04-18-2022, 02:12 AM
"It will be the largest flight-capable rocket ever returned to the VAB."
SLS is larger, but Shuttle Columbia was rolled back several times. For several months at a time once... Those tiles were, shall we say, problematic.
I'll consider it a "win" if SLS can launch by this time next year. And, at the same time, a giant LOSS, since it's such a damn financial fiasco.
I expected SLS to be comparable to the Shuttle for per-flight cost; about $1.5 Billion per flight. Nope... they blew that out of the water, at about $4 BILLION per launch.
Meanwhile, Falcon Heavy can do about 70% of SLS's job for just under $100 MILLION....
Even if Starship and Superheavy miss their cost target by a factor of TEN, it will still be almost two orders of magnitude cheaper than SLS.
SLS is larger, but Shuttle Columbia was rolled back several times. For several months at a time once... Those tiles were, shall we say, problematic.
I'll consider it a "win" if SLS can launch by this time next year. And, at the same time, a giant LOSS, since it's such a damn financial fiasco.
I expected SLS to be comparable to the Shuttle for per-flight cost; about $1.5 Billion per flight. Nope... they blew that out of the water, at about $4 BILLION per launch.
Meanwhile, Falcon Heavy can do about 70% of SLS's job for just under $100 MILLION....
Even if Starship and Superheavy miss their cost target by a factor of TEN, it will still be almost two orders of magnitude cheaper than SLS.