"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

On 2020-05-24 14:54, David Spain wrote:

The motivation for that is believed to be Loverro's preference for
Boeing's proposal for the Artemis lander of one single assembly
launched
on SLS rather than having Artemis assembled in orbit. The reasoning
being he thought this was a much more plausible approach to achieving a
lander by 2024.



Consider that no matter who does the lander, SLS is needed by 2024 to
send Orion to/from moon. No SLS, no moon.

It would be entirely possible to launch Orion on something else, but
you'd also need another launch to put an upper stage in orbit that Orion
could dock to. Once docked, the upper stage would send Orion on a
trajectory to its destination high lunar orbit.

Say, launch Orion on the heaviest version of Vulcan (because the people
in NASA who trust Boeing also trust ULA) and launch the upper stage
using a Falcon Heavy. Yes it requires two launches in somewhat rapid
succession (I'd launch the Falcon Heavy first, so that you know you have
something to dock with when you launch Vulcan/Orion). But, we did it
with Gemini several times, so we can do it again.

I believe that the problem with that plan is that the first two Orion
spaceships (one uncrewed, the next crewed) won't be able to dock with
anything, so they wouldn't be able to go around the moon (their intended
flight plans) if launched on anything but SLS. This would likely delay
the program by requiring the third Orion flight be the first test flight
around the moon instead of landing on the moon. But I don't think that
landers will be ready for crew by 2024 anyway, so this really isn't a
delay!

Since failure of SLS kils the project even if all the other parts are
delivered on time, there is some logic is wanting to put all your eggs
in the SLS basket because that might increase the chances SLS would fly
on time.

Except that this isn't true. Dropping SLS won't necessarily kill the
program. Orion can be launched on other vehicles. It will, however,
delay the program past the 2024 deadline. Of course, SLS is delaying
itself, which is making 2024 human landing on the moon very unlikely,
IMHO.

Here, when government announce a bridge reconstruction, they make a nice
photo op launch of project annoucing 200 billion to rebuild the bridge.
What they don't say is they are allocating $2000/year over 100,000,000
years to rebuild it. So basically over a 4 years term they are
committing $8000 which has no impact on the budget, yet allows them to
make a great photo-op/political promise.

Until ARTEMIS, SLS was pure pork with no mission. It had a budget that
was low enough to remain under the radar, and high enough to keep plats
opened and employees hired with no real need to deliver anything.

ARTEMIS gives SLS a mission, but no additional budgets. Had Boeing
gotten the contract, then SLS could have moved from "life support of
plamts" to "need to deliver a product" budgets.

The problem with SLS being late isn't a lack of money. The SLS program
receives about $2 billion a year.

So in a way, giving Boeing the contract would have icreased the oods
that SLS would becoem real. So there is some logic in pushing it,
because it is doubtful that SLS in its current state of life support
will be ready.

Bull****. Boeing is failing on so many fronts, they couldn't even put
forth a decent enough human lander proposal to be one of three picks to
continue forward. That lander proposal would have required the EUS
(which isn't needed for anything else!), which is more development money
for SLS as well as all the money they would have gotten for a human
lander.

Giving more money to Boeing is just throwing good money after bad, IMHO.

This is where Kennedy's dreakm of landing a man on the moon and bringing
him back safely by 1969 was most excellent: it really drove contractors
to stop thinking about jobs and pork and think about delivering on
time.

Also bull****. The creation of JSC was entirely political and required
handing off control from KSC to JSC in flight. Given 60's technology,
that was kind of a pain in the ass to do.

The spreading out of all the awards for Apollo/Saturn across the entire
country was entirely political. That was how the program maintained
enough support for the insane amount of money they were spending at the
time.

Alas, Trump's 2024 is not realistic.

No, it's not. And doubling down on SLS isn't realistic either. At $2
billion a year in funding (and no EUS in sight) and a build rate of *at
most* one every 9 months, picking Boeing for the lander would have meant
a mission rate of one every 1.5 years *at most*. That's not a
sustainable program in any way, shape, or form. It's repeating Apollo,
which will end up canceled after a few missions due to the high cost and
low rewards.

Jeff

Heck, it's WORSE than Apollo. Apollo had its first Saturn V launch in 1967.
It last flew in 1973.
So in 6 years, it flew 13 times. That's better than 2 a year, and that
includes the delay after Apollo 13.

So this is far worse than Apollo!



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