finally nasa has decided to roll back its space launch system sls rocket to the vehicle assembly
building vab to fix the fuel leakage issue which caused the artemis one launch scrub on saturday
september 3rd in today's episode we will discuss about the sls rocket's high demand
on nasa's overall budget china and russia have their sights set on the moon and its resources
said representative bill posey a republican who represents cape canaveral and florida
given what the moon represents in terms of resources prestige u.s national security
what does the u.s and nasa need to do to guarantee the success of the artemis program in the coming
years nasa's james free the agency's associate administrator of exploration systems development
answered by talking about the growing number of countries signing the artemis accords
a u.s led international agreement on principles for human space exploration
he talked about focusing on performance the schedule and the budget
but posey wanted to get down to brass tacks to some people this is a space race
for the record he said referencing china's growing lunar ambitions including launching
robots to the moon's resource-rich south pole in the coming few years what is the china-russia date
the potential obstacle standing in the way of the united states achieving the world's first
lunar outpost and mars landing is nasa's gargantuan rocket the space launch system
or sls taller than the statue of liberty at 322 feet and weighing 5.75 million pounds the
american rocket has 15 percent more thrust than the saturn v rocket used during the apollo program
and it has a price tag to match said inspector general paul martin who acts as the federal
watchdog over the space agency the cost to develop and operate sls is so high it imperils
the entire deep space flight program he said at the house subcommittee on space and aeronautics
hearing on march 1st until now few had so publicly called out the elephant in the room
as nasa moves forward it must accelerate these efforts to make artemis programs more affordable
martin said otherwise relying on such an expensive single-use rocket system will in our judgment
inhibit if not derail nasa's ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals to the moon
and mars though nasa has yet to detail its spending plan for the entire life cycle of the
program the watchdog estimated the initial four missions will cost about 4.1 billion dollars each
the first of which is an uncured test that could happen this spring or summer for perspective
that's about one-fifth of the entire nasa budget roughly half of the expense is the new rocket
system by 2025 the agency will have spent about 93 billion dollars on artemis martin said those are
sobering figures as the commercial space industry shows it could likely do the job cheaper spacex's
starship rocket though still a prototype is designed to be reusable will carry heavy loads and
has the potential to launch more often than the single-use sls rocket the united launch alliance's
vulcan centaur rocket under development also might offer an alternative with a cheaper bottom line
relying on such an expensive single-use rocket system will and our judgment inhibit if not derail
nasa's ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals to the moon and mars the
cost per launch does seem high said peter beck ceo of the commercial space company rocket lab
in an interview i know what i could do for 4.1 billion dollars and it's a lot such candid talk
from nasa's inspector general might lead one to think sls could cripple the agency's human
space exploration program if the rocket isn't scrubbed yet despite its problems the rocket isn't
going anywhere experts say because if nothing else the elephant was born a political animal
for at least the next 10 years the sls program is politically very very secure absent some sort of
catastrophic failure casey dreyer senior space policy advisor for the nonpartisan
planetary society told mashable crucially cost efficiency was never the priority when congress
adopted the nasa authorization act of 2010 it directed the space agency to build the rocket
sls is literally and figuratively founded on the space shuttle legacy which operated between 1981
and 2011. nasa has upgraded components of the shuttle for the new rocket using a larger version
of the shuttle stack that swaps out the legendary winged orbiter for either a cargo or crew capsule
the vehicle's core rocket stage is a stretched shuttle fuel tank powered by four shuttle main
engines rather than reusing those engines though nasa will ditch them in the ocean during the
artemis missions lightening the load enables the spacecraft to get on a moon bound trajectory
house and senate leaders wanting to support their space industry constituents legally required nasa
to work with all the same contractors used for the shuttle in 2010 during the great
recession those lawmakers sought to preserve thousands of jobs in their districts about 1
100 u.s companies and employees at every nasa center are now involved in the mega rocket project
the 2010 bill even told nasa to use the old cost plus contracts deals that paid the contractor for
all of its expenses and then some to allow for a profit as opposed to a fixed cost contract
where the total budget is set this model doesn't create an incentive for the contractor to finish
its work within a set time and budget despite a poor performance from boeing for instance nasa
gave the company 86 of all available award fees for developing the core martin said despite being
billions over budget and years behind schedule nasa was told what to build and told the kind
of pieces to use dryer said they couldn't just start fresh that's a key difference between the
sls and spacex's starship which isn't tethered to decades-old technology or inefficient contracts
elon musk's heavy lift rocket is reusable and designed to be refueled in flight allowing it to
carry more people and cargo said loizo ceraklius a professor of strategy and organization at warwick
business school he co-wrote a book above and beyond exploring the business of space
spacex has proven that the united states does have other transportation options
regardless of recent comments from russia's space agency chief dmitry ragoza russia decided to stop
supplying rocket engines to america following u.s sanctions over the invasion of ukraine
in a situation like this we can't supply the united states with our world's best rocket engines
let them fly on something else their broomsticks i don't know what
rogozin head of rose cosmos said on state russian television six months ago musk reacted on twitter
labeling spacex's extremely successful falcon 9 rocket and american broomstick
spacex doesn't publicly disclose its financials but at an event at its texas facility earlier
musk announced he believed starship could fly orbital missions for under 10 million dollars
per launch in as little as two or three years if true that would be several orders of magnitude
cheaper than the sls heraklius said it would be a classic case of commitment bias for the
united states to stick to its guns because of the time and money already invested into sls he said
this means that good money is being thrown after bad rather than cutting one's losses and going
with the better option he said in an email when legislators mandated sls into existence in 2011
the commercial space industry didn't have a spacecraft or rocket to send astronauts anywhere
and there are reasonable concerns for allowing a private company to handle the launching system
dreyer said when musk wrote to his team that a crisis with the raptor engine production on
starship threatened to bankrupt the company skeptics of space exploration privatization
pointed to it as an example of why the united states has to have its own rocket
you're saying that this one privately held company that is under the sway of a very powerful
influential individual whose vision drives the company
if anything happens to him or that company the us has no assured way to get astronauts to the moan
dreyer said you were putting the entire national goal on the whims of one company
the last three apollo missions in the 1970s 15 16 and 17 cost about 3.8 billion dollars each
when adjusted for inflation dreyer said that makes the artemis missions look significantly overpriced
launching more frequently could reduce the cost but nasa only plans to blast off once per year
given that the cost of running the entire international space station is about four billion
dollars annually it's not surprising that the inspector general found the sls cost unsustainable
said matthew weinzirel a harvard business school professor who researches space economics
of course he wrote in an email congress could easily make it sustainable if it were
to increase its allocation to space and if it felt artemis was worth the investment at this
point there is no reason to believe legislators have lost the political rule for the endeavor or
their beast of a rocket apropos of the program's namesake artemis greek goddess of wild animals
time and again congress has given more money to the program than the white house has requested
and that wraps up today's episode we would also like to take the time to thank you for
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