Trevor Mahlmann
President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into law on July 29, 1958. At that time, the United States launched a small satellite of about 30 kg. In less than 11 years, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
President Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act on October 11, 2010. Among the provisions of the law required NASA to build a Space Launch System rocket and prepare it for launch in 2016. That seemed reasonable. At that time, NASA had been launching rockets, including very large rockets, for half a century. And in a way, this new SLS rocket is already done.
The most challenging aspect of almost any launch vehicle is its engines. No problem – the SLS rocket will use engines left over from the space shuttle program. The side-mounted boosters would be slightly larger versions of those that powered the shuttle for three decades. The newest part of the vehicle will be its large core stage, which contains liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel tanks to feed the rocket’s four main engines. But even this component was derivative. The main stage’s 8.4-meter diameter was the same as the outer tank, which carried the same propellants for the spacecraft’s main engines.
Unfortunately, the construction was not so easy. NASA’s SLS rocket program has been a hot mess almost from the start. Congressional committee chiefs have been effective in precisely one way, distributing jobs to major aerospace contractors in their states. Because of this, lawmakers ignored years of delays, more than doubling development costs to over $20 billion, and the availability of much cheaper and reusable missiles built by the private sector.
So here we are, almost a decade after that authorization act was signed, and NASA is finally ready to launch the SLS rocket. It took the agency 11 years to go from nothing to the moon. It took 12 years from having all the building blocks for the rocket to having it on the launch pad, ready for an unmanned test flight.
I have definitely had mixed emotions.
Trevor Mahlmann
With only a few days left in space, I’m incredibly happy for the people at NASA and the space companies who worked so hard, cut through the red tape, fulfilled thousands of requests, and actually built this rocket. And I can’t wait to see it fly. Who wouldn’t want to watch a giant, Brobdingnagian rocket consume millions of kilograms of propellant and break the turbulent bonds of Earth’s gravity?
On the less fortunate side, it remains difficult to single out the one rocket responsible in many ways for the lost decade of US space exploration. The financial costs of the program have been huge. Between the rocket, its ground systems, and the Orion spacecraft, NASA spent tens of billions of dollars. But I would argue that the opportunity costs are higher. Within a decade, Congress shifted NASA’s exploration focus to an Apollo-like program, using 1970s technology with a giant launch vehicle that was completely expendable in its engines, tanks, and boosters.
Effectively, NASA is looking back when this nation’s vibrant space industry is ready to push toward sustained spaceflight by building large rockets and landing them, or storing fuel in space, or building reusable trailers to go back and forth between the Earth and the Moon. it was said. It’s as if Congress told NASA to keep printing newspapers in a world with broadband.
It didn’t have to be this way. In fact, a handful of visionary space policy leaders tried to stop the waste, but were defeated by the defense industry and its allies in Congress.
For me personally, it is also the end of an era. In many ways, this rocket reflected my career as a journalist and writer covering the space industry. As we approach this milestone release, I want to tell the story real the story – about where it came from and where it is going. I’m going to argue that the SLS rocket is the worst thing that ever happened to NASA, and maybe the best thing at the same time.
I believe this story will still have a happy ending.
