October 13, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Viasat decides not to replace ailing satellite
It apparently can make its expected customer load work with the satellite’s reduced capacity (by 90%) combined with capacity from its other satellites.
- NASA’s inspector general agrees SLS is too costly and it will be impossible to reduce that cost
The report is available here [pdf]. Normally I’d highlight each new IG report that notes these plain facts, but I’ve grown bored with doing so. They (as well as I) have been saying the same thing time after time — going back to 2011 — but nothing ever changes. We keep pouring money into an SLS rocket that costs too much, can’t launch frequently, and in the end won’t accomplish much of anything, while other space projects of greater value (for much less) go by the wayside.
And despite this report we shall continue to do so, because the federal government is broken utterly, from the White House down to the mail rooms in Congress and every agency in the executive branch. It has entirely abandoned its responsibilites to serve the American people. Instead its goal now is simply to funnel money to itself, even if that funnelling will bankrupt the country.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Viasat decides not to replace ailing satellite
It apparently can make its expected customer load work with the satellite’s reduced capacity (by 90%) combined with capacity from its other satellites.
- NASA’s inspector general agrees SLS is too costly and it will be impossible to reduce that cost
The report is available here [pdf]. Normally I’d highlight each new IG report that notes these plain facts, but I’ve grown bored with doing so. They (as well as I) have been saying the same thing time after time — going back to 2011 — but nothing ever changes. We keep pouring money into an SLS rocket that costs too much, can’t launch frequently, and in the end won’t accomplish much of anything, while other space projects of greater value (for much less) go by the wayside.
And despite this report we shall continue to do so, because the federal government is broken utterly, from the White House down to the mail rooms in Congress and every agency in the executive branch. It has entirely abandoned its responsibilites to serve the American people. Instead its goal now is simply to funnel money to itself, even if that funnelling will bankrupt the country.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Impossible to reduce costs? I’m not buying that. It needs be taken away from Boeing.
I think the assertion that it is “impossible to reduce costs” is based on the basic design being completely archaic. For one, it cannot be reused. For two, the manufacturing processes are outmoded and thus slow and expensive, making a modern launch cadence impossible to achieve.
No doubt some or even many of these flaws could be corrected, but the cost would far exceed just starting over with a clean sheet of paper… like Starship.
Starship is to use 9 engines—SuperHeavy 30+
The SLS core uses four.
The stage-and-a-half design is sound…it is just the wrong firm doing it.
A similar design could have gotten Starlinks up faster in a modified Elonergia set up.
Ironically, Boeing’s Space Freighter was to be a winged version of Starship SuperHeavy…that’s why I say that each firm really should have been making the other guys rocket.
Starship uses simpler tech that would be fine for expendable, where SLS shaves a lot of weight off—which means it’s tech might make for a lighter Starship as an aluminum bird.
Speaking of rocket tech:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1004568
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59674.0
The first article talks about how hydrogen can be stored in a liquid that is itself flammable…the second link about generators.
Could this mean you could get two rounds of combustion from one liquid?
Maybe with this tech?
https://www.lifetechnology.com/blogs/life-technology-science-news/an-electrical-switch-to-control-chemical-reactions
There’s got to be a way to combine all this into a whole that takes lessons from different disciplines to make the ultimate RLV.
Jeff Wright
You wrote: “Starship is to use 9 engines—SuperHeavy 30+ The SLS core uses four.”
It isn’t the number of engines. It is the cost. A Starship is expected to cost around $20 million to build and a Super Heavy may be a little more, once production lines go into operation. The stack is cheaper than one SLS engine, at $100 million each, and Starship-Super Heavy can be reused many times. Disadvantage: SLS.
“A similar design could have gotten Starlinks up faster in a modified Elonergia set up.”
Energia was not available and still is not. Disadvantage: Russia.
“which means it’s tech might make for a lighter Starship as an aluminum bird.”
If only you understood why SpaceX chose steel rather than aluminum or composites. Disadvantage so far: Aluminum. Maybe another day; maybe another version (e.g. lunar lander); maybe another rocket or spacecraft.
My understanding is that starship is steel due to its thermal properties. They actually tried composites and were not able to get it to work. Starship’s basic design has changed many times. Elon Musk’s companies seem to be immune from the sunk cost fallacy, while other large organizations tend to live by it. Government is especially susceptible.
Cloudy,
Another advantage of steel over composites is the rapidity of construction. Not only can steel withstand more heat than aluminum and composites, meaning that the thermal protection need not be as protective, but it is relatively easy to construct and modify steel structures. During development, this can be very helpful. It allows upgrades while SpaceX awaits licensing from the glacial, ignorant, biased government.
As for sunk costs, this is a development phase, so we should expect changes as the new technologies and techniques are updated due to lessons learned. They begin a new version of starship, but when they realize that the design has problems or will not teach them much if it is launched, they find it easy to abandon in favor of a different new version.
Most of the other large organizations are playing it safe, using established, tried and true technologies and techniques. There is nothing wrong with this, except for the high cost, low launch cadence, and stagnant mediocrity; all three of which are antithetical to free market capitalism, which explains why so little business was conducted in space for the first half century of the space age.
Since these other large organizations are not developing new technologies, they are committed to the existing tech. If they are having trouble with this tech, then they must fix the problem — for them, there is no starting over. Or that is the mindset, and that is where the fallacy comes in, that they must continue on, because they have already spent so much and committed so much time. This is why the Webb Telescope cost so much and took so long, and why we lost many opportunities for additional science that will never be performed because the resources went to Webb instead.*
Being willing to do the development is why Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and SpaceX are inventing the future. Other new companies are joining in and doing their parts to invent the future, too. Boeing, however, seems to be abandoning its effort to invent the future, as Starliner turned into a disaster for them; Starliner may not do anything other than complete its NASA contract. (Is this a new kind of fallacy? A ‘we spent so much on development that we won’t bother benefitting from the commercialization possibilities’ fallacy?)
It reminds me of an important lesson I learned during a programming class. I had a program that just was not working out, and I spent two days trying to make it work. I had too much time invested in this twisted, convoluted, virtually unreadable tangle of code to even consider abandoning it. Two hours before it was due, I finally decided to abandon it and take the hit for not turning it in — there went my “A” in the class. With two hours of downtime before class started, I chose to just mess around and start from scratch, maybe even hand in the assignment the next day or so; turning it in late was better than nothing, and maybe I could recover and still get that “A.” I decided that the sunk time (cost) was not working out and I should abandon it for a fresh start. Two hours later, just as class was starting, I had a working program and turned it in only five minutes after class started. What I had was simple and straightforward (though not as well documented as I usually did).
Yeah, I was just as shocked as you are now that the second try went so quickly and worked so well. It was as though I had learned what not to do and what to do, or something.
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* Sure, Webb is giving us fantastic science, but at what cost? We see the science that we are getting for our $10 billion, but we don’t get to see the science that $9 billion of it would have produced, had it been available and Webb had only cost twice its budget. Could that lost science have answered some, most, or all the questions that Webb is raising? Counterfactual history is hard to determine.