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by rozab
1987 days ago
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SLS reuses almost everything (with modifications) from the shuttle program. These are 40 year old designs. Falcon Heavy reused a 10 year old design (Falcon 9). edit: If we count back to the first successful propulsive landing, the technology was only 5 years old. Falcon Heavy had been planned since way back in 2005. |
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The central tank is kind of like Shuttle’s, to justify building it in the same factory in Louisiana, but it’s a different diameter, so it had to be a clean-sheet design and all of the tooling had to be created from scratch. The solid rocket boosters are similar to Shuttle (the good Senator from Utah, with all his engineering expertise, required SLS to use solid fuel boosters that only one company in Utah can make), but a different number of segments in length, requiring them to be designed from scratch.
Early in the process of SLS (under its original name, Ares V), a group of NASA engineers lobbied for a true Shuttle-derived version, which would have been much cheaper and quicker to create, with the benefit of lots of flight heritage. Of course they got nowhere, because none of that was why SLS was the way it was. Everything about SLS is designed for the sole purpose of funneling the maximum amount of money to the right contractors in the right states for as long as possible. Thus, it is acceptable that it has never flown even after so many years and so many billions—indeed it’s desirable! If the costly design phase goes on for as long as possible, the money spigot will dispense much more than if it proceeded into operations.
But, just in case, SLS will undergo two costly redesigns after coming into service: a whole new upper stage and new boosters. That should keep the gravy train running for a good long while.
In addition to the Shuttle-industrial complex which must be kept running with make-work, there is now a Station-industrial complex which must receive the same treatment, in the form of an utterly useless lunar-orbit station called Gateway. I’m not sure if you can tell but I’m fairly bitter about all this.