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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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Different design paradigms. In 1969, they had one shot to get everything right, and prepared accordingly (not to mention, they had a massive budget since the space race was all part of the cold war).
SpaceX is taking a different approach, fail fast and cheap. They are taking an iterative approach that allows them to learn from previous failures, rather than anticipating what all those failures could be and then over engineering the rocket to prevent that.
They are different approaches, and each has their own pros and cons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's a great summary, I appreciate it. Do you think the new approach has been worth it so far? The Artemis 1 launch was successful first try.
The Artemis 1 launch was also staggeringly expensive, and yet to be repeated.
In the time it's taken to develop that rocket, SpaceX has gone from it's very first real flight (by which I mean actually achieving something, rather than a pure test flight) to launching far more every year than the entire rest of the world combined. Note that by that definition, Artemis hasn't had a single "real" flight yet.
SLS did a lap around the moon flawlessly and returned safely.
Starship, a scale model of the empty shell that HLS might one day sit in, when it is finally developed, can't even land without exploding.
According to a recent speech by musk, it wasn't even the real shell. IFT3 was a 40ton-to-LEO craft, where HLS will have to be around 100, which would take the as of yet unflown and (mostly?) unbuilt "Starship 2".
And where SLS will simply have to do a repeat of what it has already done for Artemis 2.
HLS will have first be actually built, get launched, get refueled by a tanker craft that also doesn't exist yet, an unknown number of times (probably 12), fly to the moon, land there, take off, come back, land on earth and then do ALL of that again in time for Artemis 3 where it will have people on board.
SLS is 1 for 1, and if Starship IFT4 does everything right tomorrow, HLS is still at 0. And if it does everything right, I will buy a hat and eat it.
SLS is also ridiculously expensive. They hope, with time, to bring the cost down to $1 billion per launch. And the first one took 6 years longer than expected. If we're going to get to the moon more than one more time before I die, this isn't the vehicle I'm going to pin my hopes on.
SLS is currently priced at 4b per launch, based on its one launch.
Starship-HLS has cost at least the 2.9b from the NASA contract, and doesnt exist yet.
SLS is a disposable product based on existing technology. Starship intends to be reusable and is an evolution based on tech developed in the last 20 years.
Neither private companies nor the DoD is interested in using the SLS once it has been proven in the Artemis project, and given the project is based on the time-honored tradition of government pork, it's doubtful it will ever be economical. Every indication I can see is that the Blue Origin and SLS contract are to hedge bets in case Starship fails. After all, we know SLS will work, but it will always be cost-ineffective just based on the nature of the beast. Blue Origin might work out, but they've been around as long as SpaceX and have achieved suborbital flights so far. Meanwhile, SpaceX has had 332 successful launches in 14 years, with 2 failures. Their team seems to know what they're doing.
As I say elsewhere, Starship is a scale model of an empty shell into which the HLS might one day be built. HLS has not been built. HLS doesn't even exist as a non-functioning mockup. HLS has not even been designed. The vehicle to carry HLS into space has not been built. The vehicle that will refuel HLS when it eventually has been built, has not been built.
HLS has so far cost 3 billion, and doesn't exist even slightly. All that exists is a scaled down model of an empty shell and a scaled down model of the booster that has not lifted even a single pound of simulated cargo off the ground.
I'm not saying Starship won't be a great heavy-lift craft for LEO or maybe GEO cargo one day, but HLS does not exist in any way other than CGI renders, and it has cost 3 billion government dollars so far, and many more other funds.
And that's not to say I don't think Falcon isn't a great machine. It's a machine that runs entirely on unsustainable artificial demand, but I'm a massive proponent of burning the private venture capital of overly-rich idiots to fund useful spacetravel.
Well, that dollar value seems to be a big deal to you, but you brush aside the costs of SLS, and completely ignore the many billions spent to make the SLS components even possible. This has sunk cost fallacy vibes to me.
3 billion is a lot of money to pay for getting nothing, so yeah. I'll change my tune when I actually see HLS, instead of the money being spent on developing another LEO lifter
Do you know how you get new things? Not by not researching them? You should see the amount of money the US government alone has spent on fusion, and still nothing. Look at the money DARPA has spent! Sure, we got the internet, among others, but these people got the money before there was a finished product! And some of those projects failed!
And we, worldwide already have plenty of LEO lifters. Why do you want another, when the government can just pay for one?