "why use an expendable rocket?" train, why doesn't NASA use one? NASA did have one in the 1990's, the DC-X Delta Clipper, it was a scaled down technology demonstrator - but the materials science wasn't there yet to make a full scaled version viable as it's dry mass would be too high and NASA would have to choose between Venture Star (similar materials issue) and the Delta Clipper as it couldn't fund both projects. Reusable rockets are still in their infancy, only one rocket company has a reusable orbital class rocket, SpaceX - that's it. And that only consists of the Falcon9 and the Falcon Heavy. What many often overlook as they are caught in the Sci-Fi like spectacle of the boosters landing (which is very, very cool!) is that a sacrifice must be made for reusability - payload mass to orbit. The F9 sacrifices roughly 40-60% of max payload to orbit mass to RTLS or drone ship landing as it needs that fuel for landing and to cover the mass of the landing hardware (legs, etc). This is great if you aren't launching anything that heavy and/ or it's only going to low Earth orbit. If you want to go beyond low Earth orbit though, you need a lot more speed, which means a lot more fuel to be used for that acceleration making a reusable rocket a lot less useful - it becomes the wrong tool for the job. Enter Starship - Starship aims to be a heavy lift reusable vehicle and SpaceX has a plan to get around the limits of the F9/ FH for going beyond low Earth orbit while still being reusable. But it too is making an alternate sacrifice; mission complexity. Starship won't be able to go to the Moon with a full payload in a single launch - it will require 4-5 additional launches to refuel the first one on orbit so that one can continue on to the Moon. So for a single Starship to go to the Moon, that's 5-6 total launches, that's 33 engine ignitions per Heavy Booster and 9 per Starship - that's 210 - 252 engine ignitions just for low Earth orbit! And to go to Mars, it's 9-10+ launches to send one Starship! That is a lot of potential areas of failure. Add to that, orbital refueling at the scale required for Starship to successfully go to the Mun or beyond has never been attempted, moving 100 tons of fuel from one Starship to another (x5!) is a huge deal, you can't just start a pump - pumps on Earth require gravity to function, so the docked Starships will need to have a small force of acceleration to the docked craft during the length of fuel transfer. This all adds up to a ginormous amount of mission complexity compared to SLS - which can go to the Moon in a single launch and only requiring a fraction of the number of engine ignitions and no massive on orbit refueling. So when you look at from this perspective, SLS makes a lot more sense. I hope SpaceX pulls it all off, I really do - but that's a lot that can potentially go wrong. Being a private company, they can have it go wrong and try again without it being a political and public relations disaster, if NASA were to try that and something went wrong - well, we likely wouldn't be going back to the Moon.
Wouldn't many of these issues be solved just by making the rocket as big as yo mamma? I don't see why economies of scale wouldn't kick in at some point. Let's say they make a Starship that's 3 times the size of the current one but it keeps the same payload volume. That would certainly require less refueling, right? Wasn't the Sea Dragon Rocket all about economies of scale?
SpaceX has launched multiple payloads to the Moon and has launched a payload out to Mars. This was with reusable rockets. Some of SLS’s payloads have been moved over to Falcon Heavy as the SLS is too expensive and launching to infrequently to launch them too. Falcon Heavy will be launching some of the Gateway modules and will be launching Europa Clipper out to Jupiter. All for billions less than a single SLS launch. Starship resets the rocket equation by refilling in LEO. It’s design goal is over 100T to the Moon or Mars. Despite the mass penalty SpaceX has launches more mass into orbit than any other country for the last few years. The costs savings can’t be over stated.
@@bensemusx I know the cost saving are there - any private endeavor will always cost significantly less than any government project - regardless of architecture - nature of the beast. I was just trying to point out that reusable rockets come at a sacrifice that many are ignorant of, or choose to ignore and are still in their infancy - and will only get better with time. Those sacrifices ae payload mass or massive mission complexity, something NASA can't take on as again, if anything goes wrong at all, it's a massive political and public relations disaster setting everything back by several years and costing significantly more. The payloads you are referring to are low mass, the Danuri spacecraft weighs in at 1500lbs (678kg) and Elon's car weighed 2700lbs (1225kg). As I stated, F9 and FH are great for low mass launches - which is what most launches are. But if we want to send people, the required launch mass goes up exponentially, especially if we want to send them beyond LEO. And we have to have more than a single human rated heavy launch provider - what happens if Starship suffers a massive and costly setback and bankrupts SpaceX or Elon decides to sell SpaceX and the new owner dumps the Starship program? Too many unknown unknowns - and hopefully, we can launch SLS more often as that will be the only way to get the costs to go down, is launch more - see SpaceX. And to use it to build orbital infrastructure around Earth and the Moon - orbital refueling structure would greatly expand the use of reusable spacecraft and reduce mission complexity - which are the future - but we only have a toe in that water thus far.
@@bensemusx Adapting gateway and Europa Clipper to fit Falcon Heavy and pay for the VIB actually costed just a tiiiiny bit less than launching on sls would have. No "billion cheaper" bullshit.
I watched man land on the moon in school and the shuttle explode at university , then visited the Korolov space museum outside Moscow , so little progress since then , SpaceX crows about reusability but wasn't the shuttle reused ?
Nope! The shuttle was "refurbished". Especially after challenger, getting one ready for reflight was an EXTENSIVE process. The thermal tiles were constantly getting damaged and needing to be rechecked, they basically dismantled all the major components, engines included, in a hugely expensive process that took months to complete. Reuse was the intent, but cool as it was, it was not reusable. SpaceX rockets, and hopefully plenty of other companies and NASA itself down the line, are truly reusable. We're getting closer and closer to a 24 hour turnaround on a rocket from landing to reflight, which is absurdly effective compared to shuttle. I recommend you look into starship and falcon 9 some more.
When it comes to the orbital spacecraft, its simply the most efficient design for its mission. Apollo learned how to make many things work, so what better way for the daughter of Apollo, "Artemis" to accomplish a similar mission than to use the lessons her father had taught her? While tossing McDonnell's Mercury and Gemini playbook into the bin was a failing of the early Apollo program, it did eventually come back in fine fashion, so its better to not repeat its earlier mistake.
I would like to add a few notes: 1). launch costs satellites and cargo have gone down, But not a massive amount. There's more competition which is helping a lot. 2). A human rated launch vehicle requires more testing and validation than an uncrewed launch vehicle. This adds both time and development costs. 3). The amount of energy needed to launch a crewed vehicle into orbit is higher than satellites because a crewed vehicle weighs more than modern satellites or probes. So, the cost is higher. 4). The amount of energy to launch a crewed vehicle to and from the moon is many orders of magnitude greater than going to LEO. So, launch costs and development costs would be higher still. 5). AS of today, there is no private sector equal, in terms of capabilities, to SLS. Yes, there are other vehicles "in-development" but there is nothing operational to compare the cost or development time of SLS against. To be clear: I do agree that the U.S. government has "F" this whole thing up. But wanted to point out these important differences between SLS vs "current" private sector vehicle capabilities. The private sector will take over SLS "eventually" but it won't be soon.
And people keep talking about how SpaceX is *soon* going to send people to Mars and have crewed moon missions, but if you know Elon, you know that he NEVER meets his own deadlines. He is saying he's going to try an orbital Starship flight this year, and I'd bet a lot of money that it won't happen this year. What SpaceX is doing is certainly exciting, but it will take many years for anything useful to come out of it. Elon is more of a PR object for SpaceX, and he constantly overpromises to keep people interested, but the reality is that Starship has many many years of development left before it's allowed to carry people and even cargo. Starship will be better in the future, but at least SLS is the rocket that actually works TODAY.
@@zualapips1638 I agree. Plus instead of overseeing starship. He tried to buy Twitter and has wasted this entire year on nonsense. Spacex needs a full time dedicated CEO not a part time CEO. Dear moon was supposed to take place next summer. It won't. And there's no way lunar starship will be ready for Artemis 3 in 2025. So no manned landing. Very sad.
Elon always gives absurd deadlines, it's part of his philosophy. He has proven that it works as well, he may not reach his own deadlines, but he beats everyone else's multiple times over.
In 2004, when the decision was made to retire the space shuttle and begin work on a successor, the argument could legitimately be made that the fastest, most economical, path back to space was a shuttle derived booster utilizing many of the already-in-production components of the shuttle stack. Newer, better, technology, could be developed for subsequent generations of space technology. But almost two decades and tens of billions of dollars, later, both of these rationale have been shot. The SLS now serves only to burden our space program with unsustainable costs, and bind it to backwards technology produced by corrupt and inefficient legacy contractors...
@@Nom_D_Guerre you're missing the point. I'm not making the argument that NASA needs less money. But even if it had MORE money, it would still be criminal for them to be squandering it on the pointless bullshit they're squandering it on. That's OUR future they're squandering. That's OUR access to the entire universe, it's more than just money. Doesn't it make you mad? It makes me furious...
@@eliharman I'm really not seeing a squandering, I'm seeing a project that is picking up from where it left off 50 years ago that should never have been abandoned. It is also a project of politics and involving tens of thousands of people's labor, well paid and good jobs. That to me isn't wasteful. I don't care if SpaceX can do it cheaper, they also treat their employees like dirt, and it's all for profit. Sure, "better" technology could have been developed to get us to the moon, but this is getting us to the moon, and back to the path of having a moonbase, and a stepping stone to a Mars colony. Money is inconsequential.
@@Nom_D_Guerre money is not inconsequential. It's the tool we use to keep track of how much everything costs. The costlier you do things, the fewer things you can do, and the slower you have to do them. That's hardly inconsequential. SLS throws away $600 million worth of engines on every core stage with every flight. Super heavy has only $40 million worth of engines on it altogether. That means, even if you were using it in a fully expendable configuration, for the same money, you could do at LEAST 10 starship/super heavy launches for every one launch of SLS, and therefore, in principle, accomplish at least 10x more. I can't imagine what kind of miseducation has resulted in your blasé attitude about waste and inefficiency. But you couldn't be more wrong...
@@eliharman And yet NASA is bringing us to the moon again, manned missions, moonbases ahead. Where's Starship? All smoke and mirrors at this point. Again, point that waste and inefficiency finger at the military, which seems to get as much money printed for it as it needs +30%.
Well, the hard part was building up the infrastructure, after so much had been torn down. Future Artemis missions however will use brand new SLS's built from scratch. The newer-built engines will be of the same design, but not built to be refurbished and re-used, so their cost per-engine will be reduced drastically. Another reason why the SRB's won't be re-used, because the Block-II variant will be more powerful, more efficient, and even less costly.
One of my earliest memories is watching the Apollo 11 crew step onto the moon. I was 2 years old, and the image of my family sitting around the dinner table, and watching that event on our black and white TV, is stuck in my head forever.
I was 21 when I watched the Landing with my in-laws. Great Moment! I miss the crackle of the Saturn V engines though. It made the TV speaker rumble and rattled your teeth. And back then, the Speakers were very weak. Looking forward to the Monday Launch and want to hear how the engines sound in Surround Sound!
Reel engineering: with the progress happening in the commercial space industry... also RE: shows the most dangerous and badly design rocket on the market right now
I was glued to the TV during the Moon landing. About 16 years ago, my 6 year old daughter and I met Buzz Alden. He took the time to tell my daughter about his trip to the Moon. I was absolutely awestruck . I still am.
Completely agree with your take. I made a similar argument yesterday while discussing SLS/Artemis with a coworker. I'm obviously extremely excited to see the return of super heavy launch vehicles and moon missions, but it is very disappointing as full expendability seems like such a step backwards technologically.
To be fair, there isn’t really any alternative to SLS ready for the task right now. But it’s really frustrating that NASA is so dependent on being inefficient to spread money&jobs in order to gain support for their projects
@@fork9001 That's a bad argument. The government is the reason NASA can't work efficiently, if they removed that barrier then of course people would like it.
NASA is still stuck in the dark ages when it comes to rockets due the politicians wanting their slice of the pie in the form of jobs which help their chances of re-election, but it's truly a huge waste of taxpayers money. The only forward thinking space companies are SpaceX and other private companies - some of them are at least trying for full or partial reusability, SpaceX being the current leader with Starship and full reusability.
I feel like it’s just reusability isn’t NASA’s top priority, they get a huge budget from the government. While SpaceX needs to keep costs low (reusability)to exist because it’s a private company.
I feel like everyone is talking shit about SLS to be cool and safe in their predictions. If it fails they can say I told you so, if it works they can say they were pleasantly surprised.
SLS is a piece of sh*t. It is outdated. It is unacceptably expensive and unsustainable. It will bankrupt any future space programs that will rely it on transportation.
Answering it poorly, with an embedded bias toward "reuse can meet all design requirements". Large chunk, man-rated payloads sometimes means launchers that throw pieces away.
@@DEAD752 You would expect reusabiliy since thats litterally the industry standard now. I think they just made the SLS purely cus it was cheap. The real goal is the moon base or whatever tf they tryna do.
@@honkhonk8009 reusability is fine when it comes to placing people and cargo into low earth orbit. The Space Shuttle was reusable. But reusability doesn't work when it comes to sending crewed spacecraft to the moon.
I still believe that the Saturn V is still the most powerful rocket ever built. The fact it was designed and built without CAD is amazing to me. When I read about the SLS, it just doesn't have the same vibe as the Saturn V does. I understand we as a species we went to the moon already and accomplished such amazing scientific research, but the SLS doesn't feel the same.
Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built, followed by the Soviet N1 moon rocket, followed by the SLS, and then you get to Saturn V. You have to add modifiers to the statement to arrive at Saturn V. Like, Saturn V is the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit.
@@espenha Starship has never launched anything anywhere except the flopover test. Saturn is the most powerful rocket ever launched from earth. The others, even Artemis have yet to launch so they do not count until they are successful. Already, Artemis had to scrub today's launch because of an engine related cooling problem.
I am in awe of this thing as you said...but I am also fearful. I REALLY want this test to go well, but with all the mistakes and errors found during the wet-dress rehearsals, I fear they will encounter new problems during the actual launch I am not a rocket engineer by any means, but seeing NASA scraping parts together and flying them does 'hurt' a little bit. Fingers crossed for a successful launch, journey AND splashdown of this beast
This is normal for any launch, lol. You can't even begin to imagine how complicated this is, there's no way you WON'T have any issues pop up...the trick is managing them so that you can still continue with the mission
All those billions of dollars to see a rocket fly two minutes before exploding it should be funded by a private sector just think how that money could be appropriated to fund retired elders with better social security benefits or just feed people around the world
@@jeffcarpenter396 What? The rocket is literally going to the moon to fly around it multiple times to provide scientific testing and measure things like radiation, as well as confirm landing points for the moon base. Not to mention the fact that it is testing the manned module WITHOUT humans first to make sure it will be safe, so you know....the astronauts have the best chance of not dying for when they ACTUALLY fly up to the moon in two years.
@@jeffcarpenter396 Also, people are already helping the needy....a country can actually do multiple things at once...shocking, I know. The US literally gives the most charity out of all nations, as Christians give the most out of any group in the world to help others.
I watched the Saturn moon shots on TV. I watched some shuttle launches. They were great. However, technology and design should be allowed to develop. Could you imagine if the planes of WW2 were forced to look like the planes of WW1?? Well, Artemis looks TOO MUCH like the bastard child of Saturn and Shuttle. I knew it borrowed concepts, but I was surprised to learn it borrowed actual parts. That's insane.
SLS is another terrible idea NASA sold to America/Congress/taxpayers. NASA took insanely fragile, finicky, expensive components (SRBs, Hydrogen tanks/engines, GSE) of the most unaffordable, dangerous & unreliable space vehicle in history that had failed miserably to carry out NASA’s ‘cheap, safe & reliable’ shuttle promises, stacked them together differently & promised Congress/taxpayers ‘now things are going to be cheap & easy’. Liars scamming gullible/trusting suckers… bureaucrats laughing their asses off slurping 3 martini DC lunches, fattening TSPs & waiting to retire before it hits the wall. Relying on spin so taxpayers/enthusiasts blame contractors for decisions/designs/constraints NASA forced on those contractors. NASA sold this BS to us, NASA should be held responsible. #defundNasa
Physics hasn't changed in 50 years, the Saturn V design was and is a solid one, providing more lift capacity than anything available today in its envisioned D configuration. Luckily, I was around for the Saturn V launches, and lived near the cape at the time. A space shuttle launch is amazing, but a Saturn V launch is INCREDIBLE. It may well be that I'll be in the area when the SLS finally launches, I hope so.
@@johnrehwinkel7241 Physics has not changed. But, requirements do. The single use boosters of the Saturn V are great, but that is very wasteful. The new rocket should be reusable.
I'm 59 years old and I remember the Apollo Program and the moon landings. Astronauts were my childhood heroes. I am happy and thrilled for the opportunity God has given me to live this far and see this scientific odyssey resumed. Awesome video. Amazing job. Greetings from Brazil.
Yes i'm sure magic man gave you that life to 59 but decided at the same time to give some children leukemia and never reach the age of 16. priorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The rocket feels almost like a homage to the space shuttle and saturn V programs. NASA is closing the chapter with a show and passing the torch in the progress.
@@henkdeklapsteen6787 If they don't, we need to make one hell of a public show against the damn thing. We're pissing away billions on a program that never should have existed to begin with. Also: Fuck paying homage. This program is a disaster. With an estimated per-launch cost of $4.1 billion, a launch tower that somehow doesn't work with I guess now taller? main stack and will cost another billion dollars to rebuild, and the fact that Orion meets up with a SpaceX Starship in orbit around the moon that then takes astronauts down to the surface, and you have a program that was designed by lobbyists.
exactly what @@ThePretendgineer said. People should be jailed for this unmitigated display of corruption and pork-barreled politics. Any video on the topic should be covering the criminal levels of waste done in the name of getting congressmen and women re-elected, all at the expense of actual progress.
It's also a tribute to the prices of the Shuttle program. 4.1 billion dollars for a launch and that's not even accounting for R&D, just the cost of operations and construction of the rocket.
I think the main thing is rocket development and new technologies is going much faster than it ever had. When this was conceived, there was no thought into landing boosters and other things that are happening now. This design was state of the art at the time which included what was already available.
Saying it's outdated by comparing it with a technology that doesn't work properly yet, doesn't make it for me. I think NASA engineers would have made reusable parts if they think it would have been worth the cost of a more complex design (testing, safety, longer timeline, etc..). Using components that have been used before is great because you know what their issues are. It's safer. So far they only planned to use it 5 times. It is not obvious to me that it would have been cheaper to make it a reusable rocket. Maybe the next one will be fully reusable and used many times, it's not for us to decide.
I think the problem is the politics. NASA was basically forced to go at it alone and not team up with other private companies. Private companies will always make things cheaper because they only exist to make money. Government programs will make things as costly as possible because they exist to please congress and each Congressman's constituents, which means giving random people jobs even if they're not that good.
Uh, Artemis is teaming up with SpaceX for this project, where the SLS plans to meet up with a SpaceX Starship already in lunar orbit, which will then take the crew to the lunar surface and back
It sounds to me that Obama misjudged the cutoff: better to say the Constellation would be the last of its kind before NASA's funding and attention shifted to projects no one else could do. Keep the existing jobs, keep the expensive-by-design project in motion, and use the duration of the project to plan a full transition. That means figuring out what institutional knowledge they will need and how to maintain it, as well as giving professionals whose skills NASA no longer needs a heads up to look elsewhere for jobs.
@@JohnSmith-wx9wj Yup, that's why the U.S. House is the most important facet of our government, "no funding no nothing" for any GD thing from solar energy subsidies to a new weapons system, and even for cute little "low priority" things like space exploration. So, dear space fans, you know what to do in Nov. But, yeah, I know, you can't fix stupid! ;D LOL
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Artemis (/ˈɑːrtɪmɪs/; Greek: Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity.[1][2] She was heavily identified with Selene, the Moon, and Hecate, another moon goddess, and was thus regarded as one of the most prominent lunar deities in mythology, alongside the aforementioned two.[3] She would often roam the forests of Greece, attended by her large entourage, mostly made up by nymphs, some mortals and hunters. The countryside goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.
Exactly, I feel like a lot of people miss this point. There are no currently available reusable rockets with the payload capability of SLS. Only two are in development and both are still a long way from being ready.
Starship will make it to orbit this year... And they also have an expendable version that will be able to lift 4X what SLS can do... Also for about 1/10 the cost...
The lesson engineers and companies learned in the 70/80s is that when a project is finished many people lose their jobs. That is why you see projects taking forever to finish. Another thing is the accounting system. Sometimes government pays "cost" + (% in profit). So...no reason to make anything cheaper, faster and better. The longer and more expensive, companies make more money. Let's delay as much as possible. This is called "Job Security". I saw many comparations in how much the US waste in taxpayer money comparing to other countries and even other projects in the private sector. It is all about milking public money and keeping the cow alive as much as possible. Just see how long it takes for the Chinese to finish a project and how long it takes in the US. There is a video on RUclips showing the Chinese replacing a bridge in 3 days, meanwhile a similar bridge in the US takes 3 years. More wasted time, more money.
21st Century NASA going to the moon, is like NETFLIX announcing they bought the rights to your favorite entertainment franchise. You are like "Oh God, please cancel this now!". Get ready for a season of a high budget spectacle everyone will hate, full of waman, POC, rainbow flags, but on the moon instead on your flat screen😆.
I was lucky enough as a 6th grader to witness the final launch of the space shuttle program in 2011. I remember seeing it and hoping to grow up and watch people go back to the moon!
I watched the Moon landings live on television. It was magic. Huge headlines in the newspapers. People all over the world glued to their television sets. It wasn't an American achievement- it was a human achievement.
It wasn't an American achievement, huh? So who did it then? What notable contributions did the Chinese or Indians or Soviets, or various South Americans contribute to the Apollo Program? I have no problem saying that it was something that was done for all of mankind, and I don't even have a problem saying that it was a human achievement. But to say that it was *not* an American achievement boggles the mind - if we didn't do it, who did?
@@mylesleggette7520 Yes, tell that to the 450,000 American citizens who worked on the Apollo project in dozens of contracted American companies and industries, all in the USA. Back then we did not have many international companies. All parts and systems for Apollo were made in domestic industries, we were in competition with the soviets and trusted no other country to build things for our moon project. So, as far as the machines that went to the moon it was exclusively an American achievement. In so far as a "human achievement" yes humans in America made the Apollo project, and not the chimps! LOL. The Luner landers were designed and built in a small aircraft company in New York, for example. It was called Grumman and had been famous for making great aircraft during WWII. Naval fighters like the Wildcat and Hellcat. Like Grumman, many other American companies had the tooling and experience to build flying machines, since they had done so during the war two decades earlier. They switched to building space machines in the 60's. They were involved in not only the Apollo project, but the precursors of Mercury and Gemini before it. Today, who knows how many other companies from around the world are involved in the Artemis project. Don't really care as long as it works as well as Apollo did, a uniquely American technical achievement!!
0:49 because NASA is not aiming for several missions that need to fall into a supply/demand formula, like private missions need to. Not needing to spend extra time in efficiency allows it to focus on efficacy alone.
This thing had better work. It better be an absolutely perfect mission. In fact, it better be like Webb and have extra fuel left over because the launch goes so well. After all the time and money spent on it, it better be _flawless._
I don't know if I want it to work or not. At this point I have so much negative feelings about the rocket that I'd be quite happy to see it blow into bits
The Space Shuttle SLS on its own could deliver a total of 135 tons into LEO, but because the orbiter had to be brought back every time, it's capacity was limited to only 24 tons of payload. Almost as much as Saturn, but in a much smaller rocket. The Space shuttle was a great machine, but it wasted most of the capability and budget of the platform simply to bring itself back than what this could really do. The ISS could have been completed in 6-7 launches.
Well, I lived it. When the Apollo 8 circled around the moon, I wrote an essay on that in school. I remember very well that people landed on the moon. My parents thought it was such a historical event that I was allowed to stay up. I was playing with my toy cars when the Apollo 13 crew landed - and I asked my parents why they didn't go into "the caravan" (yes, children speak the truth). But my attention span was short. The later Apollo missions didn't catch my attention anymore. I'd seen those so many times before. It was time for something else. Nothing much caught my attention until the space shuttle - a plane going into space. Now that was some real space opera stuff! Until it became clear it actually was just a truck - one without a proper destination until the ISS. Actually, I can't say I get very enthusiastic when I see this thing. Is that all they could come up with after 50 years have gone by? That's not what Werner von Braun promised 70 odd years ago.
I think your parents were completely right, it was a historic moment. Taking in consideration technology level of that time it is truly marvel that Apollo missions actually happened. They were several times just so close to fail. And take in mind that USSR actually failed not even land on moon but build a moon rocket that didnt explode on launch pad. So it’s not like there is no progress since then. It more about Apollo went ahed of its time.
Wernher von Braun wanted Saturns to be used for the rest of time. pretty good idea, imagine how much that great vehicle could have evolved over 50 years. Even bigger Saturn Vs for deep space, and who knows how many little things for orbital objectives.
The fact the question being asked acks like any of the private opinion have even gotten close to what the SLS has alresdy achieve makes it clear that this question is being asked with a bias
I'm okay with how Artemis came about. There's a lot of institutional knowledge that would have been lost if all those jobs had been lost, and it would have had severe long-term effects on the US's space aspirations and its ability to carry out future missions.
A similar thought, that might not be quite as universal but I'll risk it: We really don't need our expertise in these matters held hostage by the private sector, it seems to me. Could Elon Musk run a cheaper air traffic control system? Sure, probably -- until the first instant that he didn't have to, and then he could charge us however much he wants to. We give way too much monopoly power to private sector organizations even when the stakes are relatively low; we don't need to replicate that thinking for something as crucial the future civilization as the space program.
I think the critic of the video is mostly directed towards the outdated technology used. I am also ok with Artemis but I also have doubt about the technology used, so I would agree with the point the videomaker is making.
which is why there needs to be constant movement. Once space shuttle was winding down, NASA should've started a new program to replace it. NASA should've started development of a next gen rocket by the 90s and early 2000s.But they didn't. The military has the same problem. after the cold war ended and defense budgets were cut. the military industrial base lost a lot of jobs and knowledge. And now its costing a lot to regain it back.
@@CinemaDemocratica the difference between a Nasa launch vehicle and a private launch vehicle is the private one is built and operated by a private company while the Nasa one is just built by private companies but operated by Nasa. Nasa has never built their own hardware, not even during Apollo. All Apollo components had been built by contractors, and at the Shuttle program it was the same. This first SLS launch will cost $ 4 billion, the most expensive rocket launch in history despite using existing Shuttle hardware to "save" money. Only the Orion capsule is completely new
Thrust obviously. It has to propel a mission around the Moon from Earth, which means achieving Escape Velocity and releasing a crewed ship that can go around the Moon and return again. It's only outdated if you have an alternative, and we don't.
Second hand parts, years behind schedule, vastly over budget. Going back to the moon 54 years after we first did it… This is why I have never gotten excited by Artemis. It’s the quintessential “been there, done that” story. No matter how hard NASA spins it, their logic for this program comes up short.
Have you at least gave a peek at what the program is supposed to include? You won't even mention the plans other than the one that fits your opinion? I mean idk about how much of the planned they will achieve, but cmon, make some effort.
I mean it's not outdated when you consider the future objectives with the SLS. It's only "outdated" because the Saturn V is old. We should have never abandoned the Apollo program for the space shuttle; and SpaceX is demonstrating that it's not actually cheaper to get payloads into the space by reusing rockets (as the Space Shuttle already demonstrated). If your goal is building space stations, moon bases and eventually (actually) vising Mars, the Saturn V/SLS is the proper direction. Not the SpaceX starship.
I look forward to seeing the rocket launch. It really is frustrating how primitive and expensive the government system is for massive projects. I don't have an answer other than avoid monopolies, encourage competition and award success but discourage companies (like the ones involved in SLS) from pretending they are the only option, as they abuse their absolute power every time.
All launch vehicles in use today are primitive by your standard. We have been stuck using chemical rockets to leave Earth's gravity. There really isn't any alternative in development either.
I have experienced Sputnik and the whole saga... it was far far beyond breathtaking... I think that the main reason for going back to huge rockets was that the shuttle was a total failure in its hyped bid to make spaceflight more affordable as well as its flawed design that cost lives of its crews ... Everyone forgets the HUGE cost and percent of the annual budgets that Apollo represented... Continuing the Apollo program was just not viable back then... The present design was made necessary because no one still alive remembers how to make the Saturn 5 main stage engines... they had to be handcrafted tweaked far beyond the existing blueprints and no one remembers how to do that...
And that's bad engineering documentation. Good engineering documentation allows you to reconstruct things. Legacy engineers die, and steal their secrets from us.
Bullshit on "no one knowing how to make F1 engines". NASA already designed the F1B engines over a decade ago, using modern technology and techniques to reduce cost and complexity. In fact, NASA wanted to use a Saturn V style design for SLS but was forced by Congress to choose a shuttle derived launch vehicle (SDLV, or sometimes SDHLV, with H for "heavy"). See Eric Gunnerson's video on the subject. And learn to frickin' google shit instead of repeating popular myths, yo.
@@SecretRaginMan What I said is what experienced rocket engineers said a few years ago!!! Just reproducing the old design with new computer tools does not fix the issue... only building and testing the engines then redoing the design as the origional engineers did in the 1960s would work... thankfully using the solid propellant boosters has made doing this unnecessary...
It's a basic design made of existing parts. The 4 RS-25s don't develop enough thrust to get TTW above 1 and take off. The strap ons are effectively cancelling out enough of the weight to allow liftoff rather than adding deltaV. It's exactly the kind of vessel you would make in Kerbal Space Program if you were very short of cash and had to do some orbital missions cheaply.
As someone who is old enough to have watched the Apollo missions on live TV, it has always seemed a tragedy to me that space exploration has been limited to low Earth orbit in the half-century since then. Yes, I know that we have sent probes and robots out further but it's just not the same as sending people for a lot of reasons. Right now SLS is the only thing available to get manned exploration back on track. Is the program inefficient? Funny, that was never a question at the front of people's minds during the all the programs in the 60s that led up to the moon landings. Oh, and about the program existing to just create jobs... the TV I watched the Apollo missions from was in a newly built suburban development (fun fact: that house was on land that used to be the farm I grew up on until then.) One of many Sothern Calif. suburbs that resulted from the boom in the aerospace industry in the 60s.
People tend to whine about... but what about poverty... that money could be better spent on poor people. World wide billions and billions have been spent on poverty, etc for decades and many more billions will continue to be spent. Poverty still exists but that is more down to corruption and outright theft of aid money by those governments and authorities in those nations receiving it. Poverty is also an issue because the ultra wealthy and corporations continue to screw over society, do not pay a fair share of taxes and have no intention of bringing the disenfranchised up to a better standard of living. And let's not forget about military spending. I was once accosted by a tin shaker who gave me the guilt trip speech. I asked him if the country he was collecting for had a standing army. When I had to explain to the genius what a standing army was and that country did indeed have a large military expenditure I added, "Then they don't need my money." Politics and apathy have held back space exploration and progress, not that I am advocating private enterprise as they aren't in it for the science, just money.
People didn't care about inefficiency back then because they were getting a steady stream of results. Sputnik launched in 1957, and by 1968 Apollo 8 was already orbiting the Moon. In the same 11 years, SLS is finally having its very first launch. That sounds bad enough even before you count in that SLS was re-using some of the most advanced rocket technology ever made, while the Sputnik-to-Apollo era was starting from scratch because space exploration was not a thing before then. We should all hope the SLS rockets will find nothing but success on their missions, but people have every right to be disappointed in the program.
@@andrewstamford1988 Don't be fooled. That crowd does not care for poor people. If they did, they'd be screeching about the military industrial complex & corporate welfare as well. Anti-Science Troglodytes will never support space exploration for any reason.
I'd like to point out that when you make a solid rocket motor longer, you increase its power, not its burn time. burn time is a function of the diameter and geometry of the fuel. thrust is determined by length because it increases the internal surface area of the exposed propellant. yes, it has 25% more fuel, but due to its geometry, it gives more power than duration. In the case of SLS, the motors are lit from the top, and the fire burns down through a central hole. instead of being round, it's star shape I believe, because it has more surface area to burn. if you lit it from the bottom, you would only have the area of a 12' ish circle. by lighting it down the center, you can get infinitely more surface area (if you had a never-ending tube)
Fun fact, the SLS boosters have a geometry where they actually "throttle down" and start producing less power as they burn (I'm assuming they either change internal geometry or fuel composition) but this is so that they don't keep pushing harder and harder as they get lighter, leading to extremely excessive maximum aerodynamic loads. they are way more complicated than an end-burning motor like in fireworks
also, the reason they, along with so, so much else that is built in this country, are 12 feet wide, is because that is the largest thing you can move on the highways without needing special routing to clear bridges and such. the central core of SLS needs to be moved down the Mississippi river by barge, and around the tip of Florida because it just won't fit on our infrastructure.
Edit,
if you want to see what an SRB can look like inside, google "solid rocket propellant grain geometry" and you will see plenty of diagrams alongside thrust profile graphs
Can you explain how length increases the internal surface area but not diameter? What determines if propellant is exposed or not?
Edit: thx for the answers that helped a bunch. So I guess diameter DOES increase the fuel contact surface area, but only marginally compared to length and the geometry of the bore.
u have it around the wrong way
@@charleyssss an srb isn't a solid cylinder of fuel, it has a hole in the middle, and inside of the hole is where the combustion occurs. This means that adding length also makes the hole longer, so there is more combustion, but the burn time is the same
@@charleyssss There is a hole in the center of a solid rocket motor. When you increase the length, the hole is longer, therefore more surface area. When you increase the diameter there is more fuel to burn for the same amount of surface area of the center hole.
@@charleyssss In very simplified terms, the fuel in the SRBs consists of stacks of solid fuel shaped like toilet rolls. The tubular shape helps increase the effective surface area that is being burn at a given time, versus trying to burn a solid cylinder from the bottom. While the latter would effectively increase burn time, it also reduces the output thrust at a given moment (or impulse). The former design on the other hand helps to increase thrust as more fuel is burnt at a given time.
Now back to the original question. A longer tube would effectively mean more surface area to burn, hence the increase in thrust. Burn time will not increase as the additional fuel is being burnt at the same rate parallel to the rest of the fuel.
I remember being really excited about the Orion Program and the SLS during the Orion test flight in 2012 and completely forgot all about it for the next 10 years. A couple months ago I was like “wait they STILL haven’t launched yet???”
To put it into perspective, it's taken longer since the first test luanch of Orion, to the first flight of the SLS, than it took for JFK's moon speech, to when we first landed on the moon. Think about that.
@@TheArrowedKnee true but Apollo had unlimited budget
@@TheArrowedKnee Ok, I've thought about it. Do you have a sensible and relevant point?
@@T.E.S.S. if you really need the point spelt out it's probably not worth the effort!
@@TheStuntman81 No, the Saturn V (50 Billion) cost double the amount the SLS project cost (23 Billion). (Inflation adjusted)
But with the Saturn V, NASA still had to lay the groundwork.
When the project started, NASA had just sent the first person to space. There was no 60-year history of spaceflights to look back on.
For SLS they have the experience of regularly flying people and objects to space for over 40 years.
So how come that you have 40 years of groundwork to build on, extreme advances in computing power, material science, chemistry, physics, ...
And you produce a worse product than the one built 50 years ago?
The reason the SRBs are not being recovered, is because this does not save much cost for SRBs, where the main cost is putting the fuel in in the correct manner.
To recover them, you would need to clean the casing etc., which is basically just a steel tube where the only fancy part is the nozzle. If I recall correctly, recovering the SRBs was approximately as costly as making new ones for Shuttle, though I'm not sure on the exact numbers.
Also, the SRB's being used for the first missions are built from previous hardware. There is no need to keep those, as the Block-II SLS will use a brand new upgraded design. "why not just use those now?"... because there are still leftover part they are obligated to use first.
SLS exists because there is no other vehicle flying today that can do what it does. Once that changes, we can talk about whether SLS should exist.
Starship cannot get to orbit, let alone carry crew to the moon and back in a single launch.
It makes me quite sad to see the shuttle engines being throw away. Yes, for a fantastic purpose, but sad to see them going away.
At the end of the day, we have better re-usables than space shuttle ever was, so those engines are unfortunately a bit obsolescent now.
@@the_senate8050 they are most definitely not obsolescent, they still are some of the most efficient engines in the world going to waste in the SLS lauches
The shuttle main engines were an engineering failure for an reusable vehicle. They are however perfect for a one and done mission.
All engines that still use RP1 (refined kerosen) or solid rocket fuel will never be sustainable way to get into space.
Theyre obsolete and out dated
I was 10 years old when Armstrong walked on the moon. The real difference, compared to learning about it later, is that when it is live you do not know how it will turn out. Would the ascent stage of the Lunar Module engine fire properly? Would they be stuck on the moon and die there? It was not just an exciting time, but also very tense. During Apollo 13, we did not know if the astronauts would survive. But if you missed it, hopefully you will watch us go to Mars.
Good comments. I was 14 years old, I had the same questions as you.
Yeah I don't believe everything just because it was on TV.
Repent to Jesus Christ “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Romans 12:21 NIV
h
@@neoone9820 Flat earther? Lol. Yeah I don't believe everything from numbnuts like you either. D U M B A S S!
@@repentandbelieveinJesusChrist3 So you are one of those blood sacrifice cultists?
The fact the SLS is ready to go and it’s *checks notes* one and only competitor is not ready to go definitionally demonstrates SLS is not out of date. SLS might not be the future, but is absolutely the present.
whats the competitor?
I think you meant to say StarDigger
The R-25 engines alone are more advanced, efficient and cleaner than anything spaceX has been able to make propulsion wise
The competition will catch up unlike NASA the private companies are profit driven which means it won't take that long for someone to eventually make something better than the outdated SLS for a cheaper price
50 years later space is still difficult, slow and simple is still the way to go.
Yes, the technology is outdated. But guess what? It's the only rocket capable of going to the moon and mars currently.
how can it be outdated when there is nothing that works better?
@@divedevil985SpaceX?
@@Nighthawk268falcon rockets are LEO only and Starship is still yet to be operational
@@thomashayhurst6547 Fair point.
@@thomashayhurst6547 Starship is literally operational. They just suceeded in doing far more then Artemis ever has, and they build them for about 0.05% of the cost of a single SLS launch. It is legendary levels of comedic, how outdated and awful SLS is compared to the now fully proven Starship program, which is about to start assembling a Mars colony at the end of the Decade (Next Trans-Martian Injection windows are 2026 and late 2028)
"Could the SLS money have been better spent elsewhere? Absolutely."
"Would NASA have been given that money if it went elsewhere? Probably not.""
That second part is what people miss when they say "SLS money could have funded X commercial launches."
Yeah. Also little bit similar is the LOP-G station. "But wouldn't it be cheaper to just do direct route and just dropping the space station all together". Maybe for couple flights, but for longevity one needs something to anchor the program.
Permanent on lunar orbit space station.... is pretty permanent in nature. Plus the station has international partners. Which bulletproofs program against whims of political administrations. Administrations might unceremoniously end NASA only moon program. However if they now go to cancel Artemis.... They have to explain to Europe, Canada and Japan "yeah, right, we are scrapping the space station *you are already building your own modules for* ". awkward international diplomatic incident and would make USA lose face internationally.
Whole Artemis program is a master class in NASA managing "this country changes it's plans every 4 years or at longest every 8 years and well moon program takes decade to make happen".
No, NASA would not have gotten the same funds if SLS didn't exist. That's because they wouldn't need the estimated $6 FUCKING BILLION dollars per SLS launch just so the Orion can meet up with a FUCKING SPACEX STARSHIP that's already at the moon. Why in the cinnamon toast fuck do we need to send a crew capsule to meet up with a much nicer and reusable crew capsule (that's also cheaper).
@@aritakalo8011 a permanent lunar station might be a very high maintenance idea, if in a low orbit
Lunar orbital decay is a mad headache
If I recall right, this is the reason many people propose a station at L1 Lagrange as an alternative (though it comes with its own set of headaches)
The part that I miss is why we tolerate a political system that is so corrupt. And if trends continue, soon it won't be a question of how we tolerate it but how we survive it.
Exactly. Space X is a commercial partner of NASA and the only reason they have been able to make such rapid advancements is because of NASAs funding and scientific aid.
I worked at Rocketdyne when it was still part of Rockwell, and several years after it was bought by Boeing. Then it was sold to Pratt and Whitney, and then sold again to Aerojet. All that should really tell you something. It was the worst companies I've ever worked for, with the lowest average skill level among the engineers, the lowest rate of innovation, and the most incompetent management I've ever seen.
So how have they stayed in business so long? Lobbying, and a bunch of stupid stunts to please congress. I remember once, soon after someone in congress complained about the lack of innovation, they made me get up in front of a crowd to accept an award for some stupid invention I had never heard of until I read it off the plaque they gave me. I was completely blind sighted by this. And they gave out plaques to a lot of people that day. Then there was another time when they forced all employees to buy US savings bonds to appease some other member of congress.
Hey lol technically you worked at Aerojet Rocketdyne
@@TheMagicJIZZ I left when it was still Boeing. Guess I didn't make they clear. Sorry.
I totally believe what you say but at the same time, the H1 and the RS25 were good products or not?
We found out what Eeyore's been doing since leaving the 100 Acre Woods.
Yeah, SSME Blk II, what a joke, amiright?! 🙄
The bottom line and giving the board members a bonus, is more important!!!
it exists because its flying now when starship still hasn't. sometimes good enough tech is good enough. We'll get to use starship when its ready but it won't be soon.
When you made this comment, Starship had already flown. Now im here to tell you that its flown 4 times, and should have flight 10 done by the end of this year. Its launching at a rate that will have it at 100+ yearly launches in 2-3 years. You look like a fool. The starship program is a stunning world changing sucess!
@@truegrit1860No it's not. It has less payload capacity to LEO than a Falcon Heavy and it requires an indefinite amount of refueling flights to get beyond that (which completely negates the cost savings of reusability). It has no reason to exist. It's an Elon vanity project that his fanboys lap up uncritically just like all the rest of his bullshit. SpaceX found a niche innovating LEO access, but no one who knows anything about aerospace believes all of Elon's hype. Especially when he (and all of his cheerleaders on the Internet) seems to honestly believe he invented iterative design. lmao
Its weird - from the stories I've heard about Apollo, it was this major event world wide. By the time of Apollo 11, you had tv series, stuff in newspapers etc...but for Artemis, the first I head of it was news that Artemis 1 was being launched in the local news. And its not like I'm some space pillock - I watched launch and landing of STS-135 live, I've followed SpaceX developing their landing tech, watched the end of Cassini and the landing of Curiosity...how did this program fly under the radar so much? I heard more about the JWST before it launched than Artemis.
The other thing that shocks me is I remember the Orion program being cancelled, but, from you're saying, politics basically revived it, and we ended up with another lunar program...by accident??? (If this is correct, it's gotta be one of the most epic accidents ever...)
Yeah, you are right, at the time NASA was news almost every night on TV, not just Apollo but Mercury and Gemini programs before them too. I skipped school for each launch of the Mercury and Gemini program, and it became "an issue for me" at the time with my teachers. "Way way too much science" they said!! LOL. Is that the same today I wonder? LOL ;D
They did get a good amount of media coverage once they finally launched it in November 2022.
That's because they had only a single launch (back in 2014 on delta iv heavy). There was nothing that people would be interested in until we actually would launch stuff. It got coverage during the Artemis 1 launch, and i imagine it will get MUCH more coverage during the Artemis 2 launch next year.
guess you need to widen your news sources beyond spacex fanboy sources.
🤣🤣👍👍@@divedevil985
Loving the recent space related themes. Would love to see some infrastructure related in the future.
Practical Engineering is the best for that!
@@RealEngineering Yes love that channel too. Your videos do have a particular flavor to it though.
@@RealEngineering Yes, I would love to see more of that as well!
@@RealEngineering would love to see you make a video about what happened to apollo 13
@@RealEngineering I like that that you're supporting other creators! you both are great channels!
I'm surprised this video didn't mention the mobile launch tower fiasco. IIRC it was made by a ton of subcontractors that didn't really communicate with one another, cost a fortune, and won't fit the upcoming more powerful version of SLS so we won't even get much use of it.
Wow. Didn't know that. But I am not really surprised.
Tbh, I'm banking that this is the only version of SLS that's ever going to fly.
@@darelboyer4215 Is that temporary upper stage enough when persons are on board?
@@EinChris75 Hmm they are going to be launching Orion with the current configuration. I don't know if the humans and their supplies can add so much weight that the rocket won't be able to lift it, but it seems unlikely to me.
@@EinChris75 SLS Block 1 is expected to be used for Artemis 2 and 3, which are currently defined as a "crewed lunar flyby" and "crewed lunar rendezvous [with HLS] and landing". BUT, Block 1b is needed to transport the Lunar Gateway's I-HAB and ESPIRT modules on Artemis 4 and 5.
You can have a 100% reusable rocket and that's fine but the thing is this thing can launch payloads faster to the outer solar system. Therefore it's not outdated yet.
It’s like saying a WWII rifle is outdated. It’ll still do the job it was designed to do!
In high school, we went on a field trip to watch one of the shuttle's boosters being tested. (Sideways, strapped to the hill, probably the same hill as in this video). I don't remember the exact noise, but it was certainly an experience I'll never forget.
If you grew up in Utah, it’s the same hill.
@@brettkeeler8822 good Ole promontory. A straight up keystone of my childhood
Lucky. Best field trip my school ever went on was a… a… omg I literally can’t even remember them they were so dull.
@iabboc I remember that school field trip. I'll NEVER FORGOT that highway ride. We Saw a car in front of us throw a puppy in a garbage bag out the window.
I don't remember the exact noise, but it was certainly an experience I'll never forget.
Totally agree, watching the tests were simply awesome. I moved to Utah in the 90s, and seeing that dust cloud from a ways away was creepy and cool.
Here is an interesting comment on the history of SLS, explaining that it wasn't just politics that lead to SLS. It was posted as a comment to the piece "The SLS rocket is the worst thing to happen to NASA-but maybe also the best?" which was written by Eric Berger for Ars Technica. Here it goes:
Good article. I think Eric somewhat oversells the angle that Congress and the defense contractors imposed SLS/Orion on NASA. This was very much a two-way street, and although Boeing doesn't deserve any sympathy from anybody, at least one of the other defense contractors had the right idea.
It's really important to the history of Ares/SLS to note that the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) program came before any of that. Sean O'Keefe was NASA Administrator, and he called for a fly-off competition in which multiple providers would fly an LEO demonstration mission before selecting a single winner. This precluded the use of launch vehicles that didn't exist.
Lockheed Martin's CEV proposal was far more innovative than the Northrop/Boeing proposal. They called for a reusable lifting body reentry vehicle with a captive abort system that could be launched on Atlas V. This was their LEO solution. For exploration missions, a pressurized mission module and a long-duration cryogenic propulsion stage (ACES) would be launched on two Atlas V or Delta IV rockets before the crew launch, and the three modules would dock in LEO prior to departure.
Wonderful! That's exactly what we should have done! How did it go wrong? Well, Michael Griffin was appointed NASA Administrator, and he thought the fly-off competition was silly. He also didn't like either of proposals because they were different from what he proposed in a whitepaper he authored a year before his appointment. So he canceled the fly-off, declared Lockheed the winner, and issued a gigantic change request transforming their proposal into the Apollo On Steroids we know as Orion.
Michael Griffin was the originator of the "1.5-launch architecture" in which a super-heavy Shuttle-derived rocket (Ares V) launches the lunar lander and a medium Shuttle-derived rocket (Ares I) launches the crew vehicle. Griffin argued that ULA's rockets suffered from a lack of commercial demand which would make them more expensive than if NASA developed their own rockets -- if you can believe that. This became NASA's official position as part of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) he commissioned. And the ESAS report made it easy to cultivate the support of Richard Shelby, Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and others in Congress.
ULA was advocating for distributed launch of commercial vehicles and even using the verboten D-word through 2009, when they published this gem that is still proudly hosted on their website:
www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/exploration/affordable-exploration-architecture-2009.pdf
This was around the time that Richard Shelby flipped out and said he'd pull the funding if ULA or its parents kept talking about propellant depots. NASA sold Congress on the expensive approach, and when big bad industry suggested there's a better way, Congress told them to shut their filthy mouths. Not long after, SLS was enshrined as the spiritual successor to Ares V, and at that point Boeing really started to dig in their heels to protect their cash cow from potential competition.
We could have had Lockheed's modular CEV, and we could have had a depot-based distributed launch architecture from ULA. The "dinosaur" industrial base was not opposed to delivering those solutions. There was a period in time when the big defense contractors were reading the tea leaves, and they were basically told to get their eyes checked and fall in line. So they did.
Still doesn't excuse Boeing's poor performance. Nothing does.
The original Lockheed Lifting body proposal began life as a high Mach number escape/survival pod for aircraft use. It would have reentered aerodynamically, and had a lot more control, then landed by parachute.
Or they could have used falcon heavy to launch ULA or NASA designed systems which could have cost 1/100 or even 1/1000 of ANY of this bullshit. But Elon musk disagreed with people on Twitter so we can't have that either can we.
Need TL:DR.
@@SirZeck Tl;dr: Congress bad
@@blink182bfsftw No, that is exactly not what the comment argues. Former NASA
administrator Michael Griffin pushed SLS. He was not a member of Congress. Also, ULA, an "Old Space" company, was against SLS.
I’m so excited that Artemis has fully come to fruition (potentially speaking) as I’m completing my aerospace degree. The fact I could some day work on projects that are for direct purposes on the lunar surface is so exciting. I hope the next president doesn’t cancel Artemis because it is doing critical work that no private industry would do: setting up infrastructure to invite more companies to do business. That is what the public sector should be for. This is space being done right.
Artemis is a money sinkhole and an embarrassment of technology and an example of public grift and incompetence.
I got a tickle in my heart when I learned one of the crewmembers on Artemis II, Christina Koch, is a former graduate of SpaceCamp :P
it just did an exemplary job of safely delivering Orion into orbit
Not just into orbit, but on an extended (and previously untested) "distant retrograde" Lunar orbit. Thus far, the Orion herself has exceeded even the most optimistic projections, not only on Artemis 1, but on the previous EFT-1 as well. I remember waking up before dawn (both days) to watch that launch on the Delta-4 Heavy
@@k1productions87spoke too soon
@@michelmilaneh8963 That's what testing is for. The Space Shuttle orbiter had tiles just falling off during its flight test, making years of delays,... and then once it flew with people on board (with no abort options by the way), it was ALSO missing tiles when it reached orbit.
So yeah, Orion still performed better
There are several legitimate staring points for Artemis. The concept for a heavy lift vehicle based on Shuttle components dates back before the first Shuttle flight, the concept was being evolved in the 1980s and looked pretty similar to the various legacy programs, without any hardware being flown. In the 1980s such a vehicle would have made perfect sense. By the end of the 1990s software was developed to allow for fly back boosters to be a possibility. By 2000s the shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle concept was essentially redundant, old tech.
It's always amusing when people complain about using "old space shuttle tech". The RS-25 SSME is essentially the best rocket engine that can and ever will be developed, approaching the theoretical limit for chemical rocket engine efficiency with a specific impulse of ~450s. What is the specific impulse of a new "state of the art engine", say Space X Raptor? ~350s. It doesn't make sense to NOT use space shuttle tech. Do you complain about "old tech" when you buy a new car that still uses wheels? No, because it still makes perfect sense to use wheels.
@@Kanglar okay. But have you considered why no one uses hydrogen engines anymore? Leaks, boiling point, required insulation, etc. The engine has a great ISP, but it causes the rest of the rocket to necessarily be far heavier.
@@Chroniclerope Even the engines are heavier. Raptor 2 engines have 1.9 times the thrust to weight ratio of the RS-25.
@@Kanglar Just using ISP as a metric without adding anything else into context is just plain wrong. The RS-25s are amazing engines. No question about it. But they don't have the highest ISP nor is that the whole story. The RL10 gets 465isp using the same fuel. Others have been tested up to around 540isp using other fuels. Further, the RS-25 even with 4 engines, isn't powerful enough to get the SLS off the ground. They need massive solid rocket boosters to do so, each getting an ISP of only 242. And since it uses Hydrogen, it requires much larger fuel tanks and heavier components to support it. Other fuels lower ISP since they don't burn as well as hydrogen, but they output more power and get more into orbit at a similar dry mass as a hydrogen rocket. Very high ISP makes more since on upper stages than first stages, since the longer burn times benefit more from high ISP.
The other thing to remember is that many of these parts were already "human rated" whereas ships such as Starship is not and won't be for a while still.
That's a very good point.
True, but that's intentional, they're designed using very different philosophies. Starship will likely get human rated after flying enough times just like Falcon 9. Honestly I'd feel safer flying on a rocket that got the human rating after proving itself many times than a rocket that was designed to be human rated in theory but hasn't flown much or at all.
“Human rated” in the sense that someone has predicted it should work. I prefer “human rated” being demonstrated rather than predicted. The SLS is so expensive that we can barely build one every few years, let alone test them prior to use.
@@limiv5272 , based on that, you're not appreciating how man-rated systems are designed and built.
The necessary tolerances and checks of key indicators are built into the procedure, not designed into it after enough data points are generated.
If you change subsystem components downstream, it becomes a new, untested configuration again, many components of which representing a single point failure.
@@limiv5272 A rocket build from parts of the shuttle, which killed 14 people.
The trick with "outdated" with respect to rocketry, is that we were capable of 95% of what is possible when Saturn flew. The J-2 hydrogen-oxygen engines of the Saturn had a specific impulse of 428s, compared to the 452s of the Space Shuttle RS-25 or 470s of the most efficient RL-10s we've ever flown. RL-10s in the 450s range were flying at the time as well. Compare to the best kerosene engines at ~340s or projected best methane at ~380s. On the other side of the world, the Soviets were building NK-33/43 engines, some of the most efficient and best thrust to mass ratio kerosene-oxygen engines ever flown. All our big advances in rocket design have been and will come from materials and structures, and even there the gains will be noticeable but small.
Additionally, there is no commercial vehicle that comes anywhere close to the capability of SLS. Starship is unproven and will not be crew-rated any time in the near future. Additionally, its mass to the moon is limited and it will work best as a low-earth orbit launch vehicle; methane doesn't work well for high energy missions, which is basically anything outside LEO. Falcon Heavy doesn't have the structure to lift 50 tons to LEO, even if you had a payload that would fit inside the fairing or had its own fairing. New Glenn hasn't flown yet and I haven't seen any evidence of flight hardware besides the BE-4 engines, but its BE-3 powered upper stage would likely work well for moon missions.
Finally, if you don't think a hydrogen-oxygen stage is the way to go, think of it this way. SLS Block II cargo is slated to carry 46 metric tons to trans-lunar injection in its cargo iteration. If you assume an equivalent engine and structures mass and replace the hydrolox fuel with an equivalent mass of methane-oxygen fuel, then assume it has the best projected efficiency at 380s isp, SLS would only be able to get 27 metric tons to the moon.
During the USA manned space flight days, Lockheed was blacklisted after the agena failure. Then came Hubble, what a mess. Lockheed has alway had some crippling flaws in their products. Now Orion sits on top, made by Lockheed who has never built a manned capsule, what could go wrong.
Well it has already been to space once. This will be the second Orion launch before they put people in it.
Who built the LEM?
Not entirely sure what you mean that Lockheed was “blacklisted”, or the “Agena failure”. The Agena was a rocket upper stage that was used very successfully from 1962 through 1987, with several different versions being built and successfully used by both NASA and the DOD. It was used during the Gemini program, and also on Atlas, Thor, Thorad and Titan IIIB rockets for several decades, with WELL OVER 300 of them built and successfully launched into space. So what do you mean when you say the “Agena failure”? I’m just curious.
@@jimbaulsir8838 Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation
What agena failure? 300 rockets built and used is a failure?
As one of the folks who lost his job when Constellation was cancelled and finally got it back 8 years later to work on SLS, I appreciate the delicacy with which you handled the subject. Yes, it's a jobs program, but it's also a fantastic rocket. I have to give Jim Bridenstine credit for the name Artemis and for focusing the SLS AND commercial partners on working toward a moon base and a deep space station in NRHO. I'm now working habitation design for both, which is the exciting future we have in store!
cool. would a circular rotating dwelling with a slightly angled floor ( centrefuge effect) be a good design for long term low gravity living?
Since you are in the know................how is it that NASA spent "billions and billions" on this rocket and Musk is hammering out pipe into rockets on the beach in South Texas for cheaper, bigger and better? And this rocket appears to be an updated Saturn V...............
@@pyrholorange Possibly. Right now we’re focused on just having enough living space and limiting other hazards like radiation, micrometeoroids, and lunar dust. Also, we don’t have much data on how low gravity effects humans. All our experience is near-zero-G, so figuring out how the body handles 1/6 G on the moon will help inform whether a low-gravity space station would be beneficial. In the meantime, we’ve learned to somewhat mitigate the long-term effects of microgravity during the 20 years of continuous human habitation on the ISS.
@@jamesowens7176 sounds alot more fun than earth bound construction! good luck to your team
I am curious to learn about what NASA is doing to work towards a moon base, since none of their plans seriously mention it and none of their architecture appears suitable for it. And since congress appears uninterested in funding it.
You are quite right about those shuttle engines and boosters. Experiencing a nighttime shuttle launch was one of the most thrilling things I’ve ever experienced.
that nighttime SLS launch was quite spectacular
that was the most emotional transition to an ad I have seen yet
The Australian movie ‘The Dish’ is also an amazing look into how the pictures made it to the surface via a satellite dish in country NSW, AU.
“Wake up babe, new Real Engineering upload.”
Thanks babe
"We stop for Real Engineering uploads and Merge Mansion lore"
Mustard!!!!!
"Its oNly 14 EuRo a year" curiosity stream and nebula have the vidio is just an ad
Mustard!!!
I think you’re missing some very very key aspects regarding the Constellation and Artemis programs, like the fact that even though Artemis (rather sls) has gone 2x over budget at roughly $23B it’s still 10x less than constellation... who’s budget was $230B. On top of that there’s still some political aspects that ‘helped’ shut down constellation and actually helped Artemis.
I've followed the space exploration only slightly, but this video just seems *wrong*. As if using old parts is some kind of *gotcha!*.
I could be completely wrong, but something just made my spider sense tingle. Maybe when Scott Manley bashes the SLS program I'll believe it :)
Yes, he also said Constellation was “resurrected as Artemis,” while the Artemis program didn’t actually exist until 2017. It was a nameless SLS + Orion program without a clear target from 2011 to 2016. Constellation was a very different program, especially with respect to how the Ares rockets (Ares I and V) would have been used. The biggest similarity, which he correctly points out, is in the design architecture of Ares V/SLS, with both leaning heavily on the existing Shuttle infrastructure and workforce.
Yeah, but starship really meet the goals of what NASA wants so I find the whole thing a waste of money.
If you want to put a base on the moon you can't use that Artemis program. All that does is get you people on the moon with very limited amount of equipment. You could launch two starship missions and everything is there.
While starship might not be the best way to explore, it's by far the best way to move equipment and people.
@@johndoh5182 Starship still has a LOT (I repeat-A LOT) of work to undergo to be usable. It's got potential, but that potential has yet to be realized. SLS is necessary for the next 10 years at least. Tomorrow's launch will tell us whether SLS is mature enough. If it is, we should use it. As much as I love it, Starship is still far from being mature.
@@johndoh5182 So much BS in so little texT . . . congratulations!
the one thing SLS brings over SpaceX is that theoretically it can launch substantially wider payloads which is more of a constraint than people realize, and Gateway almost requires it
If the Starship does get up and running though the SLS loses that purpose too.
At the moment, Gateway is not being launched by SLS. Just crew only.
All future blocks of SLS (which include the cargo versions) have been cancelled. Starship is actually able to lift more to orbit and has a larger payload area.
@@Bullhead_JW According to who?
Lol starship, never gonna happen
I love it when people act like Space X is this completely separate thing when it is entirely dependent on organizations like NASA not only in terms of infrastructure like launch pads and stuff but in terms of all the technology and innovation made by space programs in the past half century.
Starship has its own launchpad.
I have watched 2 shuttle launches from the ground and got to see 1 from an airplane. The sight and sound is absolutely breathtaking
From an airplane? Cool!
@@crazybird199 family freind owns a Leer and we got to watch the launch from the plane.
@@fattywithafirearm That's epic!
Don't get sentimental about the shuttle. That was a disaster in itself that should be left behind. The Saturn V is objectively better if there were no commercial options.
I grew up through all of that. I'm 68 years old. I got to meet some amazing people and ended up working Shuttles ET project from start to finish and then was part of the Orion capsule design team. I somehow survived till retirement and am loving it. I'll be watching tomorrow with chills as always.
I too worked the Shuttle program 20 years until retirement. 10 years as a pad tech (pad rat) and ten years in the LCC as an analyst and test conductor. The best job I have ever missed. Very exciting and fulfilling. Still keep up with all the launches.
SpaceX has not yet made launching cheaper, they are just creative with their bookkeeping.
How does that make ANY sense? They recoup the costs of their hardware entirely.
@@veroncia5218 Absolute BS. Re-use doesn't mean it is free. The whole rocket needs to be checked, repaired and retested. It's a myth that it should be cheaper then a on-off. NASA used many parts in the last 80 years for reuse as with the space-shuttle, and there are many reasons re-use is not always better. The assumption of this channel that the SLS rocket is outdated without bringing any arguments besides the rocket is not "re-usable" is therefor reason enough for me to block this channel from now on. I detest information channels with hidden agenda's.
If SLS is outdated, what do you think Soyuz should be called? ;) Soyuz is basically R7 ballistic missile variant with updated engine design from 1950's. It's been in wide use to this day.
Not only that. It also proves itself as the safest rocket currently operational with more than 120 flights without a loss of a single life.
I work in the engineering field and there are far too many stupid engineers that think because something is not "cutting edge" that it is outdated or obsolete. This is false. Moreover, when someone is building new equipment that is cutting edge, it is common to find a lot of "legacy" parts with proven track records to limit risk. Videos like this guy's are normally content paid for by market competition. SLS competition includes SpaceX which is behind SLS but very much nipping at its heels. In distant third is Blue Origin that is so far behind that they can't even really be seen. It is likely this content is paid for or contributed to by SpaceX.
Point is they are not developing a new 1950s rocket that's basicly the same as a 1950s rocket
@Charles Something that is about to hit its maiden voyage cannot be considered obsolete to something that has never flown. Kids. I get this kind of mental deficiency a lot from the younger engineers I employ.
@Charles You can't really compare these engines, since SpaceX design is full flown type leading to lower chamber pressures, hence giving it chance to be reusable. Soyuz uses oxidizer rich engines that are cheap, but they are not light. This design ensures fully utilizing fuel energy but it potentially damages engine beyond repair. And you can't re ignite those engines. SLS/shuttle engines are fuel rich type that ensures maximum durability but delivers suboptimal performance.
We don't have proper information available about exact cost of each of these systems. All we know that each engine model is optimized for different scenario and that leads to different characteristics, pros and cons.
Elon Musk tried to buy RD171 or 180 type engines but never got those. Lockheed Martin and Boeing use that type of engine, and Musk has said that Russian engines used in Atlas V are great. Take it for what it's worth.
I know many are on the "why use an expendable rocket?" train, why doesn't NASA use one? NASA did have one in the 1990's, the DC-X Delta Clipper, it was a scaled down technology demonstrator - but the materials science wasn't there yet to make a full scaled version viable as it's dry mass would be too high and NASA would have to choose between Venture Star (similar materials issue) and the Delta Clipper as it couldn't fund both projects.
Reusable rockets are still in their infancy, only one rocket company has a reusable orbital class rocket, SpaceX - that's it. And that only consists of the Falcon9 and the Falcon Heavy. What many often overlook as they are caught in the Sci-Fi like spectacle of the boosters landing (which is very, very cool!) is that a sacrifice must be made for reusability - payload mass to orbit. The F9 sacrifices roughly 40-60% of max payload to orbit mass to RTLS or drone ship landing as it needs that fuel for landing and to cover the mass of the landing hardware (legs, etc). This is great if you aren't launching anything that heavy and/ or it's only going to low Earth orbit. If you want to go beyond low Earth orbit though, you need a lot more speed, which means a lot more fuel to be used for that acceleration making a reusable rocket a lot less useful - it becomes the wrong tool for the job.
Enter Starship - Starship aims to be a heavy lift reusable vehicle and SpaceX has a plan to get around the limits of the F9/ FH for going beyond low Earth orbit while still being reusable. But it too is making an alternate sacrifice; mission complexity. Starship won't be able to go to the Moon with a full payload in a single launch - it will require 4-5 additional launches to refuel the first one on orbit so that one can continue on to the Moon. So for a single Starship to go to the Moon, that's 5-6 total launches, that's 33 engine ignitions per Heavy Booster and 9 per Starship - that's 210 - 252 engine ignitions just for low Earth orbit! And to go to Mars, it's 9-10+ launches to send one Starship! That is a lot of potential areas of failure.
Add to that, orbital refueling at the scale required for Starship to successfully go to the Mun or beyond has never been attempted, moving 100 tons of fuel from one Starship to another (x5!) is a huge deal, you can't just start a pump - pumps on Earth require gravity to function, so the docked Starships will need to have a small force of acceleration to the docked craft during the length of fuel transfer.
This all adds up to a ginormous amount of mission complexity compared to SLS - which can go to the Moon in a single launch and only requiring a fraction of the number of engine ignitions and no massive on orbit refueling. So when you look at from this perspective, SLS makes a lot more sense.
I hope SpaceX pulls it all off, I really do - but that's a lot that can potentially go wrong. Being a private company, they can have it go wrong and try again without it being a political and public relations disaster, if NASA were to try that and something went wrong - well, we likely wouldn't be going back to the Moon.
Wouldn't many of these issues be solved just by making the rocket as big as yo mamma? I don't see why economies of scale wouldn't kick in at some point. Let's say they make a Starship that's 3 times the size of the current one but it keeps the same payload volume. That would certainly require less refueling, right? Wasn't the Sea Dragon Rocket all about economies of scale?
SpaceX has launched multiple payloads to the Moon and has launched a payload out to Mars. This was with reusable rockets. Some of SLS’s payloads have been moved over to Falcon Heavy as the SLS is too expensive and launching to infrequently to launch them too. Falcon Heavy will be launching some of the Gateway modules and will be launching Europa Clipper out to Jupiter. All for billions less than a single SLS launch.
Starship resets the rocket equation by refilling in LEO. It’s design goal is over 100T to the Moon or Mars.
Despite the mass penalty SpaceX has launches more mass into orbit than any other country for the last few years. The costs savings can’t be over stated.
@@bensemusx I know the cost saving are there - any private endeavor will always cost significantly less than any government project - regardless of architecture - nature of the beast.
I was just trying to point out that reusable rockets come at a sacrifice that many are ignorant of, or choose to ignore and are still in their infancy - and will only get better with time.
Those sacrifices ae payload mass or massive mission complexity, something NASA can't take on as again, if anything goes wrong at all, it's a massive political and public relations disaster setting everything back by several years and costing significantly more.
The payloads you are referring to are low mass, the Danuri spacecraft weighs in at 1500lbs (678kg) and Elon's car weighed 2700lbs (1225kg). As I stated, F9 and FH are great for low mass launches - which is what most launches are. But if we want to send people, the required launch mass goes up exponentially, especially if we want to send them beyond LEO.
And we have to have more than a single human rated heavy launch provider - what happens if Starship suffers a massive and costly setback and bankrupts SpaceX or Elon decides to sell SpaceX and the new owner dumps the Starship program?
Too many unknown unknowns - and hopefully, we can launch SLS more often as that will be the only way to get the costs to go down, is launch more - see SpaceX.
And to use it to build orbital infrastructure around Earth and the Moon - orbital refueling structure would greatly expand the use of reusable spacecraft and reduce mission complexity - which are the future - but we only have a toe in that water thus far.
@@bensemusx Adapting gateway and Europa Clipper to fit Falcon Heavy and pay for the VIB actually costed just a tiiiiny bit less than launching on sls would have. No "billion cheaper" bullshit.
@@zualapips1638 Sea Dragon is yo mama. I like to check vids of that one, also other concepts like Orion nuke powered one from the time of Apollo!
I watched man land on the moon in school and the shuttle explode at university , then visited the Korolov space museum outside Moscow , so little progress since then , SpaceX crows about reusability but wasn't the shuttle reused ?
Nope! The shuttle was "refurbished". Especially after challenger, getting one ready for reflight was an EXTENSIVE process. The thermal tiles were constantly getting damaged and needing to be rechecked, they basically dismantled all the major components, engines included, in a hugely expensive process that took months to complete. Reuse was the intent, but cool as it was, it was not reusable.
SpaceX rockets, and hopefully plenty of other companies and NASA itself down the line, are truly reusable. We're getting closer and closer to a 24 hour turnaround on a rocket from landing to reflight, which is absurdly effective compared to shuttle. I recommend you look into starship and falcon 9 some more.
Thank you for this. I was so confused as to why they seemed to be reusing an old design.
Im not super up to date on the models. That was my first thought when I saw it.
When it comes to the orbital spacecraft, its simply the most efficient design for its mission. Apollo learned how to make many things work, so what better way for the daughter of Apollo, "Artemis" to accomplish a similar mission than to use the lessons her father had taught her? While tossing McDonnell's Mercury and Gemini playbook into the bin was a failing of the early Apollo program, it did eventually come back in fine fashion, so its better to not repeat its earlier mistake.
I would like to add a few notes:
1). launch costs satellites and cargo have gone down, But not a massive amount. There's more competition which is helping a lot.
2). A human rated launch vehicle requires more testing and validation than an uncrewed launch vehicle. This adds both time and development costs.
3). The amount of energy needed to launch a crewed vehicle into orbit is higher than satellites because a crewed vehicle weighs more than modern satellites or probes. So, the cost is higher.
4). The amount of energy to launch a crewed vehicle to and from the moon is many orders of magnitude greater than going to LEO. So, launch costs and development costs would be higher still.
5). AS of today, there is no private sector equal, in terms of capabilities, to SLS. Yes, there are other vehicles "in-development" but there is nothing operational to compare the cost or development time of SLS against.
To be clear: I do agree that the U.S. government has "F" this whole thing up. But wanted to point out these important differences between SLS vs "current" private sector vehicle capabilities. The private sector will take over SLS "eventually" but it won't be soon.
And people keep talking about how SpaceX is *soon* going to send people to Mars and have crewed moon missions, but if you know Elon, you know that he NEVER meets his own deadlines. He is saying he's going to try an orbital Starship flight this year, and I'd bet a lot of money that it won't happen this year. What SpaceX is doing is certainly exciting, but it will take many years for anything useful to come out of it. Elon is more of a PR object for SpaceX, and he constantly overpromises to keep people interested, but the reality is that Starship has many many years of development left before it's allowed to carry people and even cargo. Starship will be better in the future, but at least SLS is the rocket that actually works TODAY.
Then why was the Dragon capsule developed, human rated and has already flown in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost?
@@zualapips1638 I agree. Plus instead of overseeing starship. He tried to buy Twitter and has wasted this entire year on nonsense. Spacex needs a full time dedicated CEO not a part time CEO.
Dear moon was supposed to take place next summer. It won't. And there's no way lunar starship will be ready for Artemis 3 in 2025. So no manned landing.
Very sad.
Elon always gives absurd deadlines, it's part of his philosophy. He has proven that it works as well, he may not reach his own deadlines, but he beats everyone else's multiple times over.
It'll definitely be soon. 3-4 years max.
In 2004, when the decision was made to retire the space shuttle and begin work on a successor, the argument could legitimately be made that the fastest, most economical, path back to space was a shuttle derived booster utilizing many of the already-in-production components of the shuttle stack. Newer, better, technology, could be developed for subsequent generations of space technology. But almost two decades and tens of billions of dollars, later, both of these rationale have been shot. The SLS now serves only to burden our space program with unsustainable costs, and bind it to backwards technology produced by corrupt and inefficient legacy contractors...
Oh that's complete horseshit, go aim that budget argument at the military, NASA needs more funding if anything.
@@Nom_D_Guerre you're missing the point. I'm not making the argument that NASA needs less money. But even if it had MORE money, it would still be criminal for them to be squandering it on the pointless bullshit they're squandering it on.
That's OUR future they're squandering. That's OUR access to the entire universe, it's more than just money. Doesn't it make you mad? It makes me furious...
@@eliharman I'm really not seeing a squandering, I'm seeing a project that is picking up from where it left off 50 years ago that should never have been abandoned. It is also a project of politics and involving tens of thousands of people's labor, well paid and good jobs. That to me isn't wasteful. I don't care if SpaceX can do it cheaper, they also treat their employees like dirt, and it's all for profit.
Sure, "better" technology could have been developed to get us to the moon, but this is getting us to the moon, and back to the path of having a moonbase, and a stepping stone to a Mars colony. Money is inconsequential.
@@Nom_D_Guerre money is not inconsequential. It's the tool we use to keep track of how much everything costs. The costlier you do things, the fewer things you can do, and the slower you have to do them. That's hardly inconsequential. SLS throws away $600 million worth of engines on every core stage with every flight. Super heavy has only $40 million worth of engines on it altogether. That means, even if you were using it in a fully expendable configuration, for the same money, you could do at LEAST 10 starship/super heavy launches for every one launch of SLS, and therefore, in principle, accomplish at least 10x more. I can't imagine what kind of miseducation has resulted in your blasé attitude about waste and inefficiency. But you couldn't be more wrong...
@@eliharman And yet NASA is bringing us to the moon again, manned missions, moonbases ahead. Where's Starship? All smoke and mirrors at this point. Again, point that waste and inefficiency finger at the military, which seems to get as much money printed for it as it needs +30%.
turns out cobbling a rocket together from sts technology is actually harder than just building a rocket from scratch
Well, the hard part was building up the infrastructure, after so much had been torn down. Future Artemis missions however will use brand new SLS's built from scratch. The newer-built engines will be of the same design, but not built to be refurbished and re-used, so their cost per-engine will be reduced drastically. Another reason why the SRB's won't be re-used, because the Block-II variant will be more powerful, more efficient, and even less costly.
Obsolete since day 1...
Yet, it’s already been to the moon, waiting for everyone else to catch up.
One of my earliest memories is watching the Apollo 11 crew step onto the moon. I was 2 years old, and the image of my family sitting around the dinner table, and watching that event on our black and white TV, is stuck in my head forever.
I was 21 when I watched the Landing with my in-laws. Great Moment! I miss the crackle of the Saturn V engines though. It made the TV speaker rumble and rattled your teeth. And back then, the Speakers were very weak. Looking forward to the Monday Launch and want to hear how the engines sound in Surround Sound!
I cannot even remember anything before 5 years old. I'm 28 years old btw.
@@martiddy It was a momentous event, and I think the seriousness of everyone in the room must have made a lasting impression.
haha, no way do you remember that.😆
I do not have a single memory from before primary school. Are you sure you didn't invent this memory?
Reel engineering: with the progress happening in the commercial space industry...
also RE: shows the most dangerous and badly design rocket on the market right now
which one?
@@deepspacecow2644 the starship
I was glued to the TV during the Moon landing.
About 16 years ago, my 6 year old daughter and I met Buzz Alden. He took the time to tell my daughter about his trip to the Moon. I was absolutely awestruck . I still am.
Love how he says Frankenstein’s monster instead of simply Frankenstein, man clearly actually understand the story.
Dr Frankenstein was the only monster.
@@haydentravis3348 Truuu. That was the real point of the story
But he still hates nuclear
Well SAID
@@rondobrondo yes, an ambitious arrogant and mad little scientist (Dr.). Sound familiar recently? ;D LOL
Completely agree with your take. I made a similar argument yesterday while discussing SLS/Artemis with a coworker. I'm obviously extremely excited to see the return of super heavy launch vehicles and moon missions, but it is very disappointing as full expendability seems like such a step backwards technologically.
To be fair, there isn’t really any alternative to SLS ready for the task right now.
But it’s really frustrating that NASA is so dependent on being inefficient to spread money&jobs in order to gain support for their projects
@@keksentdecker What can NASA or the US gov do anyways. People won’t like it.
@@fork9001 That's a bad argument. The government is the reason NASA can't work efficiently, if they removed that barrier then of course people would like it.
NASA is still stuck in the dark ages when it comes to rockets due the politicians wanting their slice of the pie in the form of jobs which help their chances of re-election, but it's truly a huge waste of taxpayers money. The only forward thinking space companies are SpaceX and other private companies - some of them are at least trying for full or partial reusability, SpaceX being the current leader with Starship and full reusability.
I feel like it’s just reusability isn’t NASA’s top priority, they get a huge budget from the government. While SpaceX needs to keep costs low (reusability)to exist because it’s a private company.
Personal incredulity doesn't make a good argument.
Let's mention
- It's useless to have a manned flight to the moon.
- Ridiculous to think of a base there.
- Do I still need to address Mars?
I feel like everyone is talking shit about SLS to be cool and safe in their predictions. If it fails they can say I told you so, if it works they can say they were pleasantly surprised.
SLS is a piece of sh*t. It is outdated. It is unacceptably expensive and unsustainable. It will bankrupt any future space programs that will rely it on transportation.
No amount of flawless execution would ever undo how shit the SLS project is.
Finally someone answering the question I have been asking myself for the past 2 years
Answering it poorly, with an embedded bias toward "reuse can meet all design requirements".
Large chunk, man-rated payloads sometimes means launchers that throw pieces away.
I agree, I feel like this channel is getting even closer to be an unbiased spacex fanboy since they mentioned "reusability"
@@DEAD752 Mentioning reusability makes you a SpaceX fanboy?
@@DEAD752 You would expect reusabiliy since thats litterally the industry standard now.
I think they just made the SLS purely cus it was cheap. The real goal is the moon base or whatever tf they tryna do.
@@honkhonk8009 reusability is fine when it comes to placing people and cargo into low earth orbit. The Space Shuttle was reusable. But reusability doesn't work when it comes to sending crewed spacecraft to the moon.
This video turned into a lame joke on the 16.11.2022
Why? He literally said he's excited for the launch.
Those RS-25's would better serve the public as museum pieces. It makes me sad they have no plans for recovery.
I still believe that the Saturn V is still the most powerful rocket ever built. The fact it was designed and built without CAD is amazing to me. When I read about the SLS, it just doesn't have the same vibe as the Saturn V does. I understand we as a species we went to the moon already and accomplished such amazing scientific research, but the SLS doesn't feel the same.
Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built, followed by the Soviet N1 moon rocket, followed by the SLS, and then you get to Saturn V.
You have to add modifiers to the statement to arrive at Saturn V. Like, Saturn V is the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit.
@@espenha in my book starship is still far from being a reliable lift vehicle due to it's type of development style
@@manlyastronaut6984 That's fine. But it has been built. So it is the most powerful rocket ever built.
CAD doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself with pen, paper, and a slide-rule. It just makes things faster, like a calculator.
@@espenha Starship has never launched anything anywhere except the flopover test. Saturn is the most powerful rocket ever launched from earth. The others, even Artemis have yet to launch so they do not count until they are successful. Already, Artemis had to scrub today's launch because of an engine related cooling problem.
I am in awe of this thing as you said...but I am also fearful. I REALLY want this test to go well, but with all the mistakes and errors found during the wet-dress rehearsals, I fear they will encounter new problems during the actual launch
I am not a rocket engineer by any means, but seeing NASA scraping parts together and flying them does 'hurt' a little bit.
Fingers crossed for a successful launch, journey AND splashdown of this beast
Hope they got the hydrogen leak issue solved.
This is normal for any launch, lol. You can't even begin to imagine how complicated this is, there's no way you WON'T have any issues pop up...the trick is managing them so that you can still continue with the mission
All those billions of dollars to see a rocket fly two minutes before exploding it should be funded by a private sector just think how that money could be appropriated to fund retired elders with better social security benefits or just feed people around the world
@@jeffcarpenter396 What? The rocket is literally going to the moon to fly around it multiple times to provide scientific testing and measure things like radiation, as well as confirm landing points for the moon base. Not to mention the fact that it is testing the manned module WITHOUT humans first to make sure it will be safe, so you know....the astronauts have the best chance of not dying for when they ACTUALLY fly up to the moon in two years.
@@jeffcarpenter396 Also, people are already helping the needy....a country can actually do multiple things at once...shocking, I know. The US literally gives the most charity out of all nations, as Christians give the most out of any group in the world to help others.
I watched the Saturn moon shots on TV. I watched some shuttle launches.
They were great.
However, technology and design should be allowed to develop.
Could you imagine if the planes of WW2 were forced to look like the planes of WW1??
Well, Artemis looks TOO MUCH like the bastard child of Saturn and Shuttle. I knew it borrowed concepts, but I was surprised to learn it borrowed actual parts.
That's insane.
I completely agree
SLS is another terrible idea NASA sold to America/Congress/taxpayers. NASA took insanely fragile, finicky, expensive components (SRBs, Hydrogen tanks/engines, GSE) of the most unaffordable, dangerous & unreliable space vehicle in history that had failed miserably to carry out NASA’s ‘cheap, safe & reliable’ shuttle promises, stacked them together differently & promised Congress/taxpayers ‘now things are going to be cheap & easy’. Liars scamming gullible/trusting suckers… bureaucrats laughing their asses off slurping 3 martini DC lunches, fattening TSPs & waiting to retire before it hits the wall. Relying on spin so taxpayers/enthusiasts blame contractors for decisions/designs/constraints NASA forced on those contractors. NASA sold this BS to us, NASA should be held responsible. #defundNasa
Physics hasn't changed in 50 years, the Saturn V design was and is a solid one, providing more lift capacity than anything available today in its envisioned D configuration. Luckily, I was around for the Saturn V launches, and lived near the cape at the time. A space shuttle launch is amazing, but a Saturn V launch is INCREDIBLE. It may well be that I'll be in the area when the SLS finally launches, I hope so.
@@johnrehwinkel7241 Physics has not changed. But, requirements do.
The single use boosters of the Saturn V are great, but that is very wasteful.
The new rocket should be reusable.
Idk about you, but to me it seems that Starship fits these requirements pretty well.
That sponsor message introduction must be one of the best that I have ever seen
I'm 59 years old and I remember the Apollo Program and the moon landings. Astronauts were my childhood heroes. I am happy and thrilled for the opportunity God has given me to live this far and see this scientific odyssey resumed.
Awesome video. Amazing job. Greetings from Brazil.
Yes i'm sure magic man gave you that life to 59 but decided at the same time to give some children leukemia and never reach the age of 16. priorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The rocket feels almost like a homage to the space shuttle and saturn V programs. NASA is closing the chapter with a show and passing the torch in the progress.
Exactly, we wont see another sls launch. They will cancel the rocket completely and spacex will take over.
@@henkdeklapsteen6787 If they don't, we need to make one hell of a public show against the damn thing. We're pissing away billions on a program that never should have existed to begin with.
Also: Fuck paying homage. This program is a disaster. With an estimated per-launch cost of $4.1 billion, a launch tower that somehow doesn't work with I guess now taller? main stack and will cost another billion dollars to rebuild, and the fact that Orion meets up with a SpaceX Starship in orbit around the moon that then takes astronauts down to the surface, and you have a program that was designed by lobbyists.
exactly what @@ThePretendgineer said. People should be jailed for this unmitigated display of corruption and pork-barreled politics. Any video on the topic should be covering the criminal levels of waste done in the name of getting congressmen and women re-elected, all at the expense of actual progress.
The only thing SLS is a homage to is unbridled greed and corruption, that takes a great steaming shit on the grave of Apollo.
It's also a tribute to the prices of the Shuttle program. 4.1 billion dollars for a launch and that's not even accounting for R&D, just the cost of operations and construction of the rocket.
I think the main thing is rocket development and new technologies is going much faster than it ever had. When this was conceived, there was no thought into landing boosters and other things that are happening now. This design was state of the art at the time which included what was already available.
They better come with the 4k footage
Saying it's outdated by comparing it with a technology that doesn't work properly yet, doesn't make it for me.
I think NASA engineers would have made reusable parts if they think it would have been worth the cost of a more complex design (testing, safety, longer timeline, etc..).
Using components that have been used before is great because you know what their issues are. It's safer.
So far they only planned to use it 5 times. It is not obvious to me that it would have been cheaper to make it a reusable rocket.
Maybe the next one will be fully reusable and used many times, it's not for us to decide.
yeah i agree with that
I think the problem is the politics. NASA was basically forced to go at it alone and not team up with other private companies. Private companies will always make things cheaper because they only exist to make money. Government programs will make things as costly as possible because they exist to please congress and each Congressman's constituents, which means giving random people jobs even if they're not that good.
Uh, Artemis is teaming up with SpaceX for this project, where the SLS plans to meet up with a SpaceX Starship already in lunar orbit, which will then take the crew to the lunar surface and back
@@zualapips1638 the ESA has been heavily involved in this program, NASA has had plenty of outside help on SLS.
@@kievbutcher From another government agency... NASA hasn't been able to work with anyone that cares one bit about costs and efficiency.
It sounds to me that Obama misjudged the cutoff: better to say the Constellation would be the last of its kind before NASA's funding and attention shifted to projects no one else could do.
Keep the existing jobs, keep the expensive-by-design project in motion, and use the duration of the project to plan a full transition. That means figuring out what institutional knowledge they will need and how to maintain it, as well as giving professionals whose skills NASA no longer needs a heads up to look elsewhere for jobs.
Military works the same way. Transitioning the government from being a jobs program should be done gradually.
@@JohnSmith-wx9wj Yup, that's why the U.S. House is the most important facet of our government, "no funding no nothing" for any GD thing from solar energy subsidies to a new weapons system, and even for cute little "low priority" things like space exploration. So, dear space fans, you know what to do in Nov. But, yeah, I know, you can't fix stupid! ;D LOL
I wouldn’t want to be on that heap when they light it
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Artemis (/ˈɑːrtɪmɪs/; Greek: Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity.[1][2] She was heavily identified with Selene, the Moon, and Hecate, another moon goddess, and was thus regarded as one of the most prominent lunar deities in mythology, alongside the aforementioned two.[3] She would often roam the forests of Greece, attended by her large entourage, mostly made up by nymphs, some mortals and hunters. The countryside goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.
Nostalgia for a time you were born too late to experience is called "parastalgia," and it's a really cool concept.
Fancy word for hipster if ever I've seen one
SLS can lift a LOT more mass than even the best reusable rocket.
Exactly, I feel like a lot of people miss this point. There are no currently available reusable rockets with the payload capability of SLS. Only two are in development and both are still a long way from being ready.
Exactly. Expendable rockets can be pushed to their limits.
Starship hold my beer
Cope harder XD
Starship will make it to orbit this year... And they also have an expendable version that will be able to lift 4X what SLS can do... Also for about 1/10 the cost...
The lesson engineers and companies learned in the 70/80s is that when a project is finished many people lose their jobs. That is why you see projects taking forever to finish. Another thing is the accounting system. Sometimes government pays "cost" + (% in profit). So...no reason to make anything cheaper, faster and better. The longer and more expensive, companies make more money. Let's delay as much as possible. This is called "Job Security". I saw many comparations in how much the US waste in taxpayer money comparing to other countries and even other projects in the private sector. It is all about milking public money and keeping the cow alive as much as possible. Just see how long it takes for the Chinese to finish a project and how long it takes in the US. There is a video on RUclips showing the Chinese replacing a bridge in 3 days, meanwhile a similar bridge in the US takes 3 years. More wasted time, more money.
I’m excited to see something almost as big as a Saturn v launch with my own eyes.
yes, folks who saw Sat V launches and even shuttles at the cape said they could feel the bones in their ribs rattling together! ;D
This is why I like watching "For All Mankind" as we look at an alternate history if NASA was given a top priority in budget.
Nasa would waste money on useless programs like SLS. Nothing would change.
21st Century NASA going to the moon, is like NETFLIX announcing they bought the rights to your favorite entertainment franchise. You are like "Oh God, please cancel this now!". Get ready for a season of a high budget spectacle everyone will hate, full of waman, POC, rainbow flags, but on the moon instead on your flat screen😆.
the project's primary goal was to spread NASA money across dozens of states, a mission capability achieved quite early on, getting to space is a bonus
We are never going to Mars in the near future (30 to 50 years). We'll be fighting to survive on this planet.
I was lucky enough as a 6th grader to witness the final launch of the space shuttle program in 2011. I remember seeing it and hoping to grow up and watch people go back to the moon!
I remember in my 5th grade science class we actually got to call an astronaut on the iss. It was the coolest day of school
I watched the Moon landings live on television. It was magic. Huge headlines in the newspapers. People all over the world glued to their television sets. It wasn't an American achievement- it was a human achievement.
."..for all mankind"! Not woke enough for today ( better:"for all the 57 genders") but true enough, I guess!! ;D LOL LOL
It wasn't an American achievement, huh? So who did it then? What notable contributions did the Chinese or Indians or Soviets, or various South Americans contribute to the Apollo Program? I have no problem saying that it was something that was done for all of mankind, and I don't even have a problem saying that it was a human achievement. But to say that it was *not* an American achievement boggles the mind - if we didn't do it, who did?
@@mylesleggette7520 Yes, tell that to the 450,000 American citizens who worked on the Apollo project in dozens of contracted American companies and industries, all in the USA. Back then we did not have many international companies. All parts and systems for Apollo were made in domestic industries, we were in competition with the soviets and trusted no other country to build things for our moon project. So, as far as the machines that went to the moon it was exclusively an American achievement. In so far as a "human achievement" yes humans in America made the Apollo project, and not the chimps! LOL.
The Luner landers were designed and built in a small aircraft company in New York, for example. It was called Grumman and had been famous for making great aircraft during WWII. Naval fighters like the Wildcat and Hellcat. Like Grumman, many other American companies had the tooling and experience to build flying machines, since they had done so during the war two decades earlier. They switched to building space machines in the 60's. They were involved in not only the Apollo project, but the precursors of Mercury and Gemini before it. Today, who knows how many other companies from around the world are involved in the Artemis project. Don't really care as long as it works as well as Apollo did, a uniquely American technical achievement!!
I watched the Apollo 11 launch, well, thru TV, but when it was happening.
0:49 because NASA is not aiming for several missions that need to fall into a supply/demand formula, like private missions need to.
Not needing to spend extra time in efficiency allows it to focus on efficacy alone.
This thing had better work. It better be an absolutely perfect mission. In fact, it better be like Webb and have extra fuel left over because the launch goes so well. After all the time and money spent on it, it better be _flawless._
It will work, not flawless, but it will work
SpaceX has a better approach so it's maybe 50:50 chance for SLS to work as "intended". I personally would not bet on SLS's success, bad stakes. . .
You are asking a lot for what it actually is a test flight.
I don't know if I want it to work or not. At this point I have so much negative feelings about the rocket that I'd be quite happy to see it blow into bits
@BlackBullPistol trying not to be an unbiased SpaceX fan in a non-spacex related video for 1 second (he cannot do it)
The second part made me cry. I wish I could see a rocket Launch in person too.
The worlds biggest single use rocket.
Just build a new one every time you need to use it.
The Space Shuttle SLS on its own could deliver a total of 135 tons into LEO, but because the orbiter had to be brought back every time, it's capacity was limited to only 24 tons of payload. Almost as much as Saturn, but in a much smaller rocket. The Space shuttle was a great machine, but it wasted most of the capability and budget of the platform simply to bring itself back than what this could really do. The ISS could have been completed in 6-7 launches.
Now i can see travel to moon like Apollo . Go SLS
Im cant wait
Its start
🙏😊
Well, I lived it. When the Apollo 8 circled around the moon, I wrote an essay on that in school. I remember very well that people landed on the moon. My parents thought it was such a historical event that I was allowed to stay up. I was playing with my toy cars when the Apollo 13 crew landed - and I asked my parents why they didn't go into "the caravan" (yes, children speak the truth). But my attention span was short. The later Apollo missions didn't catch my attention anymore. I'd seen those so many times before. It was time for something else.
Nothing much caught my attention until the space shuttle - a plane going into space. Now that was some real space opera stuff! Until it became clear it actually was just a truck - one without a proper destination until the ISS.
Actually, I can't say I get very enthusiastic when I see this thing. Is that all they could come up with after 50 years have gone by? That's not what Werner von Braun promised 70 odd years ago.
Apollo 13 didn’t land
@@AstronomicalSFS You mean they died in space? Oops, my "Mandela moment"!
I think your parents were completely right, it was a historic moment. Taking in consideration technology level of that time it is truly marvel that Apollo missions actually happened. They were several times just so close to fail. And take in mind that USSR actually failed not even land on moon but build a moon rocket that didnt explode on launch pad. So it’s not like there is no progress since then. It more about Apollo went ahed of its time.
@@AstronomicalSFS It landed... back on Earth.
Apollo 13 was an engineering triumph inasmuch as the astronauts didn't die.
Wernher von Braun wanted Saturns to be used for the rest of time. pretty good idea, imagine how much that great vehicle could have evolved over 50 years. Even bigger Saturn Vs for deep space, and who knows how many little things for orbital objectives.
They need to stick some tiny cameras to Orion to eject off and get some sweet selfies with the moon in the background
The fact the question being asked acks like any of the private opinion have even gotten close to what the SLS has alresdy achieve makes it clear that this question is being asked with a bias
I'm okay with how Artemis came about. There's a lot of institutional knowledge that would have been lost if all those jobs had been lost, and it would have had severe long-term effects on the US's space aspirations and its ability to carry out future missions.
A similar thought, that might not be quite as universal but I'll risk it: We really don't need our expertise in these matters held hostage by the private sector, it seems to me. Could Elon Musk run a cheaper air traffic control system? Sure, probably -- until the first instant that he didn't have to, and then he could charge us however much he wants to. We give way too much monopoly power to private sector organizations even when the stakes are relatively low; we don't need to replicate that thinking for something as crucial the future civilization as the space program.
It wouldn't have been lost. They would've worked on other projects or moved to the private space companies.
I think the critic of the video is mostly directed towards the outdated technology used. I am also ok with Artemis but I also have doubt about the technology used, so I would agree with the point the videomaker is making.
which is why there needs to be constant movement. Once space shuttle was winding down, NASA should've started a new program to replace it. NASA should've started development of a next gen rocket by the 90s and early 2000s.But they didn't. The military has the same problem. after the cold war ended and defense budgets were cut. the military industrial base lost a lot of jobs and knowledge. And now its costing a lot to regain it back.
@@CinemaDemocratica the difference between a Nasa launch vehicle and a private launch vehicle is the private one is built and operated by a private company while the Nasa one is just built by private companies but operated by Nasa.
Nasa has never built their own hardware, not even during Apollo. All Apollo components had been built by contractors, and at the Shuttle program it was the same.
This first SLS launch will cost $ 4 billion, the most expensive rocket launch in history despite using existing Shuttle hardware to "save" money. Only the Orion capsule is completely new
It's common for governments to use tried and tested designs for crucial missions
Yes I get it. Starship was just a wet dream when SLS was planned. It is easy to look back and be a wise guy, but way harder to plan a decade ahead.
True, but that's meant to decrease cost, which is the opposite of what happened here. These cost + contracts are basically an invitation to rob NASA
All this and flat earthers still going brrr
Thrust obviously. It has to propel a mission around the Moon from Earth, which means achieving Escape Velocity and releasing a crewed ship that can go around the Moon and return again. It's only outdated if you have an alternative, and we don't.
it's not outdated, it's realistic, unlike starship
The truth lays in the middle ground my friend. Taking sides leads to bias
facts.
What is unrealistic about Starship?
Second hand parts, years behind schedule, vastly over budget. Going back to the moon 54 years after we first did it… This is why I have never gotten excited by Artemis. It’s the quintessential “been there, done that” story. No matter how hard NASA spins it, their logic for this program comes up short.
Thank goodness we have Elon Musk. He came along just in time. Assuming, of course, for upcoming moon missions, his new booster works.
@@paulr4353 XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.
Elon Musk XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.
Have you at least gave a peek at what the program is supposed to include? You won't even mention the plans other than the one that fits your opinion?
I mean idk about how much of the planned they will achieve, but cmon, make some effort.
@@dr_birb go back to reddit, to everyone with a pair of eyes it is plain that this is a farce.
@@dr_birb Please translate your comment into English. what do those XD's mean? Thanks.
I mean it's not outdated when you consider the future objectives with the SLS. It's only "outdated" because the Saturn V is old. We should have never abandoned the Apollo program for the space shuttle; and SpaceX is demonstrating that it's not actually cheaper to get payloads into the space by reusing rockets (as the Space Shuttle already demonstrated).
If your goal is building space stations, moon bases and eventually (actually) vising Mars, the Saturn V/SLS is the proper direction. Not the SpaceX starship.
Imagine all the incredible things NASA could accomplish if it wasn't choke-held by bureaucrats and was sponsored instead by Curiosity Stream
I look forward to seeing the rocket launch. It really is frustrating how primitive and expensive the government system is for massive projects. I don't have an answer other than avoid monopolies, encourage competition and award success but discourage companies (like the ones involved in SLS) from pretending they are the only option, as they abuse their absolute power every time.
That's Boeing and Lockheed Martin mainly. Now Bezzos Blue Origin.
All launch vehicles in use today are primitive by your standard. We have been stuck using chemical rockets to leave Earth's gravity. There really isn't any alternative in development either.
I have experienced Sputnik and the whole saga... it was far far beyond breathtaking... I think that the main reason for going back to huge rockets was that the shuttle was a total failure in its hyped bid to make spaceflight more affordable as well as its flawed design that cost lives of its crews ...
Everyone forgets the HUGE cost and percent of the annual budgets that Apollo represented... Continuing the Apollo program was just not viable back then...
The present design was made necessary because no one still alive remembers how to make the Saturn 5 main stage engines... they had to be handcrafted tweaked far beyond the existing blueprints and no one remembers how to do that...
And that's bad engineering documentation. Good engineering documentation allows you to reconstruct things. Legacy engineers die, and steal their secrets from us.
Bullshit on "no one knowing how to make F1 engines". NASA already designed the F1B engines over a decade ago, using modern technology and techniques to reduce cost and complexity. In fact, NASA wanted to use a Saturn V style design for SLS but was forced by Congress to choose a shuttle derived launch vehicle (SDLV, or sometimes SDHLV, with H for "heavy").
See Eric Gunnerson's video on the subject. And learn to frickin' google shit instead of repeating popular myths, yo.
@@SecretRaginMan What I said is what experienced rocket engineers said a few years ago!!! Just reproducing the old design with new computer tools does not fix the issue... only building and testing the engines then redoing the design as the origional engineers did in the 1960s would work... thankfully using the solid propellant boosters has made doing this unnecessary...
It exists, so that the "traditional" aerospace companies involved with it, can keep their snouts in the government funding trough.
It's a basic design made of existing parts. The 4 RS-25s don't develop enough thrust to get TTW above 1 and take off. The strap ons are effectively cancelling out enough of the weight to allow liftoff rather than adding deltaV. It's exactly the kind of vessel you would make in Kerbal Space Program if you were very short of cash and had to do some orbital missions cheaply.
As someone who is old enough to have watched the Apollo missions on live TV, it has always seemed a tragedy to me that space exploration has been limited to low Earth orbit in the half-century since then. Yes, I know that we have sent probes and robots out further but it's just not the same as sending people for a lot of reasons.
Right now SLS is the only thing available to get manned exploration back on track.
Is the program inefficient? Funny, that was never a question at the front of people's minds during the all the programs in the 60s that led up to the moon landings.
Oh, and about the program existing to just create jobs... the TV I watched the Apollo missions from was in a newly built suburban development (fun fact: that house was on land that used to be the farm I grew up on until then.) One of many Sothern Calif. suburbs that resulted from the boom in the aerospace industry in the 60s.
People tend to whine about... but what about poverty... that money could be better spent on poor people.
World wide billions and billions have been spent on poverty, etc for decades and many more billions will continue to be spent. Poverty still exists but that is more down to corruption and outright theft of aid money by those governments and authorities in those nations receiving it.
Poverty is also an issue because the ultra wealthy and corporations continue to screw over society, do not pay a fair share of taxes and have no intention of bringing the disenfranchised up to a better standard of living. And let's not forget about military spending.
I was once accosted by a tin shaker who gave me the guilt trip speech. I asked him if the country he was collecting for had a standing army. When I had to explain to the genius what a standing army was and that country did indeed have a large military expenditure I added, "Then they don't need my money."
Politics and apathy have held back space exploration and progress, not that I am advocating private enterprise as they aren't in it for the science, just money.
People didn't care about inefficiency back then because they were getting a steady stream of results. Sputnik launched in 1957, and by 1968 Apollo 8 was already orbiting the Moon. In the same 11 years, SLS is finally having its very first launch. That sounds bad enough even before you count in that SLS was re-using some of the most advanced rocket technology ever made, while the Sputnik-to-Apollo era was starting from scratch because space exploration was not a thing before then. We should all hope the SLS rockets will find nothing but success on their missions, but people have every right to be disappointed in the program.
@@andrewstamford1988 Don't be fooled. That crowd does not care for poor people. If they did, they'd be screeching about the military industrial complex & corporate welfare as well.
Anti-Science Troglodytes will never support space exploration for any reason.
@@plumetheum7017 Very eloquently put sir.
It's not a tragedy, it's a good thing. Sending people to space is just the Olympics for nerds - impressive, but not actually useful.