Is NASA planning a reusable version of SLS? | Space News

Hello and welcome to Station 204 for your Space News for December 18th, 2019. And we're jumping for joy because Starliner's first flight is only a couple days away. Rocket Lab is a new launch pad, but let's get everything started with Manju Bangalore talking a little bit about some fast-paced developments that are happening with the Space Launch System. NASA's Space Launch System is back on our show for a third week in a row. Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine held a press conference celebrating the completion of the first SLS core stage. We learned a lot about the rocket, including reusability and possibly moving to other architectures like SpaceX's Starship in the future, if you read between the lines, that is. We all know the story by now. SLS is very late and very over budget. It's based on some space shuttle technology from the 1970s and can trace its roots back to the Constellation program, which started in 2005. So this is a rocket that's been in development for nearly 15 years now, has cost just short of $30 billion, and hasn't flown one. But things appear to be changing. Now that SLS is actually taking shape, testing is wrapping up... ish, and we're starting to see flight-worthy hardware. What are NASA's forward-looking plans for this very large rocket? Will we see more than one flight? Ever? And why do we even need SLS to begin with? Bridenstine gave us a bunch of answers last week on what he dubbed Artemis Day. I think it's best to start with why he wants SLS at all. We have a directive from the President of the United States to go to the moon sustainably. In other words, this time when we go to the moon, we're actually going to stay. We're going to learn how to live and work on the surface of another world for long periods of time so we can take that knowledge to Mars. From here, we get a bigger picture. The event is showing that the SLS core stage is complete and ready to ship. But the SLS is more than just a core stage. The Orion crew capsule and the European service module have now been mated, and they're up at the Glenn Research Center in Ohio being tested with all kinds of, you know, acoustics and vibration, thermal vacuum, all the testing that it needs to do to be ready to go to space right now. That sounds promising. Once the entire rocket stack is complete, NASA plans on sending the SLS to the moon by way of their nuclear gateway. Now, there's been a lot of debate here at Tomorrow if NASA's gateway actually makes sense. We'd love to know what you think. Gateway or moon direct? Tell us what you think in the comments below. But here's how Jim Feinstein sees it. But now that we have the gateway, which the SLS and the Orion crew capsule will take our astronauts to the gateway, we're going to have more access to more parts of the moon than ever before. Think of it as a reusable, in other words, a permanent command module that will be in orbit around the moon for 15 years. One neat thing mentioned was the ability for Gateway to use its solar electric propulsion to move from the moon's north to the south pole, allowing humans to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. It's a bit like the old promise of the space shuttle program being used to ferry astronauts to an orbiting gateway that would then send them onto the moon or Mars, before all of that got funded and distorted into what we actually saw. Except unlike shuttle, the space launch system isn't reusable. And when asked about it, the answer was intriguing. So what this rocket enables us to do is launch the gateway, which is a reusable command module in orbit around the moon for the next 15 years. But more than that, it also enables us to take our astronauts to the gateway where they can get into a landing system and go to the surface of the moon. At the same time, when we talk about this architecture in its entirety, there are other rockets that we believe one day will be available that aren't necessarily qualified to take humans, although maybe one day, but I think in short order, they'll be ready to take cargo. There are only a handful of companies he could be talking about, and it sounds an awful lot like SpaceX's Starship program. It'll be interesting to see how Starship and SLS end up duking it out. While SpaceX paints an amazing picture for Starship, it's yet to fly to space. And until recently, I probably would have said that Starship will likely fly to space before SLS. But now I'm not sure. SLS seems to be pretty far along. And that's a good thing. While SLS does cost a lot, NASA knows that and is working on it. How much is it going to cost each SLS rocket? And why is that a number that's still up for debate? Well, it's really quite simple. If you buy one SLS rocket, the price is really high. If you buy two, the price comes down significantly. If you buy three, it keeps going down. So what we're doing is we're looking at what are the needs that we have over the coming decades, and how many SLS rockets do we need to buy? The more we buy, the more the cost per unit comes down. At the end of the day, only time will tell. It's easy to look at SpaceX or Blue and get excited over the vision they've painted of the future. But NASA seems to be getting its gusto back. And their vision of the future is pretty awesome too. It might be too early to count them out of the race to the moon just yet. What do you think? Remember to leave a comment below and also remember to play nice. We're all looking forward to a better tomorrow. If you thought that that was all the Boeing and NASA news for today, you are mistaken. Because not only is that duo making great progress with the Space Launch System, they're also working towards Boeing's commercial crew demos as well. United Launch Alliance, Boeing, and NASA have all given the final A-OK for the launch of Orbital Test Flight 1, which will see Boeing's Starliner capsule put through its paces on its first orbital mission. Now, although SpaceX has already flown their Crew Dragon demo flight, it's still great to see the second provider of commercial crew finally getting their chance to shine. No crew will be on board Starliner, just a small amount of cargo and an instrumented test dummy named Rosie the Astronaut. Maybe one day we can have a Ripley-Rosie mission. Maybe even swap them out if a Dragon and Starliner are simultaneously docked at station. Assuming a successful mission, the momentum is now underway for returning American astronauts to the International Space Station on American vehicles from American soil, the first time since the last space shuttle mission, STS-135, in 2011. Flights with actual crews, though, still won't be happening until 2020, with no firm date set yet. And NASA has all but confirmed that they'll be buying two more Soyuz seats beyond the final ones in April 2020, something that NASA had publicly hoped to avoid. Launch for Starliner OFT-1 is, as of the making of this episode of Space News, set for December 20th at 11.36 UTC, with a planned mission duration of just a little over a week. Best of luck to all involved. We'll be watching closely and keeping you up to date as commercial crew finally kicks into gear. And now it's time to travel all around the world to talk about everybody who left the world in this week's space traffic. Leaving Pad 3 at Site 43 in the Pleistocene Cosmodrome on December 11th at 08.54 UTC, the Soyuz 2-1B rocket successfully lofted a new Glonass navigation satellite, M-59. It put it into a medium Earth orbit. Glonass is Russia's equivalent of the United States Air Force's With a thunderous roar, the India Space Research Organization's 50th Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle said au revoir to Satish Dhawan Space Center at 09.55 UTC on December 11th, carrying Resat-2BR1, a radar reconnaissance satellite, which was successfully placed on orbit. In addition, nine smallsats were carried and deployed as secondary payloads. This is the sixth and final flight for India in 2019. With a liftoff from the Xishang Space Center at 07.22 UTC on December 16th, the Long March 3B carried Bidu 3 satellites M-19 and M-20 to a medium Earth orbit and completed the build-out of China's Bidu navigation system Constellation, bringing the system to global navigation capability for the first time. This was the 30th successful launch for China this year and they ain't done yet. Lighting up Florida's space coast at 0010 UTC on December 17th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40, carrying JCSat-18, Pacific-1. As per standard, after separation, Stage 1 began its turn and burn and successfully returned to drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, concluding its third flight. Stage 2 continued on, delivering the nearly 7,000 kilogram Comsat to a subsynchronous geostationary transfer orbit. If you've never heard of Cacific before, they're a Comsat startup who are attempting to deliver connectivity to places that otherwise haven't had it, such as small islands in the Pacific Ocean. And here are your upcoming departures. Earlier this year, quite an argument broke out as to whether Rocket Lab was a New Zealand or American company. Now, most folks said that it's a New Zealand company because they launched from New Zealand, even though technically on the books they are an American company and that's what us here at Tomorrow recognize them as. But there's no excuse now, because Rocket Lab is finally bringing their own launch capability to America. Dubbed Launch Complex 2, it sits within the purview of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, right next to Pad 0A, which Northrop Grumman uses to launch their Antares rocket. Looks like our nominal friends are getting some nominal neighbors. The new pad is designed to handle up to 12 launches a year and includes rapid call-up capability for the United States Air Force, which will be the first customer tossing a research and development satellite up sometime in Q2 2020. Of course, as to what rapid call-up meant, as to whether it was months, weeks or days, nobody's saying anything. Now, Rocket Lab has noted that with Launch Complex 2 in Virginia and Launch Complex 1 at the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, that they now have the capability to potentially reach up to 130 launch opportunities per year. That is absolutely staggering. Rocket Lab also announced that they're hoping to reach a launch cadence of once every two weeks in 2020, which by itself is also staggering considering that Electron only launched six times in 2019, which admittedly did make it the fourth most flown rocket of the year. And of course, we would not be able to do the shows of tomorrow without you, our citizens. Your help makes every single aspect of this possible. It just profoundly blows my mind that we're able to deliver this to you simply because you feel that we're worthy of being given something from you. So if you got something out of this and you would like to give something back to help us here at Tomorrow, you can head on over to youtube.com slash T-M-R-O slash join. And as always, if you can't contribute via tomorrow slash join, that's perfectly A-OK. Subscribing to us, hitting that notification bell, watching and liking our videos and sharing our work supports us as well. By doing that, you're our mission specialists making our objective possible, getting every person everywhere excited about space. And for those of you who are citizens, we'll be having a citizen hangout this Saturday, the 21st at 1800 universal time. So if you're considering becoming a citizen and you'd like to find out about the future of Tomorrow, our shows in 2020 and talking to us about that, you can do so if you sign up now. And that's it for this week's Space News. Until the next one, remember, keep exploring. Sight 43 in the Plistics Cosmodrome. No, not quite. Sight 43 in the Plistics Cos... Sight 43 at the Plistics... Plistics... Sight 43 at the place in Russia. And here are your upcoming departures. Such as myself.