I'll gently disagree that when it comes to actual exploration that there is more bang for the buck with unmanned missions. People are amazingly astute and incredibly flexible in their abilities when compared to robots. Delay in transmission never stops a human from continuing his tasks. Humans can say "hey, look, neat rock, let me flip it over and put it in my bag" without being told to, can autonomously prioritize and shift mission tasks, and generally do things all around better than robots.

Give a robot a drill and it will drill with it. Give a human a drill and he'll drill, scrape, dig, poke, roll the ground flat with the bit and use the motor to centrifuge rock from dirt by attaching it to a bucket.

Sadly, this rocket is actually a replacement for the shuttle - as it stands, the USA has no way to send or retrieve astronauts from the ISS...or to send equipment.

The Senate Launch System. Build it because we said so, NASA.



The Jedi Master

This all begs the question: If SpaceX is going to build this gargantuan rocket on its own dime, anyway, why is the U.S. Congress forcing NASA to develop the less capable Space Launch System (SLS) for many billions of dollars more?

Earlier, SpaceX stated it could develop a rocket that would launch 150 metric tons of payload,or 20 metric tons more than the most powerful version of SLS at a fixed price development cost of $2.5 billion (an amount that comes to roughly 1.25 years of SLS's funding). Also worthy of consideration is spacecraft launch company United Launch Alliance's (ULA) proposed — but not currently pursued — economical, large launcher that would loft 140 metric tons at $5.5 billion total development cost.

Wouldn't it make more sense for NASA to buy a huge rocket from SpaceX or ULA and get much more capability for less money? If SLS were cancelled now, couldn't a small part of the resulting savings help speed up development of the large SpaceX or ULA launch vehicles — or both? In fact, this was exactly what NASA proposed to Congress before SLS was legally forced on them.

It should be noted that NASA currently plans only two flights for the SLS — one in 2017 to demonstrate the 70-ton capability, and one with a crew in 2021, to . . . somewhere. They have said that, when operational, it may only fly every couple of years. What are the implications of that, in terms of both cost and safety?

Cost wise, it means that each flight will cost several billion dollars, at least for those first two flights. If, once in operation, it has a two- or three-billion-dollar annual budget (a reasonable guess based on Shuttle history), and it only flies every couple of years, that means that each subsequent flight will cost anywhere from four to six billion dollars.

From a safety standpoint, it means that its operating tempo will be far too slow, and its flights far too infrequent, to safely and reliably operate the system. The launch crews will be sitting around for months with little to do, and by the time the next launch occurs they’ll have forgotten how to do it, if they haven’t left from sheer boredom to seek another job.

As a last-ditch effort to try to preserve the Shuttle in 2010, some suggested that it be maintained until we had a replacement, but to fly it only once per year to save money. The worst part of such a proposal would have been the degree to which the system would have been even less safe, given that it was designed for a launch rate of at least four flights per year. It was unsafe to fly it too often (as NASA learned in the 80s as it ramped up the flight rate before Challenger), and it would be equally so to fly it too rarely. NASA’s nominal plans for SLS compound this folly, which is magnified by the fact that both internal NASA studies and independent industry ones have demonstrated that there is no need for such a vehicle to explore beyond earth orbit (existing launchers could do that job just fine, with orbital mating and operations), and it is eating up all the funding for systems, such as landers and orbital propellant storage facilities, that are necessary. All of this is just more indication that actually accomplishing things in space is the lowest priority for Congress (and unfortunately, the space agency itself, otherwise, the administrator would be more honest with the appropriators on the Hill).

Congress is not staffed by rocket scientists. Yet they are the ones dictating what the rocket scientists have to build.

Meticulously researched, the book describes how short-sighted decisions made by politicians in Congress have hamstrung NASA’s efforts to be the exploration agency that it was originally chartered to be. The author pulls no punches and names names. A small number of powerful politicians from both parties have used their substantial clout to force NASA into spending billions of dollars to provide jobs for their constituents rather than spending those dollars on meaningful initiatives that will actually advance America’s knowledge and capability in space.

Much of NASA has been reduced from one of the most advanced technological organizations on the planet to what is essentially a make-work program for government workers who were left with nothing to do after the end of the Shuttle program. The work they are currently doing is designing and building a massive launch vehicle called the Space Launch System (SLS) and the spacecraft it is designed to launch, the MPCV also known as Orion. This expensive combination may never result if an operational launch system. In the austere budget environment that promises to be in effect for the foreseeable future, assuming development is ever completed, the SLS will be too expensive to launch more than once or twice a year. Even those few launches are doubtful, since no actual mission for SLS has been identified to date.