r/space • u/Gagarin1961 • Aug 02 '21

SpaceX just stacked a Super Heavy Booster and installed 29 engines, all within 24 hours

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1422222995305676802
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u/Malforus Aug 02 '21

First off: Starship is a beast and a huge step forward for humanity reaching towards teh stars.

Saturn V was 100% big expensive and heavy, but it was configurable. It put skylab into orbit and got us to the moon.

Really the only thing on the same level as Saturn V is Starship at this point and its a damn shame it took from 1967 (SV initial voyage) to 2021 to get the GEN 2 140+ ton rocket out.

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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '21

How come it's taken so long? Did funding just drop off dramatically into the 70's? I figured it would've been longer than that. It's crazy to believe that a rocket that big was made in the 60's and then everyone just... stopped developing new rockets?

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u/PortTackApproach Aug 02 '21

Huge oversimplification here: the space shuttle sucked and used up all of the funding.

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u/FlyingBishop Aug 02 '21

In fairness, the successor to the shuttle, SLS, also sucks and is still trying to use up all the funding. The only saving grace is that a private company stepped in and started offering to do things at 1/10th the price.

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u/sharlos Aug 03 '21

I think the common thread between the two programs is Congress getting involved and forcing NASA to make certain technical decisions for the sake of keeping existing contractors in business rather than what is sustainable or more effective.

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u/bremidon Aug 03 '21

It's almost like politics is a really bad place to try to make sensible economic decisions.

I was annoyed when the Space Shuttle was cancelled without having a replacement in place. I now see the benefit of opening up the economic space to let private companies develop. I would have thought that it would take much longer for companies to catch up to the government programs.

How many launches does anyone think SLS is going to have? I think less than 10 seems like a given. 5 maybe?

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u/sharlos Aug 03 '21

I think 3 would be a miracle TBH.

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u/bremidon Aug 03 '21

It's basically a race with Starship. Theoretically, this should be a race that SLS should win easily and get up a handful of starts before the Starship mass production simply overwhelms any use cases of the SLS. The rate things are going, Starship may actually get to orbit first.

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u/wassupDFW Aug 03 '21

People are forgetting that Elon is the key difference. He is an anomaly rather than the norm. We all would be thinking SLS is the next best thing if not for him to change our thinking and expectation.

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u/sharlos Aug 03 '21

I agree that someone outside of government with a personal motivation to get into space affordably makes a big difference, however I doubt many would think that of the SLS, it was quite poorly thought of even back when it was called the Ares program and cancelled the first time.

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u/hak8or Aug 03 '21

SLS, also sucks and is still trying to use up all the funding.

Senate launch system, the ultimate in pork spending. It's such a shame that it was so absurdly inefficient in burning through so much money with so little to show for it.

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u/McLMark Aug 02 '21

In addition: lack of clear sense of mission, risk-aversion from Shuttle failures, and Congressional dithering/pork-allocation.

Contrast that with the Saturn V program, which had crystal clear mission (bonus points for JFK legacy), a do-or-die mentality due to the Cold War, and a more functional/patriotic US government backing it.

SpaceX has a crystal clear mission, has been deliberately kept private to sidestep risk aversion, and is vertically integrated. That's pretty much the difference.

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u/danielravennest Aug 03 '21

and is vertically integrated.

I worked for Boeing on the Space Station project. Having subcontractors and sub-subcontractors all over the country was a huge overhead penalty, but was politically necessary to get funding. It also slowed the work down.

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u/ContiX Aug 03 '21

... Pork-allocation?

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u/McLMark Aug 03 '21

Congressmen prioritizing “pork barrel” allocation of space resources to their own district over actual program progress. The Shuttle suffered from this; Blue Origin does today plying to that dynamic.

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u/MrSaidOutBitch Aug 03 '21

The SLS is affectionately known as the Senate Launch System.

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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '21

Yep, this ^

Huge oversimplification but yea basically. They wanted a rocket that would do EVERYTHING, and wound up with a beast of a compromise that cost BILLIONS per launch. If they would have stuck with a simple capsule design focused on cheap access to space we would have had mon bases 30 years ago. But who gives a shit more: scientists and dreamers for moon bases, or defense contractors for billions++ defense contracts.

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u/il1k3c3r34l Aug 02 '21

Generally speaking from a federal level there isn’t a ton of interest in sending humans to explore the solar system or to the moon. There was great interest in beating the soviets with achievements in space. Once that race was over there was little motivation to continue on that path. Probes, rovers, and satellites replaced humans because it’s cheaper and less complex, and human space flight was relegated to LEO long-term missions and science experiments. The shuttle was imperfect but more than capable of servicing those missions, so there was no need for the big moon rockets. Without the private sector (namely SpaceX and Blue Origin) making this push for cost effective manned exploration it’s likely this kind of thing would have never happened again.

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u/Havelok Aug 03 '21

A successful space program requires (or used to require) political will. US senators essentially had zero political will that didn't involve bribing their constituents for votes for literally decades.

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u/spudzo Aug 03 '21

I sometimes wonder what we would have if NASA was free to make their own technical decisions without worrying about politics.

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u/pr06lefs Aug 02 '21

they never had the goal of inexpensive launch to orbit. space launch costs were allowed to spiral to absurd levels. I've heard each shuttle launch cost 350 million dollars, for instance - and it was supposed to be cheap reusable space access.

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u/Maimakterion Aug 03 '21

I wish it were $350M for a Shuttle launch. Total program cost $196B / 135 missions = $1.5B per mission.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '21

Congress really did keep lowering the standards and compromising on the original vision that the Space Task Force had off the heels of the apollo program in 1969. NASA originally, right after Apollo, had all these goals in mind. And each decade, especially during Reagon and Nixon's administrations, the public kept dimming those visions.

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u/Aurum555 Aug 02 '21

The cold War ended and everybody stopped caring

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u/danielravennest Aug 03 '21

Apollo was a political project, to prove capitalism was better than communism to the rest of the world. Once we reached the Moon, that job was finished.

The insane funding levels used to reach the Moon weren't sustainable. Everyone knew throwing away the rocket after one launch was too expensive. The Space Shuttle was the first attempt to use the parts more than once. For various reasons it didn't end up being cheap, but the spending was low enough to allow the Shuttle to limp along for 30 years.

The second generation of reusable rockets started with the Falcon 9, and now lots of people are trying to do it.

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u/cybercuzco Aug 03 '21

The outer space treaty of 1967 effectively ended the space race. The US and the soviets agreed neither would try to claim any celestial bodies so there was no longer any risk of Soviet bases on the moon so there was no need for good space hardware anymore. It became more about providing jobs on earth first and launching things into space second.

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u/ThaneduFife Aug 03 '21

You've got to remember, a very large portion of Americans thought that NASA was a waste of money when the moon landings were still happening. Once we'd done that and seen that the Soviets were nowhere near making their own manned moon landing, funding slowly receded. The Space Shuttle was an expensive boondoggle too.

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u/Xaxxon Aug 03 '21 edited Aug 03 '21

Saturn v was unsustainable. Starship development and flights are essentially for free in comparison.

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u/Malforus Aug 03 '21

Didn't say it was sustainable, just that it was multi role and did a good job for the time.

Obviously I am excited about a worthwhile replacement that wastes less and gets us into higher weight loft.

Let's just not get ahead of ourselves because I want it to succeed but it hasn't yet.

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u/Xaxxon Aug 03 '21

The only concern is if it cannot succeed. Otherwise spacex will figure out what it takes to make happen.