Veeky Forums wants to cancel this

Scaling rockets the crazy sizes (like the ITS) to point where you can carry up more than a spoonful at a time makes the most sense to me. Challenging sure, but infinitely rewarding if accomplished. It'd do wonders for our presence in space. With vehicles like the ITS, we could put space stations in orbit that'd make the ISS look like a toy – large enough that we might be able to start establishing some rudimentary manufacturing and repair capabilities in space.

It looks so pretty though...

Did you find it a shame when the Ares V program was canceled? That rocket would have been able to launch an entire ISS in one launch.

However there have been structures assembled, such as the ISS and the docking procedures of the Apollo missions.

when your probe costs $1.5 billion it doesn't matter if you send it up with 2 $250 mil atlas Vs or 1 $500 mil SLS

SLS isn't going to cost 500 mill..
SLS is going to cost billions per launch

Trump will take us to the stars

by that logic, falcon 9 costs $200 mil per launch because nasa gave spacex billions to develop it through the COTS program

>extremely costly development and cost per launch
>very little actual innovation (basically an updated saturn V)
>no real attempt to reuse components
>is made by the shittily shitty way of doing things that nasa have in which the manufacture it all in a billion billion of pieces with a billion billion of middlemen because congress said so and they need jobs for their districts.
so the end costs is usually well up to 1000 times more expensive what it actually costs

>>is made by the shittily shitty way of doing things that nasa have in which the manufacture it all in a billion billion of pieces with a billion billion of middlemen because congress said so and they need jobs for their districts.
This is like the only thing that i hope Trumpy can fix. But pretty scared that he will just cut everything to the bone because Alex Jones thinks the earth is flat or some shit.

The tweets should be funny as fuck as it all implodes though.

>Veeky Forums wants to cancel this

And focus on this. SLS is just rehashing obsolete methods and technologies.

Na. I want to cancel SpaceX though

>We figured out physics guys, let's give up spaceflight and never try anything hard again
>The machines will do everything for us
>Becomes liberal arts major

Yeah, about that...

The size of ITS isn't nearly as important as its reusability, though.

With no reusability, an ITS launch to Mars would be a single-launch mission of a 200-ton payload to Mars transfer, and the incremental launch cost alone would cost maybe $2 billion, never mind the launch payload.

The advantages over just using something like Falcon Heavy would be modest.

With reusability, an ITS launch to Mars would be a multi-launch mission of a 300-ton pressurized payload to the Mars *surface*, with the incremental cost of launches, transit vehicle, lander, and return vehicle maybe $500 million, plus the payload. On top of that, payload development would be much cheaper due to low costs for testing in space.

First of all, that's an exaggeration. The total costs of Falcon 9 haven't been upwards of $5 billion, so even if you amortize all development costs over just the flights so far it's not $200 million per flight.

Secondly, Falcon 9 is a high-flight-rate rocket. SLS is a low-flight-rate rocket. Falcon 9 has already flown more than any reasonable projection of SLS's lifetime total launches, and they're just getting the launch rate up to speed.

Thirdly, even disregarding costs prior to the first flight, the ongoing program costs of SLS will never be anywhere near as low as $500 million per flight. That figure is purely an overoptimistic estimate of the incremental cost, the cost they can save by NOT doing a flight that's possible within their program without expanding it.

Remember, the Falcon 9 price is a *price*, not a cost, and certainly not an incremental cost. The incremental cost of a Falcon 9, the amount of money they can save by not doing a launch which their program supports without expansion, is about $25 million. The sale price is meant to cover all investments and overhead, while providing a profit.

Falcon 9 took around half a billion dollars in development money before it started doing useful, working launches, and it's costing about another billion in continuing development to make it a mature reusable rocket with a heavy variant. SLS is going to cost about $20-30 billion to get to the first working (not test) launch, and they're not going to slow down the development spending when they get there or do anything more advanced than modestly increasing payload capacity and reducing probability of failure.

The launch rate is too low.

wtf this is real based trump

Elon musk is a cuck. Fuck paypal. He's a gay chode. Fuck him and his faggy cars. Fuck trump. Shit on their face.

nasa barely takes up any of the national budget.

lol I love the salt. Holy shit how pathetic.

Yes its time to understand yourself and nature. Why its functioning in the way. Why theres so much greed and killing in the world.

it's like you guys think some people putting resources into space travel suddenly means we aren't putting any time and energy into other issues. get off Veeky Forums if you really are that stupid.

What's the use of making that if it explodes 1 out of every 9 flights?

but they've done 28 launches with 1 failure...

Literally useless without fixing our present state and planet up first. The only use it will have after that is research (mostly regarding our own bodies) and collecting resources (which is extremely far off).

truly delusional

Space Exploration should be public, a worldwide effort, and take its time. Not rush tests and make rocket explode.

Meme country, meme President, meme advisors.

I found this very surprising, considering Musk badmouthed Trump during the campaign.

If you want a space guy that is really on Trump's wavelength, look at Robert Bigelow, a hotel magnate who wants to build inflatable space hotels. He's about as rational as Trump, too, since he believes in space aliens.

Musk didn't badmouth Trump...

>I found this very surprising, considering Musk badmouthed Trump during the campaign.
It's all relative

"I think a bit strongly that Trump is probably not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States."

Do you think that even makes the top 1,000,000 list of negative things said about Trump? Musk's statement is practically pro-Trump by default if placed on a sliding scale against pic related

Pretty sure thats just him being autistic over global warming and spouting the "safe" opinion

Musk may be a beta-cuck but I'll base my respect for him on the assumption he's a closet white nationalist

Like I said, I'll take it. It's mild as fuck compared to the shit flung between Trump and Jeff Bezos.

Musk also has a definite in, being close friends with Trump advisor Peter Thiel.

Aside from that, I'm pretty sure he's already in a perfect position to win Trump's favor just by saying "We're going to build better rockets and solar panels and batteries than the Chinese"

>Elon Musk has joined Donald Trump’s advisory council despite having dismissed Mr Trump as “not the right man for the job” during the election.

>Musk's statement is practically pro-Trump by default

No it isn't you fucking idiot

He's always tried to stay neutral on politics, and he lives in Cali
I'll accept that as him wanting to say more than just "no comment"

You seem unaware of what year it is

hahaha
he types that shit after a full year of slander & libel out of the washington post???

Yeah. Pretty cool huh?

I think it should be entertaining. Imagine him and Alex Jones sitting down and discussing..well anything.
They are like matter-antimatter when it comes to space-related stuff.

Musk is a foreign proponent of alternate energy who has says wacky things like we should have a basic regardless of employment, or that someday it'll be illegal for humans to drive because it'll be safer that way. Do you really think he was secretly rooting for Trump?

Musk is a white South African who was hospitalized as a school child after being thrown down a flight of stairs, do you think he really loves black people?

I think unmanned exploration is just fine. There are plenty of experiments to be done in freefall as well. Manned exploration is a waste of resources, better just wait until the tech is there to build sustainable colonies. I would love to see us send unmanned probes to other stars as well.

>Manned exploration is a waste of resources, better just wait until the tech is there to build sustainable colonies
It already is

The biggest barrier to a city on Mars is our ability to throw a shitload of equipment at Mars instead of one RC car at a time - hence SpaceX's pièce de résistance being a fuckhuge dragon dildo that can haul 400 tons to Mars compared to the current one ton limit

My question is this: Why can't we just build our first colony in LEO? It requires less delta v, and if there is an emergency you can just slow down some landers and you're back to earth in a couple hours. An emergency on mars or luna?
>this is mission control, we'll tell your families.

No gravity, no in situ resources, you have to constantly keep reboosting the damn thing

On Mars you can forge your own ore, refine your own fuel, grow your own crops, eventually even expand your original habitat and have kids to populate it

Aside from that, if this ultimate rocket works as intended, it would be able to throw an object as large as the ISS into orbit in one flight, so you could play whatever LEO games you want at much lower cost as well.

>no in situ resources
Yeah, a total lack of matter is generally considered inconvenient for a self-sustaining colony.

On the other hand, an industrial/tourist "space city" in LEO makes a lot of sense once the launch costs go low enough. Think of ITS launching (and optionally returning) 300 tons or 300 passengers every day.

>you have to constantly keep reboosting the damn thing
Not really true. ISS isn't just in LEO, it's in a weird low orbit, due to the combined limitations of the space shuttle and the inconveniences of Soviet launch locations. Higher LEO orbits decay much more slowly and basically don't need to be reboosted.

At a 70 ton payload it's $78,737/kg to LEO

At a 130 ton payload it's $42,396/kg to LEO

That might actually be the worst rocket I've ever seen what the fuck is NASA doing

The Space Shuttle did $18,000 to LEO and was considered disgracefully expensive

>Do you really think he was secretly rooting for Trump?
Maaaaybe. Practically everybody thought Hillary was going to win.

Musk is an industrialist, one of the few who managed to be building factories in America during this period of globalism and environmental over-regulation. He knows how to play politics to be allowed to do things.

For the last 8 years, Democrats have been in charge of the executive branch, and for longer than that, liberals have controlled the EPA while globalism-friendly Republicans joined Democrats in letting American industry be gutted so their rich buddy-buds could make a short-term profit moving production to low-wage China and Mexico.

>>no real attempt to reuse components

the point is to make a big thing that can put big things into space, a thing which the shuttle cannot do

>>is made by the shittily shitty way of doing things that nasa have in which the manufacture it all in a billion billion of pieces with a billion billion of middlemen because congress said so and they need jobs for their districts.

Ares I was fucked and shitcanned for a reason. Ares V (which is what the SLS is) has been going along fine.

Reuse is the next big thing though

Soon a rocket that can't land back on the pad will be worthless - SpaceX AND Blue Origin both intend to have almost every booster they launch fly back home for reuse

>next big thing

No, the next big thing is a moon base, manned mars missions and bigger probes all of which greatly require the SLS's added capacity.

>Soon a rocket that can't land back on the pad will be worthless

You clearly do not understand the value of a spacecraft, yes reusability is nice but what matters is it's capacity. ULA, SpaceX and BO don't have a vehicle that can put big payloads into orbit like SLS can. This is especially important if NASA begins doing manned moon missions again.

For example, look at the space shuttle. It was plenty reusable, the only item discarded was the big orange fuel tank (which with modifications probably could have been reusable too). However it's pitiful payload capacity (compared to the Saturn V) hugely limited the scope of NASA's missions.

The Falcon 9 Heavy and New Glenn will both approach the capacity of the SLS Block 1, and they both may well be in service before it, and they're both the kind of craft that can be launched once a month whereas the SLS will go up once every two years if it's lucky

The Space Shuttle's reusability was was absolutely miserable - early projections hoped a Shuttle mission could be reflown as soon as 48 hours after landing, but in the end the thing had to practically be rebuilt like a ship of Theseus for months after every mission.

Block 1 but not Block 2. Again, capacity matters.

>The Space Shuttle's reusability was was absolutely miserable - early projections hoped a Shuttle mission could be reflown as soon as 48 hours after landing, but in the end the thing had to practically be rebuilt like a ship of Theseus for months after every mission.

So it's the turnaround time that matters more than reusability now? You're moving the goalposts. Also, even then only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced, it was plenty reusable.

>So it's the turnaround time that matters more than reusability now? You're moving the goalposts.
It's a symptom, it took months because of the amount of work and material that needed to be replaced. That $450 million per launch cost wasn't just paying to gas it up

I'm not shitposting here, there were very high hopes for how easily reusable the Space Shuttle could be and they never came to life. If the thing worked as well as NASA hoped it would have been a $650/kg LEO platform instead of a $18,000 one - that absolutely disgraceful cost overrun went somewhere.

>ULA, SpaceX and BO don't have a vehicle that can put big payloads into orbit like SLS can.
Falcon Heavy can replace SLS for any useful mission. Some might require a multiple-launch architecture, but SLS isn't big enough for meaningful beyond-LEO single-launch missions anyway, and FH will have a much higher flight rate and lower cost.

Besides, Orion is a pig. Way overweight for beyond-LEO missions as a launch/return capsule (about 2.5 times the dry mass of Dragon 2, which is comparable to the Apollo capsule), without being designed for or capable of serving as a habitat for long trips, like a Mars mission.

Dragon 2 on Falcon Heavy can go more places than Orion on SLS, due to all the extra dead weight. A moon landing architecture would be much easier to put together with Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 than SLS/Orion.

>look at the space shuttle. It was plenty reusable
Opinion discarded.

>only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced
You have no idea what you're talking about. The shuttle didn't use "ablator tiles", it used silica gel tiles which weren't supposed to need replacement, but which often cracked or fell off. This is a general theme of how the shuttle actually worked compared to how it was supposed to work. The repair and refurbishment of "reusable components" needed after each flight were so extensive that they approached the cost of building an entire new shuttle.

Meanwhile, the fuel tank was such a large, high-performance piece of aerospace hardware that it alone cost more than an entire expendable rocket with the cargo capacity of the shuttle (for instance: Proton), since a conventional expendable rocket would be much smaller, even though it would need expensive parts like a guidance system and engines.

More like Zubrin.

so you admit to moving the goalposts

I said it had poor reusability and stated that it took a long time and cost a lot of money and manpower to prepare it for reuse, what would you define poor reusability as?

>Falcon Heavy can replace SLS for any useful mission.

FH max capacity: 54 metric tons
SLS Block 1 capacity: 70 metric tons
SLS Block 2 capacity: 130 metric tons

This means FH is not taking people to the Moon and not taking big probes into orbit. This is a major constraint.

>without being designed for or capable of serving as a habitat for long trips, like a Mars mission.

Orion can plug into a larger vehicle and be used as a command module, just like the Dragon or CST-100. This is desirable as it gives a wide variate of vehicles (ie a space station, space tug, moon base or martian transfer vehicle) a standard command deck.

Stop being a retard, please. Nobody's "moving goalposts".

In the end, the shuttle was partially reusable in a narrow technical sense just to be able to call it reusable, when it had failed at achieving every useful benefit of reusability.

The point of reusability is more launches at lower per-kg cost, but a program based on expendables could have done more launches than the shuttle at a lower cost, even without progress in expendable tech from when the shuttle program was initiated.

The shuttle was the first try ever at a reusable launch vehicle, and when it was a failure, instead of going back to the drawing board like sane people, NASA continued to operate it for three decades with negligible improvement.

The shuttle is not a useful example of the cost-benefit proposition of reusable rockets in general. It was an absurd, deeply corrupt government spending program.

Definition of "reusable": capable of being used again or repeatedly.

From this an object "reusability" is determined by it's ability to be used multiple times without replacement. The STS did well here, as only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced. These are "dumb" things that are not technically complicated (compared to the larger vehicle) and disposable. Which is to say the system overall was extremely reusable.

The point of my argument is that reusablity is far secondary to capacity. A big rocket can take big things to space and benefits from the economy of scale. A small rocket has more opportunities (namely on re-entry) to be destroyed mid-mission and not complete it. That's not to say it shouldn't be pursued, but NASA should be focused on pushing the limit of actually doing things in space and let their contractors figure out how to make it economically feasible.

>Orion can plug into a larger vehicle and be used as a command module, just like the Dragon or CST-100. This is desirable as it gives a wide variate of vehicles (ie a space station, space tug, moon base or martian transfer vehicle) a standard command deck.
You've aptly described five excellent use cases.

Do you really think the SLS will be launched with five super-heavy payloads over the entire course of its existence?

>the shuttle was partially reusable in a narrow technical sense

The only part that had to be replaced were the abalator tiles, and the only disposable part was a fuel tank. The shuttle was plenty reusable and considering this a "narrow" technicality is incredibly stupid. Using your definition then SpaceX's vehicles aren't truly "reusable" either, since their second stage is discarded. In fact, SpaceX is wasting huge amounts of money on a fancy landing system that could have easily been serviced by a parachute.

>The point of reusability is more launches at lower per-kg cost

And lower per-kg cost can better be accomplished by building a bigger vehicle, as NASA is doing. It's all well and good SpaceX is making reusable vehicles but their aim is LEO not the Moon or other planets.

At once? Of course not. But in individual launches, yes. For starters, 130 mt gives us bigger probes and probes that can go further into space. For example, a Pluto or Europa lander. And if NASA does actually start doing things on the Moon (say a fuel refinery) then 100+ mt launches will become routine.

>The only part that had to be replaced were the abalator tiles, and the only disposable part was a fuel tank. The shuttle was plenty reusable and considering this a "narrow" technicality is incredibly stupid.
I feel like I'm talking to a wall here. Refurbishing the shuttle was disastrously expensive, an order of magnitude more expensive and difficult than it was meant to be by design. Every shuttle refurbishment involved a similar amount of cost, labor and time to building a new shuttle from scratch, it never delivered on it's own promise for reusability.

>But in individual launches, yes.
That's where my doubt is, because right now NASA is projecting a launch every two to five years while other rocket platforms are getting ready to move on a monthly basis. And none of them will be 130 ton payloads yet, which by current projections apparently won't come until the 2030s.

>FH max capacity: 54 metric tons
First of all, that's a lowball estimate, it has stayed the same even after Falcon 9's advertised max capacity increased 50%. They'll announce a larger capacity after Falcon Heavy's first flight. Plus they always have the option of upgrading the upper stage. Their Air Force grant to develop Raptor was as an engine for a Falcon Heavy upper stage.

>SLS Block 2 capacity: 130 metric tons
This is a fantasy number. Block 2 isn't even on the roadmap for flight earlier than 2030. They're not going to do that. NASA's only pretending there will be an SLS Block 2 because the act authorizing SLS development requires it to have more performance than Saturn V, and to use shuttle parts, and to launch by December 31, 2016. They can't get that performance and also use shuttle parts and also launch within a few years of the target date. So they pretend the next generation of NASA engineers will do something better and it will be called the same thing.

>This means FH is not taking people to the Moon and not taking big probes into orbit.
SLS isn't taking people to the moon either. It's not powerful enough for a single-launch moon mission (certainly not with the overweight Orion capsule), and it doesn't have the flight rate for a multiple-launch mission.

I've already explained about multi-launch missions. It only takes a couple of launches for FH to match SLS, and FH will fly much more than twice as often as SLS and for far less than half the cost. I've seen some very reasonable, conservative three-launch FH/Dragon moon landing architectures.

>Orion can plug into a larger vehicle and be used as a command module, just like the Dragon or CST-100.
...except Orion is three times heavier than either of those. If it's going to plug into a larger vehicle, there's no reason for it to be so big.

>130 tons by 2030
Wow, by the time the thing actually flies there will be higher capacity, less expensive competitors available from Blue Origin, SpaceX and the Chinese.

And I would assume that with the new generation of super heavies the Russians would also throw their hat in the ring, and maybe even Arianespace.

Russia got rolled back a couple years by sanctions and recession but they've got an 80 to 150 ton payload vehicle on the drawing board for the mid to late 2020s

What do you expect when it's 'reusing' Space Shuttle parts.

I think people are optimistic in predicting a superheavy performance from Blue Origin's giant rocket. It seems to me more likely that with their reuse strategy (more conservative than SpaceX, less mass-efficient vehicle, more aerodynamic features, cautious hover-landings), it will just be that inefficient, and this is the smallest thing that gives them confidence they'll be able to put a passenger capsule in orbit.

>it's 'reusing' Space Shuttle parts.
They're literally using the engines off of the retired space shuttles for SLS. After the first few flights, they have to go to new, unproven engines that are still in development.

>because right now NASA is projecting a launch every two to five years while other rocket platforms are getting ready to move on a monthly basis

NASA is also planning on doing manned missions outside of LEO, whereas the three private companies are sticking to LEO or probes. This means longer, and more hazardous, missions.

>First of all, that's a lowball estimate

That is the highest claimed estimate on SpaceX's website.

>This is a fantasy number. Block 2 isn't even on the roadmap for flight earlier than 2030.

That is the highest claimed estimate on NASA's website.

>NASA's only pretending there will be an SLS Block 2

Having it on every piece of material since 1999 doesn't seem like "pretend", especially when Block 2 allows NASA to put on bigger and newer boosters to ensure 130 mt (143 US tons, higher than the Saturn V) capacity. Then again if you want to throw that out the window let's also get clear that Elon Musk's 2024 ITS Mars mission is probably not going to happen.

Russia's program got severely cut back due to the war in Ukraine which caused Sealaunch to go on hiatus. The oil crash is still a major inhibitor to funding. China's program is a copy of Russia's and probably won't go any further especially as their economy melts down. And the ESA will be using Orion for all manned missions.

>Elon Musk's 2024 ITS Mars mission is probably not going to happen.
I agree there but the odds are much better that some 300 to 500 ton rocket gets fielded by 2030

A vehicle larger than the Saturn V hasn't yet been built. SLS is on the cutting edge in this regard. So to build a vehicle 2-3 times larger than SLS within ten years is highly unlikely.

However unlikely, a man can dream

>That is the highest claimed estimate on SpaceX's website.
13.5 tons to LEO was the highest claimed estimate on SpaceX's website for Falcon 9 until Falcon 9 FT flew. Then it shot up over 20 tons.

>every piece of material since 1999
There was no SLS until 2010, let alone a "Block 2" plan. They were going to build Ares V until they realized such a high-performance rocket was infeasible with shuttle components.

If they were going to convert the shuttle to an expendable, they should have just changed it as little as necessary, keeping a side-mounted payload like Energia, and reserving a tank stretch and the five-segment boosters for optional later upgrades. That way, they could have begun flights in time for the retirement of the shuttle, and would have had over a 70-ton capacity.

Going to a top-mounted payload and adding more main engines required a radical redesign. The SSMEs barely worked as a trio. When they first put them together, after having tested them singly, they shook each other apart with their vibrations and needed redesign.

When first announced, SLS was supposed to launch by the end of 2016. Now it's here, and they still haven't even tested four SSMEs together on one stand.

> The STS did well here, as only it's fuel tank and abalator tiles had to be replaced.
The tens of thousands of tiles had to be inspected and hand replaced
This was a huge cost & manpower sink
They were not ablative tiles, they were supposed to last forever

The engines had to be removed from the vehicle and refurbished
The boosters were not reusable, thats like 300-400 million dollars worth of hardware thrown away for a launch.

>but NASA should be focused on pushing the limit of actually doing things in space and let their contractors figure out how to make it economically feasible.

Except you can't DO things in space without getting there in the first place. That is 9/10ths out of the difficulty of space, for now. And the contractors have to do what NASA tells them to do, they aren't interested in lowering costs.

>SLS is on the cutting edge in this regard.
SLS isn't bigger than Saturn V. It's not "cutting edge" in any regard. It's a floundering attempt to recreate the capabilities of the 1960s using parts from a 1970s rocket.

>So to build a vehicle 2-3 times larger than SLS within ten years is highly unlikely.
Saturn V is nowhere near the upper limit of the size of a practical rocket. Its design was finalized in 1962, a mere five years after Sputnik, then it flew its first flight in 1967, and put the first man on the moon in 1969.

In many ways, rockets get easier as they get bigger. Thicker-walled tanks are more rugged and fault-tolerant. Due to square-cube law there's less mass penalty for surface treatments and insulation. Air resistance matters less for a bigger rocket. It takes longer to turn, so the engine gimballing doesn't need to be as quick. Guidance systems are pretty easy these days, but it's still an advantage that on a larger rocket you don't need a larger guidance system.

SpaceX has announced an entirely plausible plan for building a 500-ton-to-LEO rocket in the next five years, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if something four times bigger than Saturn V can be done for much cheaper after half a century of technological progress.

>It's a floundering attempt to recreate the capabilities of the 1960s using parts from a 1970s rocket.

70s era engine with modern computers is still far better than either the Shuttle or a 1960s rocket with 1960s era computers. And again, it'll have a slightly higher capacity than the Saturn V which gives it the edge.

>Saturn V is nowhere near the upper limit of the size of a practical rocket.

True, but thus far nobody has successfully built anything bigger. The last Saturn V launch was in 2973 and nobody has exceeded it since.

>SpaceX has announced an entirely plausible plan for building a 500-ton-to-LEO rocket in the next five years, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if something four times bigger than Saturn V can be done for much cheaper after half a century of technological progress.

I certainly believe SpaceX can do it, just not in ten years let alone five.

>And the contractors have to do what NASA tells them to do, they aren't interested in lowering costs.

who cares about costs? NASA isn't a business.

It still has a fixed budget

If they could launch 10 times or 100 times the payload for the same price
Thats kinda a big benefit you know

>70s era engine with modern computers is still far better than either the Shuttle or a 1960s rocket with 1960s era computers.
On a superheavy rocket, modern computers aren't a significant advantage, unless you want to do something like SpaceX and land it. There's very little use for computing power on an ascending rocket, and the mass penalty of a transistorized computer is nothing on a superheavy.

>it'll have a slightly higher capacity than the Saturn V
No it won't. I've explained why SLS Block 2 isn't a real thing.

>nobody has successfully built anything bigger
It only took them a few years to build one that big in the 60s, and nobody has really been trying to go bigger. They're not hard, they're expensive and hard to justify.

NASA's not having trouble building a superheavy, they're having trouble working within congress's pork agenda.

>I certainly believe SpaceX can do it, just not in ten years let alone five.
I don't believe they could do it in much more than five. The effort would collapse. It's hard to keep a good team together for long without major successes, not to mention the investors.

It might not be reliably reusable in five years, but it should be flying.

I'm think it'll be faster than 5 years if Musk gets a contract to produce it from Trump

>payloads can be launched in pieces
this faggot thinks that the ISS is more cost-effective than the BA-2100

arent the solid boosters super dangerous in case of an explosion?

keep your damnable morals off my science board /pol/ fag