[nickmcc]

> At more than $100 million each (equivalent to $750 million today), they departed Earth, then fell in pieces into the ocean.

Could you imagine the unit cost today, if we kept building Saturn V in an iteratively improving process? Even as an expendable rocket, the efficiencies from mass production and weight savings from miniaturizing avionics would have produced a very capable, affordable machine.

[bryanlarsen]

We modernized and rationalized the Space Shuttle to make the SLS and each SLS costs > $4B.

Building Saturn V's at low volume under the standard cost-plus arrangements that NASA uses with Boeing et al would result in steadily increasing costs.

[khuey]

> We modernized and rationalized the Space Shuttle to make the SLS and each SLS costs > $4B.

Except we didn't, because we took absurdly high-end engines (RS-25s) that were designed for reuse and refurbishment and now we drop them in the ocean after every launch.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

And because we are using those engines, which lack sufficient thrust at liftoff, we have to use the Solid Rocket Boosters. Those were supposed to be recoverable but the SLS just drops them into the ocean now too.

[tim333]

I found on a forum

>it would cost $23 million to refurbish a used SRB and $12~70 million to refuel it.

A unconfirmed sources, that worked at NASA claim that Thikol employee explained to him. That reuse cost 3 time more, than a expendable SRB https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0

[Dalewyn]

Space Shuttle (and now SLS) SRBs always dropped into the ocean for recovery after the fact.

[mikepurvis]

I think it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that, see:

https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45894

Basically the SRB had multiple modules and some were more reusable than others, so some got recovered and refurbished a lot more.

[Aloha]

AFAIK, we do recover and refurbish them - at least when shuttle was flying.

[Polizeiposaune]

Not any more. SLS drops them in the ocean.

[jasongill]

So did the Shuttle; all of the Shuttle SRB's were recovered (with one obvious exception) and refurbished and reused at least in part. It wouldn't make sense for either Shuttle or SLS to drop them on the ground

[marcellus23]

He's talking about the SLS. The shuttle hasn't flown in 13 years.

[andrew_lettuce]

https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

[skirge]

None because this institution didn't have that objective in mind. Rockets were financed by government in "cost plus" mode which made no sense in cost saving. "Rocket science" was synonym to something complex, created by people who wanted to raise costs. SpaceX proved that you can make rockets from same material your kitchen pots are made.

[fsckboy]

>Could you imagine the unit cost today, if we kept building Saturn V in an iteratively improving process?... the efficiencies from mass production and weight savings from miniaturizing avionics

the Saturn Vs were hand-welded but large numbers of welders; we can't even build one today because there is no workforce of skilled welders remaining. And avionics I don't think contributed substantially to the Saturn V's weight.

I think SpaceX's iteratively improved process is what produces the capable affordable machine.

[wat10000]

Soyuz followed that path. The result is a pretty dependable, pretty cheap launcher, but nothing too remarkable.

[Gravityloss]

It's really hard to take a Saturn V and make it reusable. Though there were plans [1]

It would be better to develop technology at a smaller scale, being able to iterate more, both in more paths explored per dollar and per year.

In that sense DC-X and the lunar lander challenge were on to something, as was Fastrac. Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Starship then continued from there. (Spaceshipone and hybrids were a dead end.)

1: http://www.astronautix.com/w/wingedsaturnv.html

[stickfigure]

...or possibly one would have failed, killing three astronauts and ending the program. It very nearly happened once during 13 total flights. Not great odds.

[kqr]

We did kill three astronauts during the Apollo project. It's just that space people tend to die closer to the ground.

The space shuttle had something like 1:70 in practise but was planned for 1:90. Artemis is currently evaluated at 1:70 too, which is deemed a little too high.

We seem to be ready to sacrifice people to space at a relatively high cadence.

[lupusreal]

The Shuttle program never properly calculated their risk in the first place because NASA admins preferred happy fiction. Only after Challenger broke up and slammed six professional astronauts and a school teacher into the ocean were the NASA admins forced to face realistic risk figures for the program.

Today, NASA as an institution has learned nothing from it. Their heat shield for Orion is defective and they tried to cover it up instead of admitting the problem. They're still proceeding under the assumption that they can simply ignore the hear shield not performing as designed if they use a different reentry profile, which they intend to do without first testing this theory.

[stickfigure]

After the second shuttle failure, flights were restricted to orbits that could drop off the crew at the ISS. The Boeing Starliner crew is still sitting on the ISS because NASA was afraid to send them down with their ride.

I'm not sure our tolerance is as high as you think. Maybe it was in the 1960s, but not now. And who knows what a couple big pyrotechnic accidents would have produced then.

I do agree with you, we're much more willing to tolerate carnage on the ground (or closer to it). More astronauts have died in aircraft accidents than spacecraft accidents.

[edm0nd]

>We seem to be ready to sacrifice people to space at a relatively high cadence.

If people are willing, is it even an issue?

You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omlette.

[lupusreal]

That's wrong. There is no need to ever fly humans on unproven rockets. NASA has historically done it that way for non-technical reasons. For instance, the Shuttle could have been designed for unmanned operations, but that would have pissed off the astronauts by undermining their claim to necessity, and that was important to NASA at an organizational level because astronauts get NASA funding by keeping the public interested. And so they designed the Shuttle such that people must be on it. Then they started using the Shuttle to simply launch commercial satellites. Why would you ever put seven human lives on the line to launch a satellite, when you can just as well do that without endangering anybody? It was completely senseless risk and they thankfully stopped doing that after Challenger. Just because you can find people willing to go to space for any reason doesn't mean the government should be funding such pointless idiocy.

[starspangled]

If it continued to be built as government projects by the same old military industrial corporation contractors? Yes I sure can imagine the unit cost, but "astronomical" is the word that comes to mind, rather than affordable.

I won't say they weren't capable or reliable, but what made rockets affordable was the privatization effort that happened after the USA, under the careful stewardship of NASA and those MIC corporations, lost the ability to send astronauts to space for the first time in 50 years, and was humiliatingly forced to rely on Russia for its astronaut launch services, even using Russian rocket engines for launching payloads of important national security and economic importance.

[lupusreal]

The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles. What changed is those contractors got fat and lazy off the cost-plus contracts and lost their will to get shit done on time. Fixing those contractors is probably impossible, those companies are addicted to inefficiency as surely as junkies to heroin. Rather they simply need to be replaced by new contractors, ideally under fixed-price contracts, that presently have a demonstrable ability to get shit done. And should they ever lose their edge, they need to be cut loose and replaced again. Ruthlessly excising inefficient contractors despite their heritage and legacy, rather than keeping them around to keep senators happy, is how you keep capabilities.

[starspangled]

> The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles.

Yes, under government run projects.

The change in direction from the administration around the Obama administration is considered privatization / commercialization of space launch services not because private companies are now involved in building rockets, but because the projects are largely private, and the government mainly bids for services not rocket construction.

[lupusreal]

SLS is as much a government run project as the Shuttle and Saturn V. It's the old way of doing things, and that's why it's so wasteful and useless. The commercialization of launch services has given us SpaceX and Rocketlab, which are both lean and efficient by any measure and easily so by the measure of programs NASA is more involved in.

[feoren]

> rather than keeping them around to keep senators happy

To whom are you directing your advice, then? This is like those articles headlined "Donald Trump must resign" -- who is supposed to make that happen? Who with any power over this situation is going to change their mind as a result of that article? Keeping senators and congress happy is literally the point of these programs, no?

[lupusreal]

I'm not giving anybody advice.