NASA conforms order for 18 SSME/RS25

In article ,
says...

Press release:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...rocket-engines



18 new RS25 engines at $1.79b so incremental cost is roughly
$100m/engine. (or $400m per launch).

So, the RS-25E engines for one SLS flight will cost as much as two
Falcon Heavy launches ($150 million each) plus one or two Falcon 9
launches (depending on if it's a reusable launch or expended).

This excludes the previous pork spend to design the RS25,
upgrade 16 SSMEs to RS25,
and the $1b to design production and produce first 6.

So basically 2.79b to produce 24 new SSMEs or $116.25 million per engine
for 24 engines.

or $465m per launch for engines alone which are not recovered.

So, the cost of three Falcon Heavy launches, just for the RS-25 engines.

So, assuming all 16 shuttle egines are used and those 24 new ones, this
yiles a dtotal of 40 engines or 10 SLS flights. That is more than I
expected.

Don't count your SLS launches until they've actually happened.

The press release doesn't mention. Are these 6 + 18 identical ion
performance to the 16 SSMEs, or is that the "next generation" (block B?)
with additional thrust?

As far as I know, there is no additional performance out of the RS-25E.
They've just been redesigned a bit to make them cheaper to manufacture
(only $100+ million each, what a bargain!).

Congratulations on Aerojet Rocketdyne. I wonder how many nights they had
to stay at Trump Hotel in Washington to rack up enough reward points
that the WHite House exchanges into such contracts? :-)

At a time when SpaceX has demonstrated re-usability, and considering
that the SSMEs were designed to be re-usable, it is very sad to see such
waste of money.

Yeah well, talk to Senator Shelby. He's the main driving force behind
SLS since the program provides for jobs in Alabama.

Silly question: if you put on deployable legs with shock absorbers and
parachutes, could you land SLS stage 1 upright with passive landing
(assuming general target area would have adequate terrain) ?

No. It goes nearly to orbit and therefore wouldn't survive its high
speed reentry. It was simply never designed for reuse.

What if parachutes were on the lower/engine side so the stage would fall
down with engines up with the tanks acting as shock absorbers at time of
landing, could that allow engines to be recovreable ? (even if the stage
isn't).

Possible, like ULA's SMART reuse plan. But again, would require heat
shield, parachutes, reliable separation systems, and etc. All of this
would cost money and eat into SLS payload, which isn't terribly
impressive given its size.

Besides, SLS has been relegated to only launching Orion (and possibly
Europa Clipper if Congress doesn't change the law it wrote to require
its launch on SLS). NASA doesn't want to launch Europa Clipper on SLS.
A recent report found it's going to cost quite a bit of money to store
Europa Clipper until an SLS is available to launch it. Which negates
the reasoning that SLS is "needed" to get Europa Clipper to Europa
"faster".

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

In article ,
says...

On 2020-05-09 10:02, Jeff Findley wrote:

So, the RS-25E engines for one SLS flight will cost as much as two
Falcon Heavy launches ($150 million each) plus one or two Falcon 9
launches (depending on if it's a reusable launch or expended).

Is the $150m for Falcon Heavy the retail cost of NASA buying the
service, or the cost to SpaceX?

That's the list price. NASA might pay higher if they have any special
requirements above and beyond just sticking a payload onto the standard
payload adapter and launching it.

I'd love to see what SpaceX would charge to build SSMEs if building
SSMEs were a competitive business instead of pork that is owed to
Aerojet Rocketdyne.

I'm pretty sure Shotwell once said something to the effect that SpaceX
doesn't know how to build launch vehicles that expensive. Let me see if
I can find it...

Ah yes, it was in testimony to Congress. Here's a cite:

Can SpaceX Really Cut the Cost of Space Travel by 75%?
https://www.fool.com/investing/gener...acex-cut-cost-
of-space-travel-75-percent.aspx

According to a transcript of the proceedings, Shotwell told
Congress it would cost "on the order of $80 million to $90
million" apiece to put a Falcon 9 rocket in low Earth orbit,
or "$150 million to $160 million" to build and launch a
Falcon Heavy (a Falcon 9 rocket with two additional
boosters). Averaged across both rocket types, she put the
cost at about $120 million.

In contrast, ULA charges taxpayers $400 million every time
it launches a rocket into space. Commented Shotwell, "I
don't know how to build a $400 million rocket. ... I don't
understand how ULA are as expensive as they are."

In contrast, a Raptor costs SpaceX more than $2 million each to produce.
Note that it's got similar thrust to an RS-25, so it's in the same
ballpark. Also its cycle is full flow staged combustion which is
actually more aggressive than the RS-25's LH2 rich staged combustion.

Also, note that the goal for SpaceX is to get the cost of a Raptor down
ten fold, so more than $200,000. Compare that to the "cost reduced" RS-
25E at $100+ million each (depending on how you do the accounting).

If looking only at incremental costs, how much would those SSMEs cost to
build in metal and manpower? Surely that is nowhere near $100m?

Actually it is. That's *exactly* what this new contract is for,
producing new RS-25E engines. RS-25 was originally designed in the 70s
and was extremely labor intensive to produce. If I remember correctly,
things like the cooling channels were all hand welded/brazed together.
But, that was all fine, at the time, because they were intended to be
used dozens of times each. And indeed they were.

I don't know what cost reductions AJR did to arrive at the RS-25E, but
clearly it wasn't enough. Building them at a rate of 4 per year at the
cost they're charging the US Government is a crying shame for an
expendable engine.

Considering that NASA had already given $1b for the R&D, tooling abd
build the first 6, you're think that buiding the next 18 would have been
at a much much lower per-unit cost.

This was a single source contract.

Don't count your SLS launches until they've actually happened.

Does this contract pretty much ensures the 18 engines get built? Aka:
does NASA have the $1,7b budget signed, sealed delivered? or is this
structured as 5 1 year contracts of $340m, and only the first one has
the budget from Congres with no garantee Congress with fund subsequent
ones? (using 5 years as random number).

I would assume so, but you'd have to read the contract to be sure.

As far as I know, there is no additional performance out of the RS-25E.
They've just been redesigned a bit to make them cheaper to manufacture
(only $100+ million each, what a bargain!).

Thanks. Appears the Block 1B and Bloc 2 perfoprmance improvements are
form the SRBs. Are these still being worked on, or is NASA just hoping
desperatly to just be able to fly whatever they have now and forget
about improvements?

If you're talking SLS, Block 1B is just the 1 with the EUS (Exploration
Upper Stage) replacing the modified Delta IV upper stage that has the
fancy name ICPS (Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) because NASA loves
fancy acronyms for mundane things like a Delta IV upper stage.

Block 2 is still fairly notional, but would include "advanced boosters".
NASA has to openly bid these, but it's a good bet they'd end up being
filament wound SRBs provided by NGIS. NGIS is building filament wound
cases in the same diameter for its OmegA launch vehicle, so NASA would
love that "heritage" in the design.

No. It goes nearly to orbit and therefore wouldn't survive its high
speed reentry. It was simply never designed for reuse.

If the goal is to recuperate engines, wouldn't it be possible to provide
heat shield only for the portion that holds engines and let the rest
burn up?

Or would re-entry bcome aerodynamically too violent as the stage shanged
shape during burn up?

You'd have to ensure an clean separation.

( I realise it is too late for SLS, so asking conceptually).

Again, this is what ULA is planning to due for Vulcan, so it's not
unreasonable to assume such a thing can be done. The tricky bit is that
a recoverable SLS engine module would be *a lot* bigger than the Vulcan
engine module. So you might not be able to recover it in exactly the
same way. I think ULA plans on snagging the engines midair with a
helicopter. I don't think we have a helicopter big enough to snag a
four RS-25E engine module.

Speaking of RS-25E, that "E" means expendable. So, you'd have to pay
AJR a crap ton of money to make yet another new design, perhaps call it
the RS-25R, which would be a cost reduced RS-25 that's reusable.
Because by the time such a thing were developed, all of the original,
reusable, RS-25 engines will be at the bottom of the ocean.

In the end, this SLS thing will end up costing more per flight than the
Shuttle and fly far less often.

You're just now realizing that? If you're just talking reoccurring
costs, the shuttle was something like $450 million per flight. SLS will
surely be well over $1 billion each, given SLS funding level of $2
billion a year and the aspirational flight rate of once every nine
months. My guess is that the reality will be closer to $2 billion each
since I doubt the flight rate will be higher than once each year.

And if you include development costs, the shuttle was about $1.5 billion
each launch. SLS will be stupidly higher given that we've already spent
about $19 billion on SLS so far. So, if it flies 20 times (which I
think is being extremely generous), tack on another $1+ billion for each
launch, so I'd call that $3+ billion each.

If we were to go back to 2010 and instad of Ares, NASA had been given
budget to build new/updated Shuttles:
-same "RS25" engine upgrades ?
-would the original ET be continued because already state of art?
-would SRBs remain the same because not much new could be done?

Side-mount would be right out, due to safety reasons, so you're talking
about a completely different design. It would have to be a TSTO since
NASA gave up on SSTO when they completely botched the X-33 program. So,
development costs would likely be absolutely insane, which is why it was
never funded. Ares was supposed to be "safe, simple, soon", but was
anything but. It's a safe bet that a fully reusable TSTO program would
have similarly been hideously expensive given that it would have been
the same NASA running the program.

Or the orbiter itself, assuming they retained same shape to maintain
aerodynamic profile, I assume they would have put the electric APU, and
made changes to how engines were mounted? Would the orbiter built in
2010 have roughly same structure (aluminium, tiles) or would there be
some possible major improvements with carbon fibre etc to lighten it?

See above.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

You're just now realizing that? If you're just talking reoccurring
costs, the shuttle was something like $450 million per flight. SLS will
surely be well over $1 billion each, given SLS funding level of $2
billion a year and the aspirational flight rate of once every nine
months. My guess is that the reality will be closer to $2 billion each
since I doubt the flight rate will be higher than once each year.

I'd say it's going to be even WORSE than that. The cost of $450M/flight is
basically "take the budget and divide by the number of flights that year"
(I'm gross simplifying of course). But we know from years where no flights
where flown and there was one year where I believe it as a Spacelab flight
that was reflown, that the actual incremental costs were far lower
(something like $150M/flight). Ironically, I still think the shuttle proved
re-usable IS cheaper. The big mistake was they never got their
infrastructure costs down.

With SLS, even if they decide, "Oh, let's toss in another flight this year"
the cost of the engines alone will dwarf anything else.

We really need to kill this beast.

Jeff

--
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/

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

You're just now realizing that? If you're just talking reoccurring
costs, the shuttle was something like $450 million per flight. SLS will
surely be well over $1 billion each, given SLS funding level of $2
billion a year and the aspirational flight rate of once every nine
months. My guess is that the reality will be closer to $2 billion each
since I doubt the flight rate will be higher than once each year.

I'd say it's going to be even WORSE than that. The cost of $450M/flight is
basically "take the budget and divide by the number of flights that year"
(I'm gross simplifying of course). But we know from years where no flights
where flown and there was one year where I believe it as a Spacelab flight
that was reflown, that the actual incremental costs were far lower
(something like $150M/flight). Ironically, I still think the shuttle proved
re-usable IS cheaper. The big mistake was they never got their
infrastructure costs down.

With SLS, even if they decide, "Oh, let's toss in another flight this year"
the cost of the engines alone will dwarf anything else.

We really need to kill this beast.

Agreed. Unfortunately, there isn't an alternative which can launch
Orion (which was deliberately designed to be "too big" for any other
launch vehicle) and get it to a high lunar orbit (i.e. Gateway). So, I
think the best we can do is continue to limit its use to launching
Orion. Of course, at about $1 billion a year in funding, Orion isn't
cheap either.

Add the SLS + Orion costs together and it's ludicrous how much NASA will
be spending to get astronauts to Gateway versus how much they'll be
spending to get astronauts to ISS.

According to the NASA IG:

https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-20-005.pdf

From page 4 (as labeled, or page 10 in Adobe Acrobat Reader):

Assuming four astronauts per flight and using publicly available
information, the estimated average cost per seat is approximately
$90 million for Boeing and approximately $55 million for SpaceX,
potentially providing cost savings over current Soyuz prices.

At four per flight that puts per flight costs at $360 million for Boeing
and $220 million for SpaceX which averages out to $290 million per
flight. Curious that this is almost exactly an order of magnitude lower
than SLS + Orion which will be about $3 billion per flight if it flies
once per year.

Yep, SLS needs to die. Orion is right behind it though. This
combination is hideously expensive for what it will actually do, which
is to simply taxi astronauts to/from Gateway.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Add the SLS + Orion costs together and it's ludicrous how much NASA will
be spending to get astronauts to Gateway versus how much they'll be
spending to get astronauts to ISS.

According to the NASA IG:

https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-20-005.pdf

From page 4 (as labeled, or page 10 in Adobe Acrobat Reader):

Assuming four astronauts per flight and using publicly available
information, the estimated average cost per seat is approximately
$90 million for Boeing and approximately $55 million for SpaceX,
potentially providing cost savings over current Soyuz prices.

At four per flight that puts per flight costs at $360 million for Boeing
and $220 million for SpaceX which averages out to $290 million per
flight. Curious that this is almost exactly an order of magnitude lower
than SLS + Orion which will be about $3 billion per flight if it flies
once per year.

And honestly, I think SpaceX has a sweet deal here, if it's charging
$55m/seat.
But hey, more power to them.
Of course even at that price it shows how much more expensive Boeing really
is.

I'm still waiting to eventually hear an announcement from Bigelow and SpaceX
on a "hotel" :-)


Yep, SLS needs to die. Orion is right behind it though. This
combination is hideously expensive for what it will actually do, which
is to simply taxi astronauts to/from Gateway.

Jeff

Yeah. It's a shame. I'd love to see us get back to the Moon, but this is in
no ways sustainable.


--
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/

In article ,
says...

On 2020-05-11 07:31, Jeff Findley wrote:

Add the SLS + Orion costs together and it's ludicrous how much NASA will
be spending to get astronauts to Gateway versus how much they'll be
spending to get astronauts to ISS.

Pork needs to be fed a lot to stay fat and healthy. And it then acts as
food for politicians's election campaigns. So it is a good agricultural
circle tax - pork - politicians , lather , rinse , repeat :-)


Yep, SLS needs to die. Orion is right behind it though.

The SLS numbers aren't even close. No debate.

But what about Orion?
At the tecnical level, is this a fine capsule with good capabilities? Or
another expensive boodogle? Is it re-usable?

It's supposed to be reusable, but NASA has ordered quite a few:

NASA taps Lockheed Martin to build six more Orion crew capsules
September 23, 2019 Stephen Clark
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/09/2...eed-martin-to-
build-six-more-orion-crew-capsules/

From above:

NASA announced Monday it will order at least six reusable Orion
crew capsules from Lockheed Martin for $4.6 billion to fly
astronauts to the vicinity of the moon in the 2020s, and the
agency said it plans to purchase hardware for up to 12 Orion
vehicles by 2030.

So they're costing about $770 million each to build That doesn't sound
too bad, but that's ignoring the rest of the funding to the program
(which is about $1.1 to $1.2 billion each year). Development costs are
a huge part of that. From the article:

NASA has spent more than $16 billion on Orion spacecraft
development since the program's start under the George W. Bush
administration.

As I said earlier, Orion is about $1 billion a year while SLS is about
$2 billion a year. That's still quite expensive when compared to what
NASA has spent, and will continue to spend, on Commercial Crew which got
us not one but two capsule designs (for dissimilar redundancy).

In terms of its width, many rockets have payloads that have a payload
fairing wider than the rocket. Couldn't that be done for Orion being
launched on a normal rocket?

It's not the size, it's the mass. Orion is too *heavy* to be launched
by anything existing and get it to its destination in high lunar orbit
(e.g. Gateway).

A quick and dirty NASA study found it might be able to be launched with
a Falcon Heavy topped with a Delta IV upper stage. But that's not
existing and simply isn't practical in many ways. It was really only
studied because NASA Administrator Bridenstine was looking for ways to
actually get people on the moon by 2024 even if SLS slipped, which it
has.

In terms of capabilities, what does Orion have that the Boeing Starliner
or SpaceX Dragon2 don't ?

Beefier heat shield (for the much higher speed reentries), better life
support (for the longer trip), better communications (for the greater
distances), better navigation (needed for beyond LEO), and the kicker is
far more delta-V (to get into and out of the high lunar orbit).

So, we're stuck with SLS/Orion for launching crew for at least the next
decade, IMHO. At over $3 billion per year total, that's a huge drain on
the Artemis program. Over a decade, that $30 billion could be better
spent. But in the interest of getting to the moon sooner, SLS/Orion is
what NASA's got, so it's what NASA will use to launch crew.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

Jeff Findley wrote:

A quick and dirty NASA study found it might be able to be launched with
a Falcon Heavy topped with a Delta IV upper stage. But that's not
existing and simply isn't practical in many ways. It was really only
studied because NASA Administrator Bridenstine was looking for ways to
actually get people on the moon by 2024 even if SLS slipped, which it
has.

If you want a beefier upper stage for the Falcon Heavy, why not add side
tanks, resting on the side boosters? The boosters would then separate as
a unit before separating from each other. You could get a 2.5 stage
effect by dropping the side tanks after depletion.

--
Mvh./Regards, Niels Jørgen Kruse, Vanløse, Denmark

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

On 2020-05-11 07:31, Jeff Findley wrote:

Add the SLS + Orion costs together and it's ludicrous how much NASA
will
be spending to get astronauts to Gateway versus how much they'll be
spending to get astronauts to ISS.

Pork needs to be fed a lot to stay fat and healthy. And it then acts as
food for politicians's election campaigns. So it is a good agricultural
circle tax - pork - politicians , lather , rinse , repeat :-)


Yep, SLS needs to die. Orion is right behind it though.

The SLS numbers aren't even close. No debate.

But what about Orion?
At the tecnical level, is this a fine capsule with good capabilities? Or
another expensive boodogle? Is it re-usable?

It's supposed to be reusable, but NASA has ordered quite a few:

NASA taps Lockheed Martin to build six more Orion crew capsules
September 23, 2019 Stephen Clark
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/09/2...eed-martin-to-
build-six-more-orion-crew-capsules/

From above:

NASA announced Monday it will order at least six reusable Orion
crew capsules from Lockheed Martin for $4.6 billion to fly
astronauts to the vicinity of the moon in the 2020s, and the
agency said it plans to purchase hardware for up to 12 Orion
vehicles by 2030.

Excuse my language but WTF does NASA need with 12 Orion capsules?
Right now there's 4 planned flights and one of those is Europa Clipper.
So they have 4x as many reusable capsules as planned flights.
Even if you say, "ok 1/2 of them are test articles, etc" that's still 6
reusable craft for 3 flights.

Even if they end up flying another 3 flights, that's 6 reusable craft for 6
flights.

So, I'm definitely missing something here.

Oh wait, and 12 craft by 2020 and the first won't even fly until next year
at the earliest.

Yeah, kill the pork.


Jeff

--
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/

In article ,
says...

On 2020-05-12 17:53, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:

Oh wait, and 12 craft by 2020 and the first won't even fly until next year
at the earliest.

Yeah, kill the pork.


They have 16 SSMEs from Shuttles
6 early early production RS25s
18 new RS24s with recent order.

Total of 40 engines or 10 flights.

And they order 12 Orions that can only be launched on SLS.

So 12 reusable Orions to fly on 10 SLS launches. This is like buying a
10 pack of hot dogs, but they only sell the buns in 8 packs. Only in
this case, the "hot dogs" cost many hundreds of millions of dollars.

WThe extra Orions will be begging for an extension of RS25 and SLS
contracts to prevent those Orions from going to waste. So spend an extra
$2b for an SLS to prevent a $1b Orion from goung to waste :-)

Don't underestimate the intelligece of pork.

It's stupidity. No way is Congress ever going to approve enough money
to increase the SLS flight rate, so at one flight every 9 months (which
is limited by the SLS core production rate), it will take about 9 years
to cycle through all the Orions. So that means NASA has 9 years to
refurbish each Orion! Yeah, really "reusable".

The SLS/Orion program makes the space shuttle look "affordable".

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

On 2020-05-12 17:53, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:

Oh wait, and 12 craft by 2020 and the first won't even fly until next
year
at the earliest.

Yeah, kill the pork.


They have 16 SSMEs from Shuttles
6 early early production RS25s
18 new RS24s with recent order.

Total of 40 engines or 10 flights.

And they order 12 Orions that can only be launched on SLS.

So 12 reusable Orions to fly on 10 SLS launches. This is like buying a
10 pack of hot dogs, but they only sell the buns in 8 packs. Only in
this case, the "hot dogs" cost many hundreds of millions of dollars.

WThe extra Orions will be begging for an extension of RS25 and SLS
contracts to prevent those Orions from going to waste. So spend an extra
$2b for an SLS to prevent a $1b Orion from goung to waste :-)

Don't underestimate the intelligece of pork.

It's stupidity. No way is Congress ever going to approve enough money
to increase the SLS flight rate, so at one flight every 9 months (which
is limited by the SLS core production rate), it will take about 9 years
to cycle through all the Orions. So that means NASA has 9 years to
refurbish each Orion! Yeah, really "reusable".

The SLS/Orion program makes the space shuttle look "affordable".

What's sad/scary was how much more "affordable" STS could have been.

Buy a 2nd round of OVs (OV-20x) with a focus on re-usability. (and solve the
foam problem!)
Build some version of Shuttle-C (and if you really want, use the much
vaunted 5-segment SRBs)
And you could have a sustained cadence of 3-4 flights a year and get us to
the Moon faster and cheaper and still have spread the port around.


Jeff

--
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/