this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Was Saturn V affordable?
Because maybe the question isn’t whether it’s affordable but whether we are budgeting enough money.
Maybe if we gave a little less to SpaceX, NASA could afford to do more.
If NASA cancelled every single contact they had with SpaceX... they might be able to afford 1/3rd of an SLS launch. Or maybe not, because then they'd have to start paying Russians for rides up to the ISS.
SpaceX is saving NASA boatloads of money. Which Congress is forcing them to waste on SLS.
Can I ask: do you actually believe NASA builds their own rockets themselves? Like out back in their shed with a table saw and pliers?
The prime contractor on the sls is boeing.
Boeing used to be a good engineering firm.
Yes, up until mid 90s
As certified by Boeing?
It's just hate for musk, people who hate musk have blinders on and think every company he has any input into is a scam.
Not a scam, but a tool to help enemies of the democracy.
SpaceX is a tool that directly aids democracy. Without it, we still wouldn't have independent access to space. We would be relying on the Russian Soyuz to carry us to the ISS, and due to the current situation, I don't think they'd have let us continue riding the Soyuz if we didn't have our own method.
What does the iss have to do with democracy?
The ISS is an important international partnership with allies and rivals alike that strengthens the US' position on the world stage. That the US is capable of maintaining such a complex system is an example of democracy's value and the US' soft power.
SpaceX existed before Musk bought it. It could have ended being used by the NASA. Then you seem to forget the ESA and their Ariane launchers.
You're conflating Tesla with SpaceX, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. ESA doesn't have a human spaceflight system.
Thanks for the correction, I learned something today.
Nah, I hate musk as much as the rest of them. SpaceX is the only company he has that's worth a damn. I was really kind of happy when he started screwing with Twitter because he has less time to screw up SpaceX.
Now, that said, SpaceX needs competition. I will take us for musk to have one bad trip hop in there and start screwing that company over. If NASA is fully dependent on them...
SpaceX isn't doing anything another company can't do. It's just that Boeing owns our f****** government.
So Tesla and starlink don't count?
Starlink is horrible on many fronts. Just the amount of trash they've thrown into low orbit is crap. Short-term disposable satellites are not great. Now he's taking and giving access based on his own political wants.
Tesla's a pretty mixed bag. Privacy issues, quality issues, resell issues, repair issues, self-driving car failures. All the other stuff they do really well everybody else also does well.
All this stuff started off really strong when he started going batshit crazy things started getting less attractive
Tesla is publicly traded and as far as I can tell Starlink is not a company but rather a SpaceX project.
To be fair, based on his companies the odds of that bet are quite good.
So Tesla is a scam? SpaceX is a scam? Starlink is a scam? Wut????
SpaceX is getting 2-3 bn dollars for Starship HLS development, most of the funding is coming from SpaceX itself. SLS costs up to 4 bn per flight. I'm not even going to mention the insane cost-overruns and years of delays associated with NASA's cost-plus contract with Boeing to build the damn thing.
SLS is a sunk cost fallacy and jobs program.
Even then, commercial launch providers get much further with less money. Sure, if NASA had more budget, they could afford the SLS program. But the commercial launch providers show that they could be more efficient with the money they do have.
That would destroy US space capabilities. Just because Elon is a racist dipshit doesn’t mean we should stop building the best rockets in the world.
Honestly if we have less money to Boeing and more to spacex, NASA would be way better off.
Even considering that, the SLS is poor value for money. It’s basically a dumber space shuttle that you throw away. It’s a parody of 1970s technology.
We can, and should, do better for that price tag.
No, and that's why we don't launch then anymore.
There was no alternative to what Saturn V did at the time. The SLS program is clearly going about things in a very expensive way and we have private alternatives that may be sufficient at a fraction of the price
That was my immediate thought, it's space exploration, it's meant to cost more than is reasonable or affordable, because monetary rationale has never been a factor in it. Even if it did pay out in the long run with inventions and discoveries in the past, it's never going to make budget sense because exploration and pushing our specie's boundaries shouldn't be. It's a miracle what space agencies are/were able to accomplish with super strict budgets in the past, but in the end there's only so much you can do by cutting corners and letting the private sector fill the gaps
but the SLS isn't pushing boundaries. It's just reusing leftover space shuttle parts and isn't meant to do much more than what Atlas V managed. And still somehow costs billions per launch.