[Space] Space Launch System, SLS - Page 10

Construction on the structure began nine years ago when NASA needed a mobile launcher for a different rocket, the Ares I vehicle. According to NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, the agency spent $234 million to originally build the launch tower. However, after the government's Ares I and V rockets were canceled due to delays and cost overruns in 2010, NASA was left without much of a use for the large structure, which consists of a two-story base, a 355-foot-tall tower, and facility ground support systems.

In 2011, after Congress directed NASA to build a new large rocket, the SLS, the agency began studying its options to launch the booster. These trade studies found that modifying the existing mobile launcher would cost $54 million, modifying the Space Shuttle Mobile Launcher Platforms would cost $93 million, and constructing a new mobile launch platform would cost $122 million. Ultimately, the agency opted for the lowest-cost option—modifying the Ares mobile launcher—but unfortunately those preliminary cost estimates turned out to be wildly optimistic.

Instead of costing just $54 million, the US Government Accountability Office found that NASA spent $281.8 million revamping the mobile launcher from fiscal years 2012 to 2015, but still the work was not done. The recently released White House budget for fiscal year 2019 reveals that NASA anticipates spending an additional $396.2 million on the mobile launcher from 2015 through the maiden launch of the SLS, probably in 2020.

Therefore, from the tower's inception in 2009, NASA will have spent $912 million on the mobile launcher it may use for just a single launch of the SLS rocket. Moreover, the agency will have required eight years to modify a launch tower it built in two years.

Three great constants in life are death, taxes — and the costly rocket program that NASA always seems to have under development.

NASA's current rocket of the future is called the Space Launch System. It is a heavy-lift vehicle that replaced a similar program called Constellation proposed by the Bush administration.

Both are quite a bit like the National Launch System of the 1990s. And all have a distinct similarity to a rocket that once actually existed — the Saturn V used in the Apollo program.

In addition to these brawny rockets, the space agency has, at different times, toiled on various smaller, futuristic rocket planes such as the X-30 (also known as the National Aerospace Plane) and the X-33.

None of these prior programs, heavy lift or otherwise, got anywhere near liftoff. Their price tags were hefty, and their mission costs would have been even heftier.

Now, the same fate likely awaits the Space Launch System. It fails to answer the overarching, existential question: Why?


President Trump rejiggered the system's mission in December to focus on returning astronauts to the moon, something that would be both hugely expensive and highly repetitive.

But the story need not end there, with history repeating itself and the space program orbiting back to where it was before.

As government flails, private-sector space entrepreneurs have been notching some notable successes. Chief among them is Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company is known for a recent demo flight that put a Tesla Roadster in space. SpaceX has a family of rockets that could slash the cost of satellite launches and then, or so Musk says, go on to support a rigorous human space program.

It’s not a far-fetched idea. In fact, he makes a compelling case that NASA should get out of the rocket business entirely and let the private sector go to work.

If human space exploration is ever to get beyond occasional, expensive, symbolic and largely uninspiring flights, it won’t be from reinventing the wheel (or the heavy lift rocket). It will be because the costs of launches and space travel are brought down significantly.

That’s a big ask given the inherent dangers involved. But it might be possible by piggy-backing on the private sector — by identifying goals and then inviting companies to devise ways to attain them, and by putting astronauts on rockets developed to launch satellites.

To some degree, NASA is already doing this. Unable to develop a shuttle replacement before its retirement in 2011, the agency has been contracting out cargo flights to the International Space Station.

But NASA, the Trump administration and a good many in Congress are still keen on the Space Launch System, a big rocket that only bureaucracy and Big Government could love.

On October 11 2018 02:17 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

I agree. But with SpaceX doing better than a lot thought possible and their scale is ramping up, NASA would be foolish to continue pumping money into Boeing or Lockheed for any future shuttles/ships/rockets. I think, once BFR is launched and shown to be a success, same with New Glen, NASA won't have a choice.

The report found that Boeing's development of "command and control" hardware and software needed to conduct this test is already 18 months behind a schedule established in 2016. This means the Stennis facility won't be ready to accommodate a green run test until at least May 2019, with further delays possible.

This is critical, because often the most serious engineering problems are uncovered during the phase when key rocket components are integrated and tested. The delay in green-run testing means that any problems that crop up during that phase of development will only push the maiden launch of the SLS further into the future.

The report found that Boeing's development of "command and control" hardware and software needed to conduct this test is already 18 months behind a schedule established in 2016. This means the Stennis facility won't be ready to accommodate a green run test until at least May 2019, with further delays possible.

This is critical, because often the most serious engineering problems are uncovered during the phase when key rocket components are integrated and tested. The delay in green-run testing means that any problems that crop up during that phase of development will only push the maiden launch of the SLS further into the future.

Another thrust of the report is that NASA has improperly awarded tens of millions of dollars to Boeing for performance fees the company has not earned. "We question nearly $64 million in award fees provided to Boeing since 2012 for the 'very good' and 'excellent' performance ratings it received while the SLS Program was experiencing substantial cost increases, technical issues, and schedule delays," the report states.

In his response to the new report, NASA's chief of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, essentially shrugs off the criticism by saying building big rockets is hard work.

"The SLS is the largest launch system in the history of space flight," Gerstenmaier's response states. "The design, development, manufacturing, test, and operations of the system are highly complex and represent a national investment in a long-term commitment to deep space exploration."

This may be true. But it seems an increasingly difficult sell after SpaceX developed the not-quite-as-large-or-complex Falcon Heavy rocket for $500 million. It is not clear what will happen next. In the past, Congress has largely ignored criticism of the SLS rocket, even from official sources. After all, the vehicle has 1,100 contractors in 43 states, covering a lot of legislative districts.

However, there are a few critics close to the White House who have been whispering concerns and criticisms about the big, expensive rocket to Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the National Space Council. To be clear, the vice president has been publicly supportive of the SLS rocket to date. But this report will at the very least add fuel to the fire of the criticisms he is hearing.

Annually, NASA spends nearly $4 billion on development of its "exploration" hardware, including the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, the launch pad, and related facilities. This is a large amount of money, comprising nearly half of the space agency's expenditure on human spaceflight activities. Development has been ongoing since 2011, and NASA hopes to finally fly the vehicles together in 2020.

The exploration program spreads those funds around to four principal contractors who once played a key role in the space shuttle program and now supports the SLS rocket and Orion. Senior representatives of all four of these companies, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, appeared last week for a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society's Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

For the most part, the presentations went as usual for these kinds of events—corporate vice presidents talking about the progress they were making on this or that component of the rocket and spacecraft. Although the Space Launch System rocket is going to launch three years later than originally planned, and its program is over budget and was recently admitted by NASA's own inspector to be poorly managed, you would not have known it from these presentations.

However, one panelist did offer a warning of sorts to his colleagues. Former astronaut and Vice President and General Manager of Propulsion for Northrop Grumman Charlie Precourt spoke about his company's contributions to the rocket (Northrop Grumman recently acquired Orbital ATK). They are building the large, solid rocket boosters that will provide a kick off the launch pad. Yet Precourt prefaced his update with a message about affordability—as the exploration program moves from development into operations with the first flight of SLS and Orion in 2020 or so, costs must come down, he said.

"We have to execute, but we also have to be planning for the future in terms of survivability, sustainability, and affordability," Precourt said. "I used all three of those words intentionally about this program. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got our mindset on affordability, and I don’t think it’s too early for all of us on this panel, as well as our counterparts at NASA, to start thinking about that."

Precourt noted that there are plenty of critics of the SLS rocket program outside of the major contractors involved in its development. (These critics have cited cost—NASA has already spent $12 billion to develop the rocket, which remains two years from flight at least—in addition to a low flight rate and lost opportunity costs). The rocket has survived substantial delays and cost overruns because it has strong support in Congress. The vehicle has 1,100 contractors in 43 states, covering a lot of legislative districts.

"We here inside the program tend not to think about the need to advocate," Precourt said. "There are a lot of people with other ideas about how we should do this mission, so I think it’s incumbent on us. It’s not too early to be thinking about the transition from development to production. And that means a totally different management philosophy and cost structure for all of us."

Precourt said contractors should consider a future in which NASA's present multibillion expenditures on rocket development costs need to be cut in half in order for the SLS vehicle to have a robust future.

"All of us need to be thinking about [how] our annual budget for this will not be what it is in development," he said. "That’s a very serious problem that we have to look forward to, and to try to rectify, so that we are sustainable."

If the other speakers had thoughts about Precourt's comments, they did not share them during the ensuing discussion.

Amazon giant Jeff Bezos invested a “mere” $2.5 billion into the two-stage, 95-meter tall New Glenn, which has a fully reusable first stage, designed for 25 uses. With its 45-metric-ton payload capability to LEO, the rocket doesn’t quite make the cut as a super heavy launch lift vehicle, but this hasn’t stopped the the US Air Force from awarding Blue Origin $500 million for New Glenn’s development in October. Its debut launch is slated for late 2020.

The even-more-ambitious, 100-percent-reusable Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also a two-stage rocket, with the entire system (spacecraft and booster) standing at 348 feet (106 meters). With 40 cabins to carry 100 passengers and a 150 ton payload to LEO, BFR’s design steadily plods toward Musk’s dream of establishing a Martian settlement. Although Musk’s roadster has already headed toward Mars, SpaceX plans to start launching suborbital “hops” in late 2019, followed by launching cargo ships to the red planet in 2022, priming the company for crewed missions by 2024. NASA doesn’t anticipate sending crewed missions to Mars until the 2030s.

Two sources familiar with the thinking of Vice President Mike Pence—who leads US space policy—have said he is frustrated with the slow pace of the nation's efforts to send humans to the Moon. In particular, he is growing tired of delays with NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which was originally due to launch in 2017 and is now likely delayed until 2021 at the earliest.

Notably, President Donald Trump's budget request calls for a 17 percent reduction in the budget for NASA's Space Launch System rocket, once viewed as the backbone of the space agency's efforts to explore deep space. The president's budget request chips away at the supremacy of the SLS booster in three important ways.

First of all, with the budget cut, the president's proposal "defers" funding for the Exploration Upper Stage. That's the more powerful second stage that would allow a future version of the SLS rocket to lift both the Orion capsule and large chunks of payload to lunar orbit.

"The Budget proposes reforms to the SLS program to prevent the program’s significant cost and schedule challenges from further diverting resources from other exploration activities," the president's budget overview states. This is a reflection of a desire to complete the initial, oft-delayed "Block 1" version of the SLS as expeditiously as possible. Future upgrades will have to wait (or may never come at all).

The budget also opens the door to commercial launches of cargo to lunar orbit, including comments of its proposed Gateway station there. "Lunar Gateway elements would be launched on competitively procured vehicles, complementing crew transport flights on the SLS and Orion," the document states.

This is a significant change from the previous plans, which called for "co-manifesting" the Orion spacecraft alongside modules of the Gateway onto a single SLS rocket, with its enhanced upper stage. The Block 1 version of the SLS is not powerful enough for such co-manifested missions.

Finally, the budget says that a robotic probe to Europa, due to launch in the 2020s, will not launch on the SLS booster. Instead, it will launch on a private rocket. (As Ars previously reported, this almost certainly would be SpaceX's Falcon Heavy). "By launching that mission on a commercial launch vehicle, NASA would save over $700 million, allowing multiple new activities to be funded across the Agency," the budget document states.

With this proposal, therefore, NASA is taking away a key upgrade to the Space Launch System's upper stage, proposing to launch Gateway on commercial rockets, and removing a high-profile mission from the launch manifest—the Europa Clipper. This leaves just one real task for SLS, which no commercial rocket can presently perform: the direct delivery of a crewed Orion capsule to a high lunar orbit.

On Monday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine held a town hall for agency employees to begin talking about how they can return humans to the Moon by 2024. This was the goal set down by Vice President Mike Pence last week during a space policy speech in Huntsville, Alabama.

The discussion was short on details until Bridenstine was asked why an idea to use private rockets to launch the Orion spacecraft on an uncrewed test flight around the Moon was unworkable. The administrator replied that the agency had looked at a variety of options using United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, or (perhaps most intriguingly) a combination of the two.

"By the way, I was for it, because the visuals would be beautiful," Bridenstine said. Unfortunately, none of these options really worked for a 2020 mission due to a variety of reasons. These included the availability of Delta IV Heavy rockets, launchpad issues, and Orion's lack of capability to dock autonomously with a rocket's upper stage in orbit.

However, Bridenstine then laid out one scenario that has huge implications, not for a 2020 launch, but one later on. Until now, it was thought that only NASA's Space Launch System could directly inject the Orion spacecraft into a lunar orbit, which made it the preferred option for getting astronauts to the Moon for any potential landing by 2024. However, Bridenstine said there was another option: a Falcon Heavy rocket with an Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage built by United Launch Alliance. "Talk about strange bedfellows," he mused about the two rocket rivals.

This plan has the ability to put humans on the Moon by 2024, Bridenstine said. He then emphasized—twice—that NASA's chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, has yet to bless this approach due to a number of technical details. His reservations include the challenge of integrating the Falcon Heavy rocket in a horizontal position and then loading Orion with fuel in a vertical configuration on the launchpad. The Falcon Heavy would also require a larger payload fairing than it normally flies with. This would place uncertain stress on the rocket's side-mounted boosters.

"It would require time [and] cost, and there is risk involved," Bridenstine said. "But guess what—if we're going to land boots on the Moon in 2024, we have time, and we have the ability to accept some risk and make some modifications. All of that is on the table. There is nothing sacred here that is off the table. And that is a potential capability that could help us land boots on the Moon in 2024."

With this comment, Bridenstine broke a political taboo. For the first time, really, a senior NASA official had opened the door to NASA flying its first crewed missions to the Moon on a Falcon Heavy rocket built by SpaceX. An official with the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There are, of course, considerable caveats to consider here. For one, Bridenstine said the SLS rocket, with its larger throw capacity, is still the agency's preferred option. But that rocket's first launch has been delayed until at least late 2020, and there is no guarantee it will be ready to fly by then.

There is also the matter of Gerstenmaier, who was seated in the front row of Monday's town hall. On multiple occasions, Bridenstine referred to the influential US spaceflight leader along the lines of, "Gerst is going to be so mad at me for saying all of this." Sources have told Ars that Gerstenmaier has, in fact, not yet bought into any of this.

Finally, there is politics. It is not clear whether Democrats would support a policy like this put forth by the Trump administration, although in the past they have been somewhat more favorable to private space companies such as SpaceX. Certainly there will be opposition from key Republican senators, such as Alabama's Richard Shelby, who will oppose any effort to sideline the SLS rocket.

For all of that, however, Bridenstine reiterated Pence's line that the "ends" of reaching the Moon matter far more than the "means." And he encouraged the NASA workforce to embrace the possibility of change that would accelerate what has, until now, been a rather slow pace in human spaceflight. "This is a big charge, and it comes straight from the top," Bridenstine said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."