Thread: Nasa Sls
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Old 01-24-2021, 03:05 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Originally Posted by tdracer
I disagree - the problems with NASA have little to do with funding. Even corrected for inflation, their funding over the last 40 years hasn't been all that much less than it was during the 60's. But they are not spending it efficiently or effectively - way to much going into bureaucratic overhead and insuring they "spread the butter" across many states/districts to insure congress maintains the funding. They are spending more in inflation corrected dollars to develop the SLS than they did to develop the Saturn V


Quite true... and that's what's so INFURIATING about it... we're getting the bill, but NO GOODS TO SHOW FOR IT...

Apollo cost in then-dollars about $26 billion dollars. For that NASA developed not only Apollo, but Saturn V, part of the development and manrating of Saturn IB, and built all the basic infrastructure it has now and in the shuttle era-- including Kennedy Space Center with its VAB and Pads 39 A and B, MOST of the facilities of consequence at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, including test stands for the S-IC and the complete vehicle vibration test facilities among many others there (remember MSFC started as Redstone Arsenal, which NASA basically was allocated after the Space Act of 1958 that basically created NASA out of the old NACA... so we won't count the existing infrastructure at places like Redstone Arsenal which grew into MSFC to support Apollo and Saturn I/IB/V... but MOST of the facilities built there WERE to support Saturn/Apollo). Also, the Mississippi Test Facility (Now Stennis Space Center) where the test stands are for the Saturn V stages, as well as the SSME and now SLS core tests are conducted), AND Michoud Assembly Facility, which was refitted from a former weapons plant in WWII for use constructing Saturn IB and then Saturn V first stages in nearby New Orleans. PLUS the entire Manned Spacecraft Center (Johnson Space Center in Houston) with "Mission Control" and the astronaut training facilities and manned spacecraft system development and testing facilities there as well (which had been a cow pasture that had been donated to Rice University and remained so until it was used for the grounds of the all-new MSC in the early 60's). Plus the Apollo contracts had paid for countless tests and infrastructure construction at places like NASA's facilities elsewhere operating in support functions across the country, including Little Joe II flights at White Sands to develop the Launch Escape System for Apollo, and a huge number of contractor support facilities from numerous assembly plants in California to build the S-II and S-IVB stages and Apollo spacecraft, test stands for the stages and rocket engines in at least two different locations (Santa Susana and outside Sacramento), and the Grumman plant in Long Island, NY building the LM. Plus it paid for numerous test flights of Apollo hardware-- Apollo 4 booster test of Saturn V, Apollo 5 unmanned LM test on Saturn IB, Apollo 6 booster test of Saturn V, Apollo 7 manned test of Apollo capsule on Saturn IB, Apollo 8 around the Moon on Saturn V, Apollo 9 LM/Apollo test in LEO using Saturn V, Apollo 10's LM test flight over the Moon, as well as the lunar landings themselves on Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17, and the lunar flight of the ill-fated Apollo 13. It also built MOST of the hardware for the Skylab program and the Apollo Soyuz Test Program (including the S-IVB stage modified into the Skylab orbital workshop and the launch vehicle and Apollo spacecraft for the manned Skylab flights and ASTP), so MOST of the work done on those programs was evolutionary or developmental, not having to build new hardware or infrastructure (other than the "milkstool" for launching Saturn IB's from KSC instead of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's nearby pads...) *MOST* of the infrastructure that supported the shuttle program, and which supports SLS *NOW* was bought and paid for and built back in the 60's in cow pastures and swamps to support the Apollo Moon missions. Johnson said it best one time when he commented that "after spending all this time and money building up the Apollo Saturn hardware, systems, and capabilities, they'd probably just p!ss it all away..." Which is basically what happened... NASA didn't even plan to reuse KSC in the early shuttle program-- they planned to build a NEW shuttle launch facility near Wadsworth, TX south of Bay City (not far from where the South Texas Nuclear Project power plant now stands) about 70 miles west of JSC to launch shuttles... or build a spaceport on South Padre Island, not far from where SpaceX's Boca Chica test center now resides... If NASA had gotten their druthers back in the early 70's, KSC would be a rotting hulk "abandoned in place" or razed and scrapped in the 80's due to neglect after the end of Apollo... but it soon became apparent that 1) there wouldn't be money for another entirely new space center and 2) they needed the support of the "space coast" politically, which meant recycling the Apollo VAB and pads into the new Shuttle program.

So fast forward to TODAY... NASA has spent about $19 billion dollars in present-day money on SLS... this of course DOES NOT include the over $9 billion that was WASTED on Ares I development between 2004 and 2010 when it was cancelled along with the Constellation program and recycled into SLS. Granted SOME of that money (like the Ares I LUT which was being/had been built at KSC) were recycled into the SLS program rather than simply scrapped, BUT in all honesty that just makes SLS look THAT MUCH WORSE, because they've STILL spend near $20 billion dollars on the thing, and that's AFTER getting all these "freebies" from other programs like the Ares I LUT, the existing SSME's and SRB's, and the facilities at Michoud, KSC, SSC, etc. In the 18 years since the destruction of Columbia in early 2003 started this entire "replace the shuttle and return to the Moon and on to Mars" effort outside the shuttle program, NASA has managed just 2 flights related to it-- Ares I-X, which was simply an old shuttle SRB that had passed it's "best if used by" date, topped with a dummy fifth segment and a boilerplate upper stage and dummy spacecraft, which showed Ares I to be a failure because the booster was bent beyond reuse after landing in the ocean in the five-segment configuration (which is why the SLS boosters will not be recovered but left to impact the ocean and sink), and the test flight of Orion on a Delta-IV Heavy-- a vehicle not even otherwise used in the program. That's it. No new infrastructure to speak of-- oh, upgraded facilities and modifications to existing facilities, a ton of new tooling for SLS core construction at Michoud, etc... but most of it is SPECIFIC to the SLS vehicle/system and wouldn't be much if any use for anything else-- the rest was preexisting and repurposed Apollo/Saturn facilities and equipment or repurposed from the shuttle program (most of which was repurposed FOR shuttle from Saturn/Apollo itself).

AND, all this to build a vehicle which uses the most expensive bits of the shuttle, designed for reuse, in EXPENDABLE MODE... a vehicle basically with no more orbital launch capability than the existing and INFINITELY CHEAPER Falcon Heavy, and which will require BILLIONS more to develop an ascent upper stage and in-space stage before it would even be capable of supporting a lunar landing or gateway station or anything else beyond an Apollo 8/Zond redux in a looping highly elliptical "lunar orbit" and return to Earth test mission, nevermind the necessity of spending billions to design, construct, build, and test a lunar lander to make a lunar landing even a possibility... It's about like if they spent $26 billion dollars, instead of on the ENTIRE APOLLO PROGRAM, all the supporting infrastructure on Earth to build, test, and launch it, and pay for all the missions, instead if they had spent ALL THAT MONEY on SATURN V's FIRST STAGE ALONE... (since without an ascent upper stage (S-II) and in-space station (S-IVB) the S-IC first stage could do very little on its own... SLS *CAN* get to orbit with 70 tonnes, but the PAYLOAD and whatever cobbled-up interim upper stage has to provide all the propulsion from there... which is sorely lacking).

Meh... what a mess... OL J R
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