Posted: 10 August 2020 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | 2
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Andrew>>We need to be honest about that, because spending billions to establish us there<<
Just to be clear, after a decade of development, the SLS program has spent around $17Bn so far for a total of zero launches and just a handful planned (at $2Bn+ per launch).
By way of comparison, Falcon Heavy cost $500 million of SpaceX's own money. And yes, there was public money developing Falcon 9, but it was only a few hundred million (a song) and got us the most used and affordable rocket in the inventory for our trouble.
For the tonnage, we could have bought 130 Falcon Heavy launches in fully-expendable mode for the zero launches SLS has put up so far. There is hardly any new tech involved in SLS either. The boosters are Shuttle-derived. The main engines are Space Shuttle main engines (literally pre-flown Shuttle engines). The upper stage engines are a vintage design that first hit the test stand in 1957 (very nice performance, but expensive hand-made works of art).
In sum, we can have a moonbase (I'm all for it), probably a nice one too, but the traditional NASA approach is kinda stupid and for sure unnecessarily expensive.
It isn't just the space part that makes space hard. The politicians on the ground aren't helping much either.
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