The good news about SLS is that it’s not burning fracked natural gas like Elon’s rockets… it’s burning Hydrogen that was produced from fracked natural gas. It’s not green now, but it has the potential to be in the future. Cryogenic H2 requires some expense compared to cheap-and-dirty methylox.
The other advantage of SLS is that these rockets are owned by the people, not private companies. If we want an equitable future in space, we need NASA rockets. Right now the SLS is that rocket.
It doesn’t have potential. It’s possible, but not practical. Using hydrogen for transport is snake oil - there are plenty of other industrial uses that should have much higher priority.
In order to meet the global industrial demand with green hydrogen, we would need to dedicate 3x the global renewable generation capacity from 2019 entirely to hydrogen production. That simply isn’t going to happen - and that’s just trying to deal with demand where there are no other options but hydrogen. If you start adding transport the demand will sky rocket. This is great for those in the business of selling hydrogen, terrible for everyone else.
Hydrogen is also an incredibly inefficient fuel, both in terms of burning it and in terms of energy cost to produce.
Methane is also not exclusively extracted through fracking. You’re minimising the negatives of hydrogen and sensationalising the competition.
The other advantage of SLS is that these rockets are owned by the people, not private companies.
Yes because Boeing are totally a company for the people, they never take advantage of government contracts and always stay within budget.
Say what you will about SpaceX and the issues with the private sector and publicly traded businesses, SpaceX have revolutionised the rocket industry and driven costs down.
You’re not being honest if you argue from the assumption that the green Hydrogen for space flight is coming from Earth. Hydrogen is everywhere in space. Put out a magnetic net and catch it from the solar wind. Methane only exists as part of a biosphere on Earth, and that’s likely the case for other planets as well. Carbon is a much more precious resource, wherever we may mine it from.
A rocket being made by Boeing, but owned by the people is very different from a rocket being made and owned by SpaceX.
Go suck Elon’s dick elsewhere.You’re not being honest if you argue from the assumption that the green Hydrogen for space flight is coming from Earth.
Remind me again, where is SLS taking off from? Who’s the one not being honest in their argument here?
Go suck Elon’s dick elsewhere.
Wow. You’re not worth speaking to.
Not going to lie, I found your back and forth interesting (and mostly sided with the other person), but the argument was lost for me when they attacked you directly.
You are right, SpaceX brought down costs (in dollars) to move mass into space which has opened many new doors. We can argue and disagree about what the broader and long term costs and outcomes of that change might be, but I didn’t get the feeling you were being a fanboy or unreasonably lavish in your praise.
Kudos for walking away from the conversation.
The other person was just wrong.
Large scale Hydrogen generation isn’t generated in a fossil free way, Hydrogen can be generated is a green way but the infrastructure isn’t there to support SLS.
Hydrogen is high ISP (miles per gallon) by rubbish thrust (engine torque).
This means SLS only works with Solid Rocket Boosters, these are highly toxic and release green house contributing material into the upper atmosphere. I suspect you would find Falcon 9/Starship are less polluting as a result.
Lastly the person implies SLS could be fueled by space sources (e.g. the moon).
SLS is a 2.5 stage rocket, the boosters are ditched in Earths Atmosphere and the first stage ditched at the edge of space. The current second stage doesn’t quite make low earth orbit.
So someone would have to mine materials on the moon and ship them back. This would be far more expensive than producing hydrogen on Earth.
Hydrogen on the moon makes sense if your in lunar orbit, not from Earth.
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Sorry, I wasn’t exactly bee-ing nice last night.
SLS takes off from Earth, but that doesn’t mean successor Hydrogen rockets will, and that doesn’t mean that the Hydrogen has to come from Earth once space infrastructure is in place.
By tackling challenges with hydrogen storage and transport, SLS is an investment in our future and in other parts of the green hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is very small and leaks. This is one of the biggest technical challenges wherever hydrogen is used. NASA overcomes technical and engineering challenges on large scales. Investment in hydrogen rockets is investment in green energy for the future.
Major benefits of NASA and space travel come from challenging ourselves to do things the “right” and “hard” way. Tackling these hard challenges provides technology that improves life and jumpstarts the economy across many sectors.
Going cheap-and-dirty and cutting corners is potentially dangerous for those using the cheap rockets, uses up underground organic reserves that are vital to ecosystems, and promotes a “throwaway” culture.
I should have challenged myself to reply to you the “right” and “hard” way instead of being dismissive and rude.
Thank you for writing this response. My general thoughts on hydrogen for rocketry have been that it doesn’t seem worth the trouble (temps, leaks, storage, etc), but I hadn’t considered the environmental or future angles. I’m not convinced that it’s the right choice now, but thanks for giving me something to think about.
The really annoying thing about hydrogen is that it’s most useful once you’re already in space, where the density and thrust of the fuel doesn’t matter so much and insulation is generally easier. Since all our rockets so far are built and launched from Earth’s surface hydrogen ends up being a thing that’d be really nice in concept but not so good in practice.
I wouldn’t be terribly concerned with the environmental impact of methane rocket fuel, personally. Although currently Starbase gets is methane shipped in by trucks from elsewhere, SpaceX’s ultimate goal with Starship is to land and return from Mars and they’ll need to refuel on Mars for that to work. So the long-term plan for Starbase is to build a Sabatier process methane production plant powered by solar panels, much like they’ll be building on Mars, to convert CO2 into methane. Once that’s up and running Starship will be a carbon-neutral launch vehicle.
No worries. Tbh I kind of jumped on a hydrogen rant, that was all I wanted to talk about, rather than SLS as a whole. I agree we need NASA making things for space, we definitely don’t want SpaceX to be the only player. However it bears mentioning that NASA have also contracted SpaceX to make their moon rockets, in exactly the same way they contract Boeing and others (the only difference is SpaceX already had a suitable rocket in development). So there is no sign of NASA rockets going away, if anything they have more suppliers to choose from.
Hydrogen also does have its place in combustion, and it’s good that there’s some development in this area. However, as someone who works in the electricity industry, adjacent to hydrogen ballooning into the energy markets, I’m intentionally wary of development as much of it seems to be pushed by those looking to sell more hydrogen using disengenuous claims about the reality of it being green.
You’re not being honest…
This is an ad hominem. Please, be nice here…and thank you for apologizing to @TWeaK@lemm.ee.
I mean, we’re talking about hydrogen for rockets here which is an absolutely tiny portion of global fuel consumption, wether or not we should be using it for anything else and the costs and scale of doing so is neither here nor there. ( Personally I think hydrogen powered cars are dumb)
In the context of rocket science hydrogen is just a better fuel in absolute terms. It is ~25% more efficient than methane. It’s less dense and thus needs larger tanks, but due to the square cube law that matters less and less the larger the rocket is, so on particularly large rockets like those going to the moon, hydrogen is just flat out better and leads to smaller less costly rockets if done properly.
The problem is that Boeing has been holding nasa hostage and extracting ransom, I don’t think nasa should be reliant on private companies for it’s rockets, they should have a internal department that develops and builds boosters in a similar way to how JPL works with probes and rovers. It would be costly upfront for sure, but would save money in the long run since it would prevent private companies from exploiting public interests in the future.
The SLS isn’t owned by the people ether, not really anyways, all the infrastructure and production lines are owned by Boeing which is just as bad as any of the new companies.
Personally I think NASA should just have an internal booster production team/facility like they do with rovers and probes through JPL.
It’s ludicrous to me that the consensus coming out of the space shuttle program and SLS that nasa’s designs were blamed for cost when the cost mainly came from choices made by private interests and contractors.
I hadn’t heard that take before… very interesting to learn of the influence Boeing has on NASA.
I’d recommend looking in to the cost plus contracting system that nasa used for years and that can likely be blamed for the cost over runs and delays.
Let’s just ignore the partially burned polymers and aluminum and stuff billowing out of the boosters, huh?
Elon is a shithead, but that does not make SLS a good rocket.
Natural gas can be green too. You can extract it from landfills or from bioreactors of organic waste.
But still… you’re burning hydrocarbons so you end up producing a lot of CO2 which is going straight into the atmosphere. That’s not what I’d call super green.
It’s carbon that’s already part of the carbon cycle. Like burning wood or consuming food.
The carbon to worry about is the stuff we’re extracting from underground.
And where are the bioreactors located? What would happen to that carbon if it weren’t collected by the reactors?
I agree its better than mined gas, it falls under the 3Rs, but it’s still taking carbon from the ground and releasing it into the atmosphere.
In the grand scheme of things the deus ex machina of fusion is the only long term solution.
If it’s capture from a landfill, it’d likely be released as methane directly into the atmosphere.
If it’s made from things like chaff, it often gets simply burnt and released immediately back as CO2 into the atmosphere. No difference but significant usable energy.
I was absolutely arguing the wrong side of that, sorry. I didn’t realize landfill emissions don’t stay in the ground.
https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas
The methane just breaks down into an equivalent amount of CO2 when vented anyways and until then is a much more potent greenhouse gas. That’s why it’s usually flared off apart from safety.
It’s so frustrating how expensive this thing is.
I get that SLS and Orion have insane congressional approval. And keep getting overfunded because of it. And a lot of that money would go away without them. And there’s a lot of interesting development in HLS and CLPS that wouldn’t exist without them. But it still just stinks to see how expensive SLS is and that there’s basically nothing that can or will be done about it.
Fuck SpaceX propaganda.
Are you familiar with Wernher von Braun? He was a Nazi who ran Germany’s V2 rocket program during World War II. He produced thousands of ballistic missiles intended to indiscriminately bombard British cities, they were unable to accurately target specific military sites so they were just aimed at civilian centers and let loose. Slave labor was used in their production, resulting in many thousands of innocent Jews and other concentration camp prisoners dying under hazardous conditions and bombardment of the manufacturing facilities.
After the war he went to work for NASA and was the principle designer behind the Saturn V that took humanity to the Moon. Should NASA have repudiated the Saturn V design and gone with a less capable vehicle? Should people be responding “Fuck Nazi propaganda” whenever the virtues of the Saturn V are mentioned? Or is it possible to separate the evaluation of the merits of a rocket from the evaluation of the rocket’s designer?
Elon Musk is a shitty person. The Starship is a fantastic rocket. Both of these things can be simultaneously true.
Interesting tidbit about the V2: as far as I know it’s the only weapons system that killed more people during the manufacturing process than it did in actual use. Casualties caused by V2 strikes are estimated to be around 9 000, but around 12 000 slave laborers died making them (see eg the wiki).
In any case, comparing von Braun to Musk is uncharitable towards von Braun: he actually did design rockets and knew what he was doing, where Musk is just a bigoted windbag that emits money. But I do tend to agree with your sentiment though: SpaceX has good designs, but that’s completely separate from Musk being a human turd (and his only part in it is the part where he emits money.)
Death of the
authorengineerventure capitalist?
It’s not propaganda when it’s true.
And SLS is hideously expensive compared to every other launch vehicle in history.
You can take SpaceX out of the equation and it still is a massive money spend.
Compare the cost of the entire Apollo program (adjusted for inflation) to the SLS program.
You might be surprised.
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Be(e) nice from now on at Beehaw and enjoy your three day vacation.
It looks like there are a few new articles since this one came out:
https://spacenews.com/gao-report-calls-for-more-transparency-on-sls-costs/
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/gao-nasa-not-transparent-about-unaffordable-sls-costs/
Neither of those mention SpaceX at all, and the OP article just mentions them and Blue in the context of engine prices.
There are Republicans in government too. They will always sell out to corporations over public interest.
You cannot argue with the numbers
The numbers are bullshit. All money spent on NASA goes back to the economy. And it’s all public domain technology. Fascists would love to replace that will privately controlled technology.
How is a fixed price launch contract for SpaceX that different from a cost plus contract for Boeing to build an SLS as far as money going back to the economy? I genuinely don’t get how those are meaningfully different.
How does the public domain technology actually matter, other than from an idealistic standpoint? NASA is even spinning off SLS production and management to be more private under EPOC to Deep Space Transport (Boeing+NG). They, along with Aerojet, basically get these sole-sourced, partially because of their non-public IP for making this stuff.
Meanwhile:
“As of 10 March 2023 the fiscal year 2024 (FY2024) presidential budget request was $842 billion.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Killing people is always affordable
But will that mean the ignore the sunk cost fallacy and ditch the program?
Who am I kidding, of course not. Actually launching shit was never the goal of the program in the first place.
It’s just maddening. The money could go to so many better things, but it has to get funneled to the same bloated old Shuttle contractors.
It’s called the Senate Launch System for a reason. Many components are built in strategic states to ensure support from key senators.
the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent,
lmao. what a joke.
Why?
The GAO has performed an annual review of the Space Launch System every year since 2014 and switched to reviewing the Artemis program in 2019.
Each year the GAO points out Nasa isn’t tracking any costs and Nasa argues with the GAO about the costs they assign. Then the GAO points out Nasa has no concrete plan to reduce costs, Nasa then goes nu’uh (see the articles cost reduction “objectives”).
The last two reports have focused on the RS-25 engine, last time the GAO was unhappy because an engine cost Nasa $100 million and Nasa had just granted a development contract to reduce the cost of the engine.
However if you took the headline cost of the contract and split it over planned engines it was greater than the desired cost savings. Nasa response was development costs don’t count.
Congress reviews GAO reports and decides to give SLS more money.
they’re wasting money like nobody’s business.
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How much do they spend on these rockets as compared to military spending? Compared to tax incentives and bailouts for large corporations? For dead-end pet projects for reps who are trying to pander to their demographics, or secure contracts for their buddies in the lobbying business?
This is a drop in the bucket comparatively.
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This whole discussion about hydrogen is interesting, because my industry (oil but not really and shipping but not really; it’s complicated) MUST replace fuel oil in the very near future, and we have no fucking idea what to do about it. It’s mostly the IMO (the only UN agency wired real teeth) driving this, but there are some local actions, especially in the EU affecting it now too.
No one and I mean no one has built out a non-fossil fuel based infrastructure for the ships that transport 90% of everything we consume on the planet. Right now, larger container ships seems to be moving to LNG, but some others are betting on bio methane, and some battery tech (good luck with that on anything bigger than a small ferry). And a bunch of other replacement fuels + incremental fuel savings + short tern carbon capture.
It is absoluteluy no exaggeration to say that hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe more, over the next ten years at stake, so if you want to know what’s eventually going to have the energy density to fuel rockets, look at the developments in the shipping industry. Cause ships need nearly as much of it as rockets do, just over a much longer time frame.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.
Published on Thursday, the new report (see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission.
“Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states.
The report also cites concerns about development costs of future hardware for NASA’s big-ticket rocket program, including the Exploration Upper Stage.
“Some NASA officials told us that changes to Artemis mission dates should not affect the SLS program’s cost estimate,” the report states.
“Other officials noted that the program’s cost estimate would be expected to increase to account for the delay to the Artemis IV mission, which shifted from 2026 to 2028.”
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It will be interesting how Starship works out. Till now Spacex has been highly successful doing what has been done before but with new twists mostly reusability and without the defense providers pork. Also with vision vs. status quo.
It is all cost per pound to orbit, moon, Mars, act. SLS is not it. Starship who knows yet. Amazes me how people do not want to try something new but are willimg to spend way more money on SLS.
I am baffled by the SLS supporters. Where do people think the nutty costs go. Lot of it into overpaid executives and stock holders. I guess the one plus is that it pumps more money in to key political districts and keeps things status quo.
Keep in mind too… I do not think Musk is a huge humanitarian. Nor are the owners and execs of the defense contractors that NASA usually uses.
