Today’s class will be discussion-based. This prompt is meant to help guide your discussion. We will convene as a class after 20-30 minutes to discuss the issues raised.
The US government space community faced some hard choices in 2018.
It had been clear for years that if the US wanted to get serious about deep space exploration at a reasonable cost (i.e. without spending tens of billions of dollars on each mission), it needed a bigger rocket than anything that existed—a “super-heavy-lift” launch vehicle. Such a launch vehicle would also help with expected growth in NSS launch demand. Two relevant things happened in 2010. First, the Obama administration had cancelled the “Constellation” program—the W Bush administration’s troubled plan to return to the Moon by 2020. Constellation involved developing a new launcher system which would not allow for deep space missions or super heavy lift capacity, but might allow for a crewed mission to the Moon by 2020. Second, President Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 into law. The bill directed NASA to create the “Space Launch System” (SLS), the biggest rocket in human history. The SLS would have a whopping 70 tons of capacity initially, and eventually up to 130 tons after planned upgrades. That capacity would enable crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, and uncrewed missions at least as far out as Jupiter. In 2011, Florida Congressman Bill Nelson revelead the design, along with plans for a first crewed test flight at the end of 2017. Internal and external audits estimated a development cost of roughly $18 billion.
There was some controversy over having NASA develop the SLS, forming into two camps—one in favor of private rocket development, and one in favor of government rocket development. Obama administration officials were largely in the private rocket development camp and had pushed hard to have private companies like ULA and SpaceX compete for a contract to develop a super-heavy-lift rocket, arguing that it would be more economically efficient and responsible with taxpayer money to pursue a commercial development path. At the time, ULA had two heavy-lift rockets (the Atlas and the Delta) using Russian RD-180 engines. Faced with Congressional mandates to end their reliance on Russian rockets, ULA had contracted with space startup Blue Origin to develop a new engine for a new heavy-lift rocket named “Vulcan”. SpaceX had no heavy-lift rockets, but they had an impressive technological track record—in 2015 they had successfully vertically landed a used rocket booster, in 2016 they had successfully flown a used booster—and had begun planning their own heavy-lift rocket called Starship. Starship would be capable of missions to the Moon or Mars.
However, people who had been in the NSS community for years—legislators and career officials—and remembered the challenges of the early 2000s (particularly the difficult decisions around the ULA merger) argued that it was critical for the US government to ensure the heavy lift capacity and push the technological frontier forward. These folks formed the core of the government rocket development camp. They compared the potential of the SLS to the Space Shuttle program, which provided unparalleled civil government space access. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama was particularly aggravated, arguing that he would not “sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human spaceflight program”.
In 2014 the SLS passed an important development milestone, but a key facility in New Orleans suffered a technical issue. The issue was fixed but led to the internal launch date slipping from December 2017 to July 2018. In 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report noting that while NASA had been doing a good job on cost and schedule estimates, NASA was rapidly running out of time to have the SLS ready for flight by November 2018. GAO estimated that the price for the first flight would be $9.7 billion, and updated the total development cost to $23 billion. Boeing and the other contractors will be able to build 1 SLS rocket per year. Once it gets going, each mission will cost roughly $2 billion.
In 2015, the Orion spacecraft which would carry crew announced a schedule delay till 2023. As a result, the first SLS flight would no longer be crewed.
In 2017, a GAO report stated (and NASA concurred) that the first SLS-Orion flight would be delayed regardless of whether the mission would be crewed. The first flight date was moved to 2019. The development cost grew by another $2 billion due to cost overruns and delays. Rumors suggest that the delays are largely driven by poor performance from Boeing, NASA’s prime contractor for design, development, testing, and production of the SLS core stage. The Trump administration announced their plan to return to the Moon by 2024 with a crewed mission, scrapping the Obama administration plan of going to Mars.
In 2018, analysts were assembling a report on the Trump 2024 Moon plan, tentatively called the Artemis program. Artemis needed a capable and reliable heavy-lift system. The key question on the table was whether to use SLS or bet on one of the upcoming private heavy lift rockets: ULA’s Vulcan, SpaceX’s Starship, or Blue Origin’s New Glenn (which would use the same engine as Vulcan). None of these rockets exist yet.
Senator Shelby is leading the charge to ensure SLS plays the main role in NASA’s plans. Proponents of the government development approach cite the importance of having guaranteed capabilities and deep space access (equivalently, the capacity to deliver very large payloads even closer). For deep space science missions (e.g. the Europa Clipper mission), they argue the SLS capabilities are essential. Without the SLS, deep space exploration would require much more expensive near-Earth space infrastructure and would likely be infeasible for at least the next 20 years. SLS also ensures that US super-heavy-lift capacity is not tied to the vagaries of the market—useful when the next space winter arrives, or if the current boom ends soon.
Proponents of the commercial approach note that while the commercial options generally have lower capacity, they can support greater launch cadence and are cheaper. Additionally, they note that SpaceX has been developing Starship and another booster called “Super Heavy”, to create a Starship launch system capable of putting 100 metric tons into low-Earth orbit. For the same $2 billion it costs to build a single SLS rocket capable of delivering 95 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, commercial proponents argue SpaceX could build one Starship per month, reuse it dozens of times, and launch 100 metric tons into orbit every two weeks (assuming all goes according to plan). They also note that there is little demand for deep space science missions—very unlikely enough to justify 1 SLS each year.
Funds are limited, the political environment is increasingly polarized, space is increasingly politicized, and Congress is unlikely to give NASA all the money they need. From the perspective of an analyst in 2018: should Congress direct NASA to pursue SLS development?
Some questions to help focus your discussion:
What is your framework for thinking about this question?
What additional questions (e.g. historical context, technical details, etc) do you need to answer to tackle this one?
Which of those can you and your small group answer before we reconvene as a class?
Try to generate strong arguments on both sides of the main question, assessing which you find most compelling and why.