Trump's SLS Plan Just Got The Beatdown

The SLS isn't THAT terrible as a rocket, but the US government needs to actually fund it at a level beyond "enough to keep the lights on" if they ever want it to fly.

>Trump's SLS Plan
It wasn't a plan, I think it was more of a rhetorical question, the beginning of a strategy to cancel SLS.

It's important to remember that the president isn't a king, just an executive. Officially, the role of the president is to execute the policy determined by congress. That's why congress can remove the president, but the president can't remove anyone from congress (rather, the senate and the house can remove their own members).

While Bush was enthusiastic for Constellation (before it failed so miserably), Obama didn't choose SLS/Orion and I doubt Trump likes it much either. Rather, there are people in congress who fight hard for it as a pork project, not caring about the results, only about the continued flow of money to the same contractors who worked on the shuttle.

So Trump's only way to end SLS and free up that funding for more productive purposes is to subtly work toward a situation where it's politically infeasible to support SLS.

Trump asking NASA if they can put a crew on the first SLS launch draws attention to just how long it will be before they can launch a crew, how much it will cost to do so, and how little they'll actually be doing when they do. He got them to come out and admit they're not actually going to fly until late 2019.

The next big blow will be Falcon Heavy. There will be surprises after its first flight. They're going to uprate its payload capacity figures after getting flight experience. They might announce two-launch mission capability.

Then will come Trump's next question: "Hey NASA, since you can't do EM-1 with crew, can you do something equivalent to EM-1 with crew, at lower cost and earlier than EM-1 is scheduled, if you don't use SLS/Orion?" The answer can only come back, "Yes, it can be done in 2018, will cost a few percent of the price, and in fact, we could do the whole program up to EM-5 with less than we would have spent on EM-1 before EM-1 would happen."

>implying throwing money at the problem will automatically fix the issue

NASA needs to just cut that turd loose, after the saturn V days NASA hasn't built a decent rocket

NASA is filled with old fuckers who would rather never launch than risk stuff
Gotta remember that this SLS rocket started with the constellation program, they have spent BILLIONS on it without any results, still years away from launching.

The NASA that was capable of doing stuff died in the 70's when Apollo ended, though even Apollo was a stupid makework program

>The SLS isn't THAT terrible as a rocket, but the US government needs to actually fund it at a level beyond "enough to keep the lights on" if they ever want it to fly.
$23 billion.

That's the GAO estimate of what SLS/Orion is going to cost up to EM-1, an unmanned test launch to nowhere interesting, and they've been getting the money. That's not getting SLS to some kind of efficient production mode, that's just the first, incomplete prototype. They'll still need to develop the real upper stage for it.

That's money spent developing an option that will never make sense to use.

NASA is getting ridiculous amounts of money for SLS. They're just using it in spectacularly inefficient ways to build something entirely worthless.

>Trump's SLS Plan
Lets not get ahead of our self and call each whim he gets while raiding Twitter for "plans"

I love America, I really do. But it drives me nuts the way we prioritize our spending. We have all the money in the world for bailing out banks, giving tax cuts to the super rich, and bombing the crap out of third world shit holes, but we cant scrape together the money for a proper space program. Its depressing.

NASA gets tons of money, even if you doubled their budget they wouldn't be spending it better

When the private sector regularly does shit for 1/10th that NASA does, you know money is being spent poorly.

NASA is a dog and pony show at this point anyway, right?

they're going to need to clean house and fill the place with actual engineers before they can pull off a manned mission

>propaganda
feels bad for you man

Can't even tell what you're trying to say.

It wasn't a concrete plan, just a question to see if it could be done (it would look good to see astronauts flying on it and to the moon). The paper said it didn't make financial sense to do so it wasn't going to happen.

Honestly, i hope sls gets the ask, but Congress likes the pork. Falcon Heavy needs to be flying multiple missions outside of orbit before there is enough leverage to cancel. It still is too small part of the budget to expend political capital on.

19 billion is a fucking laughable figure in a 4 trillion federal spending

>return
j e j

>I can't build a car for 25,000 dollars because matt damon made a lot of money last year
THIS IS HOW RETARDED YOU SOUND

...and yet it's more money than everything that has passed through SpaceX's hands so far, plus the amount they say they'd need to build ITS and put men on Mars.

There's no defendable reason to give free taxpayer money to SpaceX for their Mars project.

There's no defensible reason to give free taxpayer money to NASA for their rocket to nowhere.

There are very good reasons to pay SpaceX to land American astronauts on Mars. One of them is that it's quite an affordable amount of money, and they're likely to land someone else's astronauts on Mars if America won't pay.

>here are very good reasons to pay SpaceX to land American astronauts on Mars. One of them is that it's quite an affordable amount of money

The golden age of science was during the 20th century, when science spending became more centralized for political/social/ideological reasons.

Now China has taken the scepter, and due to the state's focus on achieving certain scientific objectives, humans will indeed return to the moon... Hopefully the new cold war with China will make western leaders pour more money into state science projects so we can see another scientific revolution.

SpaceX would require a good deal less money to land men on Mars than NASA is spending to send an empty capsule into orbit around the moon.

Why?
1) They use modern technology for everything, while NASA is sticking with 1960s and 1970s technology for their actual flight hardware.
2) They do merit hiring and fire poor performers, while NASA does diversity hiring, clings to near-retirees, and finds it almost impossible to fire anyone for less than gross incompetence.
3) They carefully pick contractors, negotiate with them for good prices, look hard at the quality and timeliness of their work, and replace them or bring their work in-house whenever it's beneficial, while NASA is stuck with depending on politically-connected contractors no matter how late, poor-quality, or expensive their work is.
4) They build reusable rockets, with an honest emphasis on reducing costs by doing so, while NASA has given up on reusability, after pursuing it dishonestly and using their first try for decades after it was obvious the shuttle didn't save money.
5) They have an integrated design process, where they try to make everything fit together elegantly and be useful for many things, and one man at the top makes the final decisions, while NASA has a lot of people with using political influence to get their own work included and funded, so they end up with horrible cobble-job designs.

So for less money, in less time, SpaceX can develop a much larger rocket, with advanced features like reusability, in-orbit propellant transfer, and upper stage / crew habitat / lander / return vehicle integration, which will be faster to build and cost far less per unit, let alone per flight.

With a 500-ton pressurized load to the Mars surface, visiting Mars becomes easy.

Remember that SpaceX has been given NASA's work before, after NASA failed from incompetence. Orion was supposed to fly on Ares I, to resupply ISS and rotate crew.

Yea if Trump wants anything to happen at NASA in his 8 years he's going to need to appoint some guy that can fire most of their employees

The money for SLS exists to create jobs in Alabama, not to send people around the Moon.

Without that political motivation, the money dries up.

If SpaceX wants the USG to pay for their Mars rocket (lets put aside the ethical question of taxpayers paying them to develop a service that they plan to commercialize), they need to find some friends in congress. This is especially difficult due to the fact that SpaceX is based in California, and representatives from California are enormous pussies compared to the ones from less populous states.
Elon should have thought twice about deciding to set up shop in California rather than in the South.

I don't see why you'd want to cancel SLS when its existence will create additional high-profile cargo missions to the Moon that SpaceX can profit from.

>when its existence will create the need for* additional high-profile cargo missions

Adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget in the Apollo years was about $22 to $23 billion

Their ability to spend so much money and do fucking nothing is astonishing

Adjusted for inflation, the cost of SLS (the rocket) is less than the cost of the Saturn V (the rocket); lets not even get started on the Apollo program costs as a whole.

>Adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget in the Apollo years was about $22 to $23 billion
Wrong.

You mean other than Cassini, Juno, New Horizons, Voyager, Curiosity, ISS?

I told the NASA fags that they can't do it.

NASA is a useless .org for manned spaceflight.

The US space program rode on the coattails on their Nazi pets, with them dead, we probably won't even make it back to the moon.

If anything its over funded.
If they were THAT desperate to keep the shuttle porks fed they could have just went with shuttle-c design and call it day instead of that horrid spare parts frankenstein that is SLS. That would have implied there is some semblance of competence in NASA and those who make the decisions though.

The best part is the maiden voyages of that firecracker are scheduled for somewhere around the time musk is supposed to build that ITS kerbal rocket thing... I'm not redditorfag sucking his dick but if I were to make bets which one is more likely to fly, I know I won't be putting my money on the sls.

>The money for SLS exists to create jobs in Alabama, not to send people around the Moon.
>Without that political motivation, the money dries up.
Not true. The money for NASA's manned space program comes from public support and interest in space exploration. It gets diverted to "jobs in Alabama" (a lot of it actually goes to corporate profits for companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin) because the public also doesn't pay much attention to what NASA is actually doing.

>I don't see why you'd want to cancel SLS when its existence will create additional high-profile cargo missions to the Moon that SpaceX can profit from.
This is a stupid argument. First of all, SLS doesn't go "to the moon". It doesn't even go to low lunar orbit. It goes to a high lunar orbit, which is comparable to going to an Earth-moon lagrange point. Secondly, using SpaceX to send stuff there would undermine the justification for SLS.

Most importantly, a handful of Falcon Heavy launches in the mid-2020s would be basically irrelevant to SpaceX's business, compared to being hired by the US government at a fraction of the cost of SLS/Orion to land men on Mars, which becomes possible if SLS/Orion gets cancelled.

>>Adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget in the Apollo years was about $22 to $23 billion
>Wrong.
Take the average, not the peak, Einstein. They also had years with under $10 billion during the Apollo program. It was an 11-year program with 6 years above typical post-Apollo NASA budgets, 2 years well below, and 3 pretty average ones.

>Adjusted for inflation, the cost of SLS (the rocket) is less than the cost of the Saturn V (the rocket)
You can't say that. SLS hasn't flown yet, and won't for years. All of their past cost and schedule predictions have proven overoptimistic. Besides, it also does less than Saturn V, and it would be ridiculous to settle for 1960s results after half a century of technological progress.

That's with starting roughly from 0 and getting people to the Moon in 10 years. SLS, on the other side...

>The money for NASA's manned space program comes from public support and interest in space exploration. It gets diverted to "jobs in Alabama" (a lot of it actually goes to corporate profits for companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin) because the public also doesn't pay much attention to what NASA is actually doing.
Not true.
NASA funding has increased by as much as $3 billion in the 2010s, for the purpose of funding SLS.

>This is a stupid argument. First of all, SLS doesn't go "to the moon". It doesn't even go to low lunar orbit. It goes to a high lunar orbit, which is comparable to going to an Earth-moon lagrange point. Secondly, using SpaceX to send stuff there would undermine the justification for SLS.
Are you stupid?
NASA's plan is to build the Deep Space Gateway using SLS. They issued a request for information last year on potential commercial cargo capabilities to resupply this station.

>Most importantly, a handful of Falcon Heavy launches in the mid-2020s would be basically irrelevant to SpaceX's business, compared to being hired by the US government at a fraction of the cost of SLS/Orion to land men on Mars, which becomes possible if SLS/Orion gets cancelled.
Never going to happen. It's politically infeasible for the reasons I stated above, not to mention that it would be more morally reprehensible than SLS.

>Take the average, not the peak, Einstein. They also had years with under $10 billion during the Apollo program. It was an 11-year program with 6 years above typical post-Apollo NASA budgets, 2 years well below, and 3 pretty average ones.
Look at the table, moron. NASA's budget during the Apollo program was higher than today's budget (which is $3 billion higher than normal) for 11 straight years, sometimes nearly 3 times higher. NASA's budget then was nearly entirely dedicated to human spaceflight, whereas today only 20% is dedicated to HSF.

(1/2)

>Their ability to spend so much money and do fucking nothing is astonishing

fucking ISS costs 4 billion a year and that's a congress mandated figure, not something NASA pulled out of their ass

>You can't say that. SLS hasn't flown yet, and won't for years. All of their past cost and schedule predictions have proven overoptimistic.
SLS should launch in 2019, and we know how much it will cost by then. Even throughout the 2020s and early 2030s, it still costs less than Saturn V.

>Besides, it also does less than Saturn V
Block 1B (i.e. the operational version) has 86% the Lunar throw capacity of Saturn V.

>and it would be ridiculous to settle for 1960s results after half a century of technological progress.
We haven't been able to replicate those "1960s results" for nearly 50 years.

>That's with starting roughly from 0 and getting people to the Moon in 10 years. SLS, on the other side...
see >NASA's budget then was nearly entirely dedicated to human spaceflight, whereas today only 20% is dedicated to HSF

ISS has cost $160 billion in total
It's not exactly the model for "smaller segments and distributed launch = cheaper" that the Falcon Heavy advocates like to throw around.

>>>Adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget in the Apollo years was about $22 to $23 billion
>>Wrong.
>Take the average, not the peak,
By the way, it comes out to about $27 billion, which is higher than $23 billion, but still only about 50% higher than recent NASA budgets.

Taking into account technological advancement (for instance, a lot of what NASA spent money on in the Apollo Program was computers and workarounds for not having fast, cheap computers), NASA's capabilities in manned spaceflight certainly shouldn't be reduced because of their current budget alone, compared to the Apollo era.

>starting roughly from 0
In fairness, NASA took over the military's manned spaceflight program (including a moon program) already in progress, which had taken over Nazi Germany's rocket program, which had been based on earlier theoretical and practical work dating back to the late 19th century.

When NASA was founded, they already had:
- orbital launch capability
- several competing orbital rocket projects nearing completion
- liquid hydrogen technology, including the RL10
- space-storable propellants
- RP-1 propellant
- the F-1 engine used on the first stage of Saturn V
- detailed plans for not only visiting the moon, but building a base there
- basic designs for life-support systems and space suits

NASA, quite frankly, fucked up what they were given, turning a moon base plan into flags and footprints, at much higher cost. The amount of money they were given, and turning it over to the civil bureaucracy rather than the military, made it a magnet for careerists and profiteers. Parasites swarmed over it, at the same time as the public was overwhelmed with the illusion of supercompetence by this brand new agency accomplishing amazing things seemingly out of nowhere (actually just showing up at the ends of programs which predated its existence to take credit).

>ISS has cost $160 billion in total
>It's not exactly the model for "smaller segments and distributed launch = cheaper" that the Falcon Heavy advocates like to throw around.
I agree that modular is a bit overrated but the Falcon Heavy will have an LEO payload of 64 tons and the SLS will have an LEO payload of 70 tons so I don't understand what one can do that the other would have to piecemeal

And there wasn't a single ISS module over 20 tons, was there?

>NASA's plan is to build the Deep Space Gateway using SLS.
...starting in the mid-2020s, AFTER SpaceX's ITS is supposed to already be done, and a handful of launches would be peanuts at that point.

>They issued a request for information last year on potential commercial cargo capabilities to resupply this station.
They also did a study on putting crew on EM-1. It's just theater.

>NASA's budget during the Apollo program was higher than today's budget (which is $3 billion higher than normal) for 11 straight years
Look at the table yourself, idiot. The Apollo program started in 1961 and ended in 1972. '61 and '62 are under $10 billion.

>SLS should launch in 2019, and we know how much it will cost by then.
Should. *Late* 2019. And that's "we know how much it *should* cost by then". It will almost certainly slip to 2020, and exceed cost estimates. The latest EM-1 estimated launch date is still two and a half years away, and the schedule always slips, never gets pushed forward.

>Block 1B (i.e. the operational version) has 86% the Lunar throw capacity of Saturn V.
So when it comes to cost and schedule, you want to talk about EM-1, but when it comes to performance, Block 1B is "the operational version"? So SLS will be "non-operational" for at least another five years, then.

Anyway, even if they hit that 86%, that's less than 100%, and Orion is twice as heavy as the Apollo capsule, designed for two-launch Ares I/V missions with near double Saturn V's performance.

>We haven't been able to replicate those "1960s results" for nearly 50 years.
SLS is the continuation of the first attempt to do so (Constellation).

>ISS has cost $160 billion in total
>It's not exactly the model for "smaller segments and distributed launch = cheaper" that the Falcon Heavy advocates like to throw around.
Dumbest argument ever. They weren't breaking it down to fit it on a cheap vehicle, they were making excuses to fly the most expensive launch vehicle a lot.

>64 tons
literally nothing. We are going nowhere fast until we get a space elevator set up. Its impossible to actually build real deep space vessels until then.

SLS block 1b will have a TLI capability of 38.5 tons, whereas FH will have an (expendable) capability somewhere between 17 and 20 tons.

SLS will never be used to launch stuff into LEO, and FH can never launch 64 tons to LEO because it cannot handle it structurally. It's purely a theoretical number.

Space elevator wouldn't save anything compared to efficiently reusable rockets (which will cost far less to develop).

ITS will take 300 tons to LEO (380 for loads of propellant) with full reusability. Want to put a million tons up? Just launch it 3000 times. It'll only cost about $10 billion.

With big launches that cheap, you can start mining from asteroids, the moon, and Mars, so it's not necessary to send bulk materials from Earth.

There are about 100,000 flights of aircraft per day. The US air travel market alone is worth $120 billion per year. Spending $10 billion per year to launch 10 rockets per day shouldn't be seen as something outlandish, rather it's quite a modest little industry.

incredibly
there's a fuckload of experiments going on up there all the time generating lots of worthwhile data. the most recent of which is perfecting growing plants in microgravity which is actually really hard to do

There's also no useful space elevator material, and more importantly there might never be - even carbon nanotubes are looking inadequate now that they're being manufactured in small scale

>SLS block 1b will have a TLI capability of 38.5 tons
...and it should fly around 2022-2023. Some time after ITS is launching 300+ tons in fully-reusable mode and demonstrating in-orbit propellant and cargo transfer so it can land 500 tons on the Mars surface for less than the cost of an SLS launch to nowhere interesting.

>FH will have an (expendable) capability somewhere between 17 and 20 tons.
17 is obviously low. It can send nearly that much to TMI. TLI is significantly easier. It should do around 21 tons.

You're also not accounting for upgrades. First of all, FH is likely to be uprated after its first launch. Secondly, they're working on advanced upper-stage capabilities: Musk has mentioned they're working on attempting upper stage recovery on the first Falcon Heavy launch, and they also demonstrated a long coast before relight with the last launch. If there's any demand for it, they can easily upgrade to a stretched FH upper stage that can dock with a payload in LEO before a departure burn, bringing its TLI payload up into the mid-30s (for one reusable-booster launch, plus one expendable launch). Even adding orbital propellant transfer can be done before SLS block 1b can be ready, at far lower cost, so SLS performance is exceeded to all destinations. Finally, FH wouldn't be carrying Orion, which is badly overweight and primitive compared to Dragon. Even without upgrades, FH could send Dragon to anywhere SLS could send Orion, because it's that much lighter.

>FH can never launch 64 tons to LEO because it cannot handle it structurally
You know, when you spout made-up bullshit this stupid, you reveal that you don't have even a basic understanding of the field.

>2023. Some time after ITS is launching
bwhahahahaha

>You know, when you spout made-up bullshit this stupid, you reveal that you don't have even a basic understanding of the field.
Kill yourself you stupid moron.

>@elonmusk. Is the GTO payload still projected for 22,200 kilograms?
>@jasonlamb. Looks like it could do 20% more with some structural upgrades to handle higher loads. But that's in fully expendable mode.
twitter.com/elonmusk/status/847884776719740928

The schedule has ITS orbital launches starting in 2020. It can slip two years and still fly before 2023.

Let me guess: you're such a blithering idiot that you think this means it can't carry more than 22.2 tonnes to LEO, because the rocket would just fall apart if they put that much mass on top of it during launch?

First of all, he's saying the structural upgrades are a clear option they can exercise if there's a demand for it. You're going around insisting that we should only talk about SLS 1b's performance, but you're also saying we should only compare it to the very first Falcon Heavy that ever launches, six years before SLS 1b, even though Falcon 9 performance was more than doubled with upgrades during the six years after its first launch? This is stupid. The expendable version is obviously a physically different rocket from the reusable version (which is what will be launching first). That doesn't mean it's not a Falcon Heavy.

Secondly, he's most likely talking about needing structural reinforcement for a tank stretch on the upper stage, to carry more propellant. If he's not, he's talking about using higher accelerations to reduce gravity drag.

What he's talking about is performance, not the ability of the vehicle to physically support the payload on top of it, because they can control the structural loads in software by limiting acceleration and dynamic pressure with their throttleable engines. They can easily lift off with 200 tonnes on top of the rocket, fly into space, and accelerate until the prop runs out, they just can't get to orbit with it.

It isn't difficult. Here is the sunflower I grew.

>the sunflower I grew.
>I grew
>I

sooooo astronaut from the ISS is shitposting on /sci now?

I believe the rocket also has structural limitations on what payload can be mounted on it.

Nothing is over built in the rocket after all.

timestamp of nasa id pls

>I believe the rocket also has structural limitations on what payload can be mounted on it.
That's nice. You're wrong. Not relevant ones, anyway.

As the fuel is depleted, and thrust increases due to reaching higher altitudes and lower air pressure, the acceleration increases, so the rocket is effectively under higher and higher gravity. Furthermore, there's dynamic pressure from pushing the fat fairing through the atmosphere at high speed.

These are much higher loads than simply the weight of anything reasonable you might put where the payload is supposed to be.

In some cases, the structure can be a limiting factor in performance, due to the need to limit acceleration or dynamic pressure, but it's not going to be a matter of just not being able to put a load on top that would otherwise be able to go to orbit.

>That's nice. You're wrong.
Provide some sources as to why Elon's quote is wrong.

The US spends more money on space than the rest of the world combined, you dumbass redditor.

can you imagine

can you imagine if this was real?

wait...do ISS posters get their own flag on /pol/?

>implying the rest of the world is spending enough money and that its a meaningful comparison.

you funny.

no, American half has US flag and Russian half has a RU flag

Going by his current rate with EPA and Education hirings, we will probably see Ken Ham in charge of Science, and some kind of Alex Jones tier conspiracy guy running NASA. Or maybe a Flat Earther. Who knows. At least Mattis was a good pick.

Should be 4 fine years

Well that, study's on how hardware handles prolonged usage, how the human body handles prolonged micro gravity, and so on.

Well, we don't exactly need testing to know that a centrifuge will work to make artificial gravity. Not many places on earth you can do long experiments in zero g, however.

Im more interested in the engineering of such a centrifuge desu. How to seal it, control it, make it part of a spaceship, bearings and so on.

Oh boy, I love when regulations get in the way of progress and innovations

How about you just get some willing people and put them inside

woah, how difficult was that

The answer to that is generally, don't use bearings. Spin the ship/station.

Yeah, that would make sense.

It's sad how obviously flawed the entire concept is.

SpaceX NEED to be successful and NEED to find ways to be profitable otherwise they cease to exist.

NASA can sit on their ass and do nothing, doesn't matter, they'll still get $20 billion every year.

SpaceX is a meme.

For the time it takes to refurbish one rocket stage, they could launch 10-15 expendable rockets. Somebody is not doing the correct math. Man-hours and materials to refurbish in my opinion does not cost less than manufacturing to finality a regular one. When that bulk consumption subsides and man-hours explode exponentially, an unsustainable event materializes. Musk is hard-set that flying rockets should be on-par with Boeing airliners. Boeing airliners never leave the atmosphere and undergo cryogenic hysteresis. When he pushes the envelope that hard, the odds of dire consequences vastly increase. The basis of his venture is what is at the root of ..basically...low intelligence being "re-purposed" into higher intelligence? Give me a break. 1940's technology remains 1940's technology.

But Musk is not alone. NASA, Amazon, and all of the others are doing the EXACT SAME THING. They are all competing with each other using the exact same technology....hahahaha. Nothing like using hobby shop drone software to engage the "rocket come home and land over there" commands.....Wonder where the algorithms came from actually......hmmm

There is a way to lift a 500 ton payload into space and move it anywhere it is needed. Deep orbit, next to the moon, stationary orbit - anywhere. It is just these so-called scientists cannot see the forest through the trees. Too many like-minds and all focused on one thing: build a tube and attach liquid fuel burning engines to it...YEAH! THAT'S THE TICKET! We at NASA just blew through 20 billion building the next rocket......which is no better than ATLAS......Should have just upgraded ATLAS...would have saved 19 billion and would have already been doing things and going places.......

My tax dollars not at work. I want to pull a "Exorcist" moment and spin my head around 360 degrees and then projectile vomit green pea soup......

Scientists - - -idiots, highly trained and highly specialized non-free-thinking idiots.

>There is a way to lift a 500 ton payload into space and move it anywhere it is needed. Deep orbit, next to the moon, stationary orbit - anywhere. It is just these so-called scientists cannot see the forest through the trees. Too many like-minds and all focused on one thing: build a tube and attach liquid fuel burning engines to it..
Go on..

Its an old stale pasta, just ignore it.

Guys reverse searching this image turns up nothing.

Not that guy but why not build massdriver?

Because the idea with space travel is to go in a straight line, genius.

Because for Earth a mass driver isn't practical. You either need to build the thing absurdly high up and long or limit yourself to only launching payloads that can withstand an absurd level of acceleration and deal with atmospheric heating.

>this guy is responsible for the unknown flag posts

You are like a little baby. Watch this

>space lettuccc

This is what happens when America has a president that doesn't know manned space flight has been entirely hoaxed. Someone post the webm of the people in zero G and the woman has long hair sticking straight up like iron rods and it looks very obviously gelled since it doesn't move at all when she does

What is it with this gif of an insufferable roastie that's always accompanied by somebody usually being completely wrong in an unnecessarily smug way?

you just haven't searched hard enough, it's Don Pettit growing a sunflower.

Or the Japanese flag if they were posting from Kibo

I can't find any (20th century) plans by NASA for a lunar base. Do you know where to look or have a link?

Just build a shell around the entire vehicle so all the spinning sections are on the 'inside' therefore sealing the bearings becomes a non issue. This way you could also make the spinning section the rotor part of the electric engine that spins it, with the coils being housed in the shell that covers it. To reduce friction you could use magnetically levitated 'bearings'. However spinning the entire vehicle is more cost effective as it requires no power other than to start it and stop it, but the ship becomes highly unmanouverable while artificial gravity is in effect. Although the spinning centrifuge design would also work both by spinning the ship while in normal flight and powered spinning while the ship must be stable for manouver. Although then we get gyroscopic effects which are a problem but one would counter that with two counter rotating sections.

i remember one of the NASA engineers who worked on the apollo program said, it wasn't a race against the USSR but a race against NASA becoming a bureaucracy

DUDE

Can't fix it without disbanding and remaking the agency. It's a pit for hereditary bureaucrats seeking safe retirement and contractors milking endless government money.They'll be building that sls and orion turd another 50 years and then still be that far away from putting it on the pad.

NASA BLOWN THE FUCK OUT

THE FREE MARKET WINS AGAIN.

BE4 Powerpack GO BOOM

twitter.com/blueorigin/status/863881495169048576

As much as I like SpaceX, I don't think ITS will fly before 2025.Hope i'm Wrong though.

oops xd

>For the time it takes to refurbish one rocket stage, they could launch 10-15 expendable rockets.
blahblahmmf timetomanufacture mumblemffblah
And you don't even know what "the time it takes to refubish" is. Hint: less than it's taken so far when they gave the returned stages a complete anal exam just to be sure, combined with the time it takes to convince a customer to use one.
>there's a better way
>so-called scientists cannot see the forest through the trees
>but it's too big to fit into the message size limit

It's happening.