"David Spain" wrote in message news

On 2/15/2018 9:12 AM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
One hope I have now is that Falcon Heavy flies enough to convince
Congress to put the nail in the coffin for SLS and redirect that money
elsewhere.


Won't happen due to FH. It just won't fly enough nor the "right" type of
missions to make Congress wake up and smell the coffee. Even though I agree
it should...


You're probably right.

OTOH BFR/BFS, once it starts to fly, will definitely be the tombstone for
SLS. Musk says it will definitely end FH and likely F9 or stop further
production of F9's until they are all expended.

Yeah.. "once". Like most SpaceX timelines, I don't really believe the
current one.


But Musk time doesn't jibe well with real time, so we'll see...
There are a ton of fixed costs (mainly time, some money, and big time
infrastructure) for BFR/BFS development that I think Elon is discounting
right now... But maybe he's much further along on the curve than I believe
he is? We'll see...


Nah, I'd add 2-3 years and most likely to his schedule ;'-)

As per cost vis-a-vis ULA, I read an article on Ars Technica from Eric
Berger where there is a contract with ULA that will expire soon that will
cause fixed costs of D-IVH to rise well above that $350 million figure.
(Don't have time to look up the link now, Google it yourself). ULA knows
that it *has* to get its Vulcan rocket flying ASAP. It will be interesting
to see how well it can compete with F9 and F9H when reuse of Vulcan AT BEST
will require some reassembly (re-mating used methalox BE-9(?) engines with
core tanks EVERY SINGLE TIME), vs inspection and resetting of landing legs
and not even bothering with a paint job for the F9.

Dave


I just can't see how Vulcan will compete. To me it seems like they
completely missed the point.

Sure, the engines are the most complex and expensive part and you need those
back.

But it's the whole damn system that needs to be cost effective. That's what
Musk is approaching.

It's like saying, "well the engines on a 737 are expensive, we'll keep those
and replace the hull every time.

I suspect Musk is a couple of years, at most, of landing a F9, bringing it
back to the launch pad, do a minimal check out, refueling and relaunching in
less than a week.

I just can't see Vulcan doing this.
1
Vulcan seems to me to take all the worst parts of the shuttle program and
redo them.


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net
IT Disaster Response -
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/