Re:SpaceX Launches Super-Heavy Communications Satellite
by valuearb on Tuesday May 16, 2017 @08:30PM
(#14354593)
It's hard to imagine they'll build bigger versions that the 70,000 kg one. They are way behind schedule on the first version, and still don't have a compelling mission commitment.
There is no doubt they could send some pretty large payloads to Mars with the SLS, esp. the later block designs. The question is whether congress is going to commit to the tens of billions to build those designs and actually launch manned missions to other planets or the moon with them.
However, in defense of the SLS 70000kg is the minimum requirement, the rocket will lift more like 80000kg.
Even now it would be cheaper to cancel it. For just the the SLS budget of the next 2 years SpaceX could easily build them the BFR. They could have three different super-heavy boosters from three different companies for the price of the SLS.
> To be fair, no one could have possibly foreseen the quantum leap in rocket technology SpaceX has made over the past 8 years since the SLS was designed.
It was foreseen. They wanted to gather proposals both from inside and outside of NASA because NASA had already realized that it might be much cheaper. They had evaluate how much SpaceX had spend on development and concluded that they would have spent about 10X more.
Non of these investigation were pushed and the SLS 'proposal' was selected. Interestingly another group inside NASA (the only other proposal) want to go back to the F-1 engine.
> But it's beginning to seem more and more like a government welfare program for Boeing rather than an effective launch system.
It was always that. Since its inception everybody called it the Senate Launch System. NASA actually did not want to build it, the Senate forced them and specifically required them to use specific tech. Its nothing but a 20+ Billion pork program.