SLS VS Starship: Why does SLS still exist?!

- Hello, it's me, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut. NASA just announced lunar landers for the Artemis program, and to everyone's surprise, SpaceX's massive Starship is actually one of the landers NASA chose alongside proposals from Blue Origin and Dynetics. Oh. (laughs) And this raises a lot of questions, some of which we'll answer in my next video, "Should NASA just cancel SLS and use Starship" and/or other commercial launchers for Artemis?" to delve into why NASA

does

n't just is using Starship entirely, and why are they only looking to use it as a lunar lander. But today I think we need to resolve a lot of debates here first about these two rockets, and now more than ever, it's time for us to really confront them head to head. face because this could very well go down in the history books as a serious irony that these two rockets

exist

at the same time, I mean, even though these two vehicles have very similar capabilities, two more opposite vehicles could not be devised with. two drastically different engineering philosophies.

I mean, one rocket has been meticulously designed and built for years and years by experienced rocket engineers, and the other is being built in a. field in Texas by a team of space cowboys, some of whom previously built water towers. So today, let's take a look at the history and progress of Starship and SLS, including the Orion capsule and everything needed for the Artemis missions, their design considerations, and finally, their capabilities. Once we do that, I think we will be able to answer the question: how is it possible for two rockets like SLS and Starship to

exist

at the same time?

Should they exist at the same time? I mean one is easily the most ambitious rocket ever conceived and actually being worked on, and the other lives in the past, meaning it literally reuses old parts from retired space shuttles. How the hell did we end up here, two of the most powerful rockets ever made running at roughly the same time? Well, we have a lot to cover, so let's get started. - Three, two, one, take off (upbeat music) - That's one small step for man. - (speaking weakly) Try one. - Before we get too far into this video, I just wanted to do a quick, fun shout out to this awesome Lunar Mission t-shirt I'm wearing.

At the end of this video, I challenge you to find the Easter egg in this shirt. We'll talk more about that later at the end. Well, have you ever spent two months researching, recording, editing, and animating a video only to finish it completely and discover the day before you planned to release it that every part of your video needs to be enlarged, and you need to re-cut the parts? remains? Oh yeah, no, no, I have no idea what that's like. If you're one of my Patreon followers, you're probably laughing right now at how different this video is from what you saw earlier this week, which I'll keep there, Patreon, for the sake of posterity.

So, forgive me if you notice that I recorded this video in pieces, because I do. (laughs) but there is a lot of good information that we need to get to. As you know me, once I got into the topic of SLS vs Starship, perhaps I got a little too carried away answering my own questions, digging deeper and correcting a lot of assumptions that, frankly, were wrong. But I've summarized this topic completely and we're going to cover all the bases in great depth, because this is crazy and you guys debate it all the time, so we have a lot to figure out.

Now, since we have a lot to cover, and like all my long videos, here are the timestamps if you need a reference for later. But seriously, don't skip this video. You'll be surprised by some of the things I learned, at least about the history and progress, and of course some of the conclusions as well. And I also have quick links to these topics and an article version of this video in the description. Well, from the beginning, we should make one thing clear. NASA and SpaceX are not competitors. If you love SpaceX, you can thank NASA for that.

NASA is SpaceX's biggest customer and biggest sponsor, so let's keep that in mind. As if that wasn't obvious now that NASA is literally investing in Starship for the Artemis program and seeing NASA glued to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for the Commercial Crew Program, the relationship with NASA and SpaceX goes back practically to the beginning from SpaceX. . I mean, after all, if it weren't for NASA's initial investment of nearly $400 million for the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule, plus the billions of dollars for the CRS and commercial crew contracts, SpaceX they certainly wouldn't be where they are today. NASA

does

incredible things, vital research and science that no private company would or could do, and it does a lot of things behind the scenes that can often go unnoticed.

In my last video comparing SLS and Starship two years ago, when Tim inexplicably wore a high-altitude Russian flight suit in his dorm days, I really delved into why it's not fair to compare NASA, the organization, directly to SpaceX , the private company. . As you probably know, I'm generally a team space and I like to encourage my audience to fight tribalism, and not just think that one thing is the best and therefore everything else sucks. But when it comes to NASA building and operating a rocket, then we can properly compare the pros and cons of those two systems.

Because I know there are many of you who are "the bad orange rocket, the good bright rocket", and vice versa. So let's come together, sing some kumbaya and celebrate the fact that we have multiple mega rockets, yeah. Okay, now that hand-holding is out of the way, let's define the term super-heavy lift launch vehicle. Then you know why we don't include rockets like Blue Origin's upcoming New Glenn or other heavy-lift launchers in this comparison. The aerospace industry considers a super heavy launcher to be a rocket that can carry more than 50 tons to orbit. Super heavy launchers, of course, can put bigger things into orbit, but what that really means is having enough capacity to potentially send big things to the moon or place probes on direct trajectories to our outer solar system without the gravitational assistance that requires a long time, potentially reaching outer solar system destinations almost three times faster.

Historically, there have only been five super-heavy lift launchers that ever flew, and only four of them were successful. There's the Saturn V, which could lift 140 tons, the Soviet Union's failed N-I that could have lifted 95 tons, and then there's the Soviet Union's twice-flown Energia rocket, which could lift 100 tons. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can technically lift around 64 tons if SpaceX decides to expend all three boosters. Although this has never happened and may never happen, it technically makes the Falcon Heavy a super heavy launch vehicle. Although, when all three cores are reused, its payload capacity is more than 30 tons. And finally, the space shuttle which, if the orbiter is included as part of its payload capacity, could technically put 122.5 tons into orbit.

I should probably quickly point out, following that same logic, that if you included, say, the SLS core stage, which can go into orbit if you wanted to, that would

still

add another 80 tons to your payload. ability. But the Shuttle was just a different beast, and somehow you had to take into account the orbiter as a payload that went orbital, but the actual, deployable payload capacity was actually only about 27 tons. Although a C shuttle was proposed to make it super heavy, but, okay (laughs), tangent, let's move on. So if we humans are going to get back to the Moon as soon as possible, or especially if we're going to get to Mars, we absolutely need to have some serious capabilities.

Of course, I think we should have undertaken these types of missions a long time ago. I want humans on the moon again, in 4k! Actually, let's do 8k. Let's send MKBHD there with some of their cameras. Now, before we get into the data on SLS and Starship, in case you've been living under a rock, we are currently working on returning to the moon with NASA's Artemis program, and a substantial amount of work has been laid, funds and objectives. outside. So during this video you will hear Artemis move around quite a bit. Although we could group the next space station around the moon, Gateway, on Artemis, we will really only focus on the SLS rocket, the Orion capsule and the human landing system.

To be clear, SLS is to Artemis what Saturn V was to the Apollo program. And right now, the Gateway is being jumped on for the first or second manned moon landing, and while there are a lot of things lined up and in progress for the Gateway, we're only going to focus on the moon landing and the hardware that's directly related. involved in that. (relaxed music) Let's get a few things clear here before we pit these two rockets head to head, because I think a lot of people have the wrong idea as to how and why NASA went after SLS and Orion in the first place and how fit into the Artemis program.

After the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, NASA began to rethink its next steps and began looking for a replacement for the shuttle in low Earth orbit and also began to set its sights on deep space exploration and needed to build a large rocket to achieve it. . NASA's original vision was the Constellation program, which would be a crew transport replacement for the Shuttle with the Ares I and a new space rocket called Ares V. After slow progress and huge cost overruns noted in the Commission's report Augustine 2009, the Constellation show ended up being cancelled. So, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directed NASA to develop a space launch system capable of lifting 70 to 100 tons to low-Earth orbit and evolving to 130 tons or more.

The vehicle must be able to lift the Orion crew vehicle, as its development was well advanced and NASA needed to work with existing partners when they became available. As we know, NASA, instead of an Ares 1 low-Earth orbit vehicle, ended up hiring commercial partners to send cargo and eventually crew to the ISS with the Commercial Crew Program, and NASA was tasked with one more rocket. focused and slimmer. The idea was to launch a massive rocket quickly and efficiently, as their directive required the vehicle to be operational by December 31, 2016. (laughs) (sighs) NASA performed a figures of merit analysis and narrowed it down to five different variations of a launch vehicle.

Some of them were getting quite exciting, with 10 meter wide core diameters and oxygen-rich staged combustion engines. The analysis weighed the options of affordability at 55%, programmatic at 25%, performance at 10%, and programmatic at 10%. NASA landed on what we now know as SLS, and although SLS and Ares V look very similar, SLS was actually a pretty blank design, but it definitely took cues from a rocket proposal called DIRECT that SLS would rely on. largely literally. leftover space shuttle parts and facilities as a quick and easy way to prototype and test the most powerful rocket ever built. Unlike the Commercial Crew Program we know today, NASA would continue to work with Shuttle contractors using the well-known cost-plus contracting financing scheme, which basically means: "This is how much money" we will give you to do it. , "but we will also foot the bill "for anything that goes over budget." With funding running at around $1.5 billion for SLS development per year since 2011 and the Orion Capsule receiving just over a billion a year , the contractors were assured that they will have plenty of resources to make it happen, but while staying within a realistic NASA budget that matched funding levels during the Shuttle era.

But the problem with cost-plus contracting is that it offers. very little incentive to stay on budget or especially on budget. In fact, schedule delays literally mean more money for contractors, and SLS' prime contractor, Boeing, will receive the most money for the project. NASA does performance reviews of their contractors, they have been scrutinized for being too easy for some of them, more on that later. So, to keep some of those contractors, employees, and members of Congress happy, keeping the rocket legacy close to the Space Shuttle ensured that funds would continue to be allocated to Shuttle contractors, or so it was thought.

So while the SLS literally looks like a giant space shuttle without wings, it has actually had many changes to make the vehicle have higher performance and lower costs thanspace shuttle parts. Here's a quick summary of the changes. The SLS will have five-segment solid rocket boosters, unlike the four-segment SRBs the space shuttle had, which lack recovery hardware and feature a redesigned plug that keeps squirrels and other things out, and the redesign ensures that debris does not enter. Potentially damaging nearby RS-25 nozzles upon ignition. The central stage, which although looks like the outer fuel tank of a space shuttle, has practically nothing in common with the outer fuel tank, except its color and its 8.4 meter diameter.

It uses a new aluminum, AL 2219, different construction and welding techniques, and even a different spray foam. People definitely tend to think of it as literally a stretched external fuel tank, myself included, but again, it has almost nothing in common, mainly because the SLS will have structural loads that will go down through the top of the tank instead of hanging down. from the side of the tank. tank. The RS-25s have been modified quite a bit since the space shuttle and have increased their power output from 104.5% to 109%, or 111% in an emergency. But again, like the SRBs, the RS-25D and later RS-25E variants will of course not be brought back in SLS.

Just a fun side note, those percentage numbers are based on the original nominal thrust of 1.6 meganewtons at sea level. After some adjustments to the space shuttle main engines, they ended up being able to be accelerated beyond their original design during the shuttle program and are being boosted even further with the SLS. Another cost-saving and time-saving decision was to initially fly the SLS with literally the upper stage of ULA's Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy, known as the Delta Cryogenic Second Stage, or DCSS, only modified to fit into the upper part of the 8.5 meter wide central stage, different hydrogen tanks and more reaction control fuel.

This configuration is known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS. SLS is intended to have a much more powerful upper stage known as the Exploration Upper Stage, which is considered part of the Block 1B upgrade and makes SLS much more capable. Next, we must talk about the Orion capsule. It sits on top of this entire vehicle for the Artemis missions. The Orion capsule is a fairly traditional crew capsule and in some ways is a newer and improved version of the Apollo capsule. But although it looks quite similar, it is much larger than it looks. At five meters wide compared to the 3.9 meters wide of the Apollo capsule, and with an impressive volume of nine cubic meters, compared to 6.2 cubic meters, it will be considerably more spacious and can accommodate up to six astronauts, although probably only four fly for the Artemis missions, compared to three for Apollo, which could technically fit five.

Well, barely. The Orion capsule used to be called the Crew Exploration Vehicle when it was in development for the Constellation program. But it has changed quite a bit and now features another cost-saving measure, which is a service module based on the ESA Automated Transfer Vehicle. But there is one thing we should mention that is

still

new in this entire lineup, and is still in progress, and is definitely necessary for the Artemis program to land on the moon, and that is, of course, the actual lunar lander. And that brings us to today. So far, everything we have talked about and discussed is only capable of carrying humans into lunar orbit with SLS and Orion, because there really is not yet the ability to also carry a lunar lander with SLS Block 1, or even the improved.

Block 1B. But NASA has officially selected three very, very different lunar landers for the Artemis program, and each has until 2021 to define exactly how they will take their modules to the moon. You know some proposals could end up shipping modules alongside Orion on the upgraded Block 1B SLS. But to get to the moon for Artemis 3, which will use a Block 1 SLS, the lander will need to fly on a separate commercial rocket, or two, or three, or another SLS, depending on how big it ends up being. because the Artemis hardware is big. This part of Artemis is much closer to the Commercial Crew Program than it is to SLS and Orion.

NASA only has one set of requirements, but it is allowing contractors to submit proposals, and they are doing so incredibly quickly and ambitiously in the best attempt to land humans on the moon by 2024. NASA will not own or operate the craft space as they do for SLS and Orion. So this means that we will need at least two rockets per manned mission to the moon for the Artemis program, probably even three, maybe even four. So we'll talk more about what options the Human Lander Systems proposals could use in the next video when we see what other options NASA has, if they were to simply cancel SLS in favor of Starship and other commercial options.

So, let's talk about Starship. (chill music) If you're new to the Starship or SpaceX scene, you may not realize how far this goes. Basically, since SpaceX started, there has been talk of making a BFR or a Big Falcon Rocket. And unlike SLS, the actual engineering and development had mostly been done behind closed doors since the early days. And actually, before the start of SpaceX, propulsion engineer and number one employee Tom Mueller had built a BFR rocket engine at his high-powered rocket club, the Reaction Research Society. And yes, the naming scheme comes from the BFG of "Doom." Fun side note: Tom's BFR engine was a pivot injector engine that targeted 10,000 pounds of thrust.

And Tom was up against David Crisalli, who built a more traditional flat-face injector. Tom's design won out and eventually became the basis of the Merlin engine. But the BFR vehicle didn't really gain public attention until around 2012, when Elon would mention a huge rocket called the Mars Colonial Transporter that SpaceX would add to its lineup. But at the time, SpaceX was still a relatively small company and had only launched three Falcon 9s to date. After that, rumors emerged about a Falcon X, Falcon X Heavy, and Falcon XX rocket being its next megarockets. It wouldn't be until 2016, at the International Aeronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, that the world would really get an idea of ​​what SpaceX was working on.

And yeah, that was that super weird press conference where everyone asked ridiculous questions. Well, not all. Hi Elon, this is Tim Dodd, Spaceflight Now's everyday astronaut. He shows it entering orbit with the 100 passengers and then refueling it three to five times, and then making its injection into Mars. - Good. - Is this the plan, or is it to have an IBT, or MCT, or whatever, with all the fuel, and then put passengers on board? Or can you tell me a little about that process? - Yes. - The plans Elon showed were appropriately ridiculous, perhaps even Scottish, something the world had never seen legitimately proposed.

A fully reusable rocket, 12 meters wide and 122 meters high, with 42 methane-powered full-flow staged combustion rocket engines in its first stage, then six vacuum engines and three more sea-level engines in the upper stage, and an advanced carbon composite. construction and sporting an insane 300 ton payload capacity. It was known as the Interplanetary Transportation System. After 2016 we saw some adjustments year after year, and the biggest change was actually a not big change when suddenly the rocket was reduced to nine meters in diameter and the capacity was reduced with it. Around this time, SpaceX started calling it BFR again and announced plans to send Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawo, on a trip around the moon for dearMoon.

But perhaps another big change was the decision to move away from carbon composite construction and use stainless steel. Then the name Starship finally came about. And, not to confuse us, the entire system is called Starship, but also the upper stage itself. The reinforcement is called Super Heavy. So we can loosely say that Starship means Starship and Super Heavy, but we could also just be talking about the upper stage. Kind of like when you can point to corn and say, "Hey, look, that's corn." If it's off the cob and in a bowl, you'll still call it corn, but when it's on the cob, you could say it's corn on the cob. (laughs) God, you can tell I'm from Iowa, right?

In 2019, SpaceX held a press event in front of a full-size Starship mockup prototype in Boca Chica, later known as Mark 1. At this point, the design was being iterated less and less, and now the upper stage was going to having only two fins that act like giant air brakes. Now I've made a video explaining the reasons why they probably used two fins instead of three, and it's a fun video. But that brings us up to speed with Starship, as most of the development was done behind closed doors and on SpaceX's own terms. I think now would be a good time to analyze the progress of these two programs, add up what exactly has been built, and see if we can get a better idea of ​​their wildly different design philosophies. (relaxed music) So this is a segment I've wanted to do for a while.

Starship skeptics will point to all the expanded test articles and say, "Look, they can't even build a tank," while SLS skeptics will say, "It's been a decade and nothing has happened." So let's design all the hardware that has been built. This will be quite comprehensive, but not a complete list of absolutely everything, but we will at least list the most important milestones, starting with SLS and Orion. A lot more hardware has been completed and tested than you might think. So far we've seen over a dozen Orions used between Ares 1-X, different abort tests, mock-ups and drop test units.

There has been a mostly complete flight of a legitimate Orion capsule in 2014 atop a Delta IV Heavy for EFT-1. I was on that mission and it was absolutely incredible. A full-size SLS hydrogen tank test lasting more than five hours at 260% of its structural rating was conducted at Marshall Space Center in 2019. All the hardware for the first full SLS and Orion test for Artemis 1 mission is practically ready for final assembly. The core stage is currently on the test stand preparing to perform a full duration static firing, the five segments of each SRB are ready to be stacked, the launch abort system is ready, the actual Orion capsule has finished all its tests and it's back. at the Kennedy Space Center awaiting its next launch around the moon.

The interim cryogenic propulsion stage has been ready to go for years, the Orion service module is ready, literally all the hardware for Artemis I is complete and finishing testing and then integrations. In total there are 16 RS-25Ds, four of which are currently integrated into the center stage, and 14 of those RS-25s previously flew Shuttle missions. There are enough Solid Rocket booster segments to form 16 boosters. There are also four more RL-10 engines ready for use in the upper stages. And now that the manufacturing lines and practices are in place, parts are being assembled for Artemis II, including the LOX tank, hydrogen tank, intertank, front skirt, engine section, pressure vessel for Orion , its service module, the heat shield, start abort tower and also other hardware components.

And of course, as mentioned, the RS-25 and booster segments are complete as well. But that is not all. Artemis 3 hardware is also being assembled, including Orion parts, the SLS hydrogen tank, service module parts, and again the solid rocket motors and engines. This is what has been achieved and completed over the last decade. So how does that compare to Starship's progress? Starship's progress is very different. The Raptor engine began development around 2012, and since then, here's a list of what we've seen built and tested. To date, more than 26 Raptor engines have been built, many of which are now in pieces, with probably only a handful actually capable of flying at the moment.

But that number is changing rapidly, as SpaceX has produced almost all of them in 2019 alone. And if we ignore the progress and test articles for any carbon composite and/or 12 meter diameter Starship, again, almost everything that we are going to list was built in the last year. Starting with Starhopper, which is the only Starship prototype that actually flies, at least on purpose, with two flights, a jump of 20 meters and another of 150 meters. We then watched the full-scale Mark 1 prototype being put together. At the same time, SpaceX was building a similar prototype in Cocoa, Florida, as a way for two different teams to work on different methods ofconstruction in a friendly competition.

Mark 2, as it was known, has since been abandoned and is still there. We then saw the two teams meet at the end of 2019 to finish and test the Mark 1 prototype, which failed in testing, as expected because they were already working on the next one, which would be called SN1, and that was when they changed the nomenclature. from Brand to Serial Number. There have been three subscale pressure test articles that have also tested welds and the ability to hold pressure at cryogenic temperatures in this era. They tested SN1, which imploded when the bottom fell out. Then we have the SN3, which also failed due to inadequate testing procedures.

And, at the time of this video, SN4 is already complete and SN5 is on its way. And if I keep trying to update this stupid animation with all the new pieces they're making, this video will never come out, because they're making them too fast. In other words, SpaceX has built and flown three times as many tanks in the last six months as SLS has in the last six years. And this is where we see huge differences in construction, testing, and overall philosophies. It's time to dig into this for a second. (upbeat music) By now you probably have a pretty good idea of ​​the design differences and philosophies just by looking at how these two programs have developed over time.

But there are some things that really show how different they really are. So let's start by putting ourselves in NASA's shoes. NASA, being funded by the government, has to do things very differently than a privately funded company, but perhaps the most important thing they can't do is take big risks. When building something as massive, complex and ambitious as SLS, you really need to take absolutely everything into account before you start sending instructions to contractors. If you start telling contractors to start building something and then something changes in the plan, all that work will be for nothing.

And this is compounded when there are dozens of contractors and government support employees who depend on each other to finish their parts on time. Imagine if a key part is delayed a year. What are government employees who support that system supposed to do? You can't just lay them off for a year and then reinstate them to the project, they will look for a new job. You can't really reassign them to anything else. It's not like a propulsion engineer is going to move on to the other rocket NASA is currently working on. There are a lot of inherent costs per year that are sunk costs in running a program of this scale.

So while it is inherently less risky and inefficient, there is also a safety net by having multiple contractors and space centers spread across the country, which greatly helps make it more attractive to Congress. So while it is inefficient, it at least helps ensure the survival of the program and that it continues to receive funding. And this is especially true when you realize that it is written into the law that the Europa Clipper, a probe headed for Jupiter's moon Europa, is legally mandated to fly on SLS. And perhaps the craziest thing about that fact is that $250 million has been added to the program because there won't be an SLS rocket until at least 2025, even though the probe will be ready by 2023.

But in the long run, this law helped keeping a program moving forward and funded during what could be very uncertain times with changing administrations. Now, this obviously isn't ideal at all, but if you're worried about the show's survivability and not just about its vision changing 180 degrees every four to eight years, doing things like this is just part of the game, for better or worse. evil. worse. But let's not forget that NASA's budget is only about half a percent of our national budget, and human spaceflight programs are not even half of that. So in general, the main philosophy for building SLS is to plan ahead and take little risk, because there really isn't much room for failure when you have to answer to taxpayers why their money literally went up in smoke.

Now compare this to Starship. Spacecraft development is literally a blank slate. SpaceX didn't start with detailed blueprints, it literally started by simply learning what questions to ask and how to frame the constraints of what its vehicle needed to do. SpaceX appears to be done with two main goals. Be completely and quickly reusable and have a capacity large enough to be useful for carrying humans to other celestial bodies. That's it, and then start working backwards. The next most important element that helps answer that question is the development of an engine that is efficient and massively reusable. As I mentioned in my video about SpaceX's Raptor engine, a full-flow staged combustion cycle engine powered by methane, is perfectly suited to the needs of these targets.

From there, everything is practically a giant playground. So when we saw the sudden pivot from carbon fiber to stainless steel, you get an idea of ​​how important it is for SpaceX to start flying to have a starting point to iterate on when you listen to Elon explain why it was so important. to make the change. - Take the general approach that if a design takes too long, the design is wrong and therefore should be modified to speed up progress. - Good. - One of the most fundamental mistakes made in advanced development is sticking to a design even when it is very complicated and not putting in the effort to eliminate parts and processes.

It's incredibly important. So the switch to steel was because advanced carbon fiber was taking too long. - That's why we're seeing so many random things happening there in Boca Chica, Texas, with the development of Starship. That's why it's a bit silly to bother asking more about future plans, of which, of course, I'm as guilty as anyone. (laughs) Because it all depends on what will happen with the current step, and the subsequent development step will be based on the results of the previous step and etcetera, etcetera. It's a similar philosophy to something known as the agile model, which is standard in software development, which makes sense given Elon's original background in software.

Basically, you don't work on step two until you've finished step one. If you plan any further in advance, there's a good chance you'll have to undo your work. Now, this is literally the opposite of SLS, where everything needs to have an exact plan because, if you end up building the rocket three meters shorter than the plans, suddenly your entire ground support system will change too, and anyway, More or less this has basically happened with SLS and its mobile launch tower. But everything for Starship is still on the table right now. I mean, we're literally watching them build a factory around a rocket and not the other way around.

And, frankly, this is quite risky. But it's also much easier to do, because SpaceX is so vertically integrated, meaning changes in decisions don't have as big of a ripple effect as other, more traditional methods. But know that we will see more hardware fail. We'll see some setbacks, we'll probably see explosions. But unlike SLS, it's not only okay to fail, it's expected to be a lower-cost, faster way to learn and prototype. Elon has said time and time again, in one form or another: "Failure is an option here; if things don't fail, you're not innovating enough." This is very similar to the design philosophy of the Soviet Union.

Basically, build something as cheap as possible, test it, if it blows up, see what went wrong, make improvements, repeat. And it definitely gave them an advantage in the space race during early development. Let's say you blow up a rocket you built in a. month, well, learn from it. SpaceX will build another rocket in less time than it will take NASA to fuel and test the SLS once. And that's just a huge, huge difference in philosophies. I think it's time we stack these rockets side by side to help figure out how they really compare when we look at their nuts and bolts.

We've already touched on the dimensions of each vehicle, so here they are on the screen again. For now, we will compare some initial versions of each rocket, namely SLS Block 1 and Block 1B and the rough version of Starship as it currently stands. But definitely keep in mind that Starship will change a lot (laughs), pretty much every time one is built for at least the first dozen or two. But SLS could also change a bit if Block 1B comes online. But while we're at it, let's look at the Saturn V and the Falcon Heavy for additional perspective on how these vehicles really compare.

As it stands today, SLS is big, really big, but Starship will be huge. Now let's talk about engines and their fuels. Falcon Heavy has 27 Merlin engines at sea level and a single vacuum-optimized Merlin engine in its upper stage, all of which are powered by RP-1. Then there's the Saturn V, which had five F1 engines in its first stage that ran on RP-1, five J2 engines in the second stage, and one J2 in the third stage that ran on hydrogen. As we know, SLS has two SRBs, four hydrogen-powered RS-25s, and Block 1 has only one RL-10B2 in its upper stage, and Block 1B will have four hydrogen-powered RL-10s.

Lastly, Starship has 37 engines on the Super Heavy booster and six Raptors on Starship. This number is highly subject to change and is relatively easy for SpaceX to do so due to the small size of the Raptor engine. Next, let's look at his thrust on takeoff. As always, this is pretty fun. The Falcon Heavy is the baby here at 22.8 meganewtons, followed by the mighty Saturn V at 35.1, then the SLS at 39.1, and finally Starship will be king here at 72 meganewtons as it currently stands. Now we've gone over some of the low Earth orbit capabilities of these rockets, so let's add SLS and Starship back into this.

Now look, we're going to show the performance of SLS Block 1 and the Block 1B upgrade, but their low Earth orbit capabilities are pretty much the same since it's the core stage that pretty much puts them into orbit. But now let's show how much mass they can send to the moon, also known as translunar injection or TLI, since we're talking about lunar missions anyway. Quick note: This isn't necessarily how much a vehicle can put into lunar orbit, but rather how much it could shoot at the moon. You still need to enter lunar orbit with your spaceship. In the case of Orion or Apollo, this is done with the Service module.

And this is technically a C3 of -0.99 to be exact, which is a measure of the characteristic energy to reach a certain point in space. Falcon Heavy, when reused, can deliver about nine tons to the Moon if all three cores land on unmanned spacecraft, or about 15 tons when expended. Then we have the Saturn V which could send 48.6 tons to the moon. Then the SLS Block 1 can support 27.5 tons and the 1B can support up to 43 tons. Now, you might ask, "How can a more powerful rocket get closer to the Moon than the Saturn V?" Well, that interim cryogenic propulsion stage is very small for this size rocket.

But interestingly, even with the Block 1B and With the four upper exploration stages powered by RL-10, the SLS can still only send 43 tons to the moon, so it's little of what the Saturn V was capable of, which, frankly, is a bit disconcerting to me. And Starship is a bit. It's more confusing when it comes to TLI alone not being able to perform a translunar injection Due to its huge dry mass of 120 tons, carrying all that dead weight all the way. of the moon doesn't work without it. Now, of course, in-orbit refueling is 100% part of the Starship plan, but we'll talk more about that in an upcoming video where I'll talk about using a booster stage versus refueling. of Starship fuel.

Now this is where we are going to go down a very, very deep rabbit hole, so hold on tight. We are going to talk about prices, and it is not easy to talk about this, you will see why. And all the numbers you'll see are adjusted to 2020 US dollars. Let's start with what I'll call the sticker price. This is the price at which you could presumably purchase a release. For now, we are ignoring development costs and what the bill would be for launching such a rocket. But we'll get to the development costs in a second, but for now, just file them away.

And we're also going to look only at rockets, not spaceships like Apollo or Orion. Starting with Falcon Heavy with around 90 million when reused and probably around 150 million when spent. The Saturn V was around 1.2 billion, the SLS Block 1 and the later Block 1B will be around 875 million once production stabilizes. And Starship, well, Elon claims they can launch it for two million. But let's say they can make two million, but for a while it would be smart to charge 100 million until the market catches up. So let's throw in 100 million as the sticker price on theworst of cases. Now, with these numbers, we can make a basic relationship between dollar and kilogram.

And since we're talking about the Moon again, let's just look at how much it costs to send a kilogram to the Moon using a translunar injection for each of these vehicles. Falcon Heavy can take one kilogram to the moon for about $10,000, whether reused or spent. So, the Saturn V cost about $25,600, the best case scenario for the SLS Block 1 with stabilized production is around $31,500, but the Block 1B seems much better, at $20,000 per kilogram. And finally, Starship. Now remember, a single $100 million Starship launch can't achieve anything with a translunar injection, so two additional launches will be needed to resupply it at an additional cost of $100 million each to deliver 156 tons of payload with a translunar injection. , which would end up costing around $2,000 per kilogram.

In case you don't know, we're putting Starship in as a punching bag in case it gets too optimistic. And yet, it is still by far the cheapest product on the list. But these preliminary costs are based on many assumptions. They don't really take development costs into account and we still have a lot to cover in terms of budgets and costs. So for now, just file this away, because in the next video we'll really look for all the holes when it comes to costs. (upbeat music) So how did we get here? How is it possible that we have two completely different super duper mega rockets online at the same time?

I think the story speaks for itself. When NASA began working on SLS, the idea of ​​a rocket like Starship would have been completely ridiculous. I mean, even today, a lot of people think it's crazy and likely to fail. But Starship is impossible until it isn't. And then, suddenly, literally everything changes. And don't forget that NASA has been working on SLS and Orion for almost a decade. If SpaceX had approached NASA with Starship in 2011, it would have been like trying to sell a farmer in 1870 a John Deere 8RX 410 four-track, nine-liter turbodiesel, GPS-guided tractor with an infinitely variable transmission and 85- Integrated cc displacement hydraulic pump with 227 liters per minute of hydraulic flow, air conditioning and heating, 10 inch touch screens and digital monitoring when looking to buy a plow for their horse.

They just wouldn't have believed you. (laughs) Oh man, I showed my Iowa again, sorry. And NASA has had the rug pulled out from under them so many times, so many programs starting, only to change direction and hands 100 times before the program has a chance to actually begin. So NASA did what it had to do: it took a safe, conservative route, leaning on existing technologies, partners, and program funding schemes to design a rocket that, for better or worse, would have a hard time being canceled so that at fewer could have true deep space capabilities for the first time in almost 50 years.

Because I think that's the biggest surprise in all of this. It's not Starship. Humanity has Starship on the way. Starship is destined because, frankly, it makes sense to make a fully reusable rocket. Everybody wants that, everybody wants to do that, nobody thinks it's a bad idea and nobody thinks it's ever, ever going to happen. But I think the biggest surprise is that it would be almost 50 years before there would be a rocket capable of taking humans to the Moon after Saturn V. If you had told that fact to the last person to walk on the Moon, Gene Cernan, to his Coming home in 1972, no one would have returned to the Moon by 2020.

He probably would have done a Buzz Aldrin and punched you in the face. It wasn't until the market changed that rocket technology became attainable, not by nations, but by a small handful of bright, brave individuals who could rethink everything and open up business options and opportunities that simply didn't exist before. I know Elon's life goal is to get to Mars, but in the meantime, he will have completely changed humanity's access to space for the better. And yes, even when you take into account how much rockets pollute, because believe me, I already made a very, very long video on that too, which is a fascinating topic, you should definitely watch it.

To get to Mars, you need a highly capable, fully reusable rocket, and to discover that crazy proposal completely changes the economics of spaceflight by orders of magnitude. I mean, the reason we stopped going to the moon in the first place was because it was so expensive and the United States had clearly measured its shares against the Soviet Union, and that just wasn't a sustainable way to explore the moon. So, speaking of sustainable ways to explore the moon, that's what we'll really dive into in my next video which, by chance, is almost finished, so hang on and we'll respond, in case NASA cancels SLS and uses Starship and other commercials. launchers.

So at the end of the day, in my opinion, the orange rocket is pretty good for now, the bright rocket is awesome for the very near future. And we, as a space team, can celebrate the fact that we even live in a time when we will have two super megarockets coming online at about the same time. Yes. So what do you think? You learned something new? Did any of your perspectives change? I know mine does. Honestly, when I started making this video and working on the script, I thought it was a foregone conclusion. I thought I knew it all, and I found out that it was actually humbling to really analyze how this all works and just do a reality check for myself.

Let me know if you learned anything or if something changed in your mind. And I'm sure the comments are still full of SLS versus Starship, which is what this video is about. And I probably guess I didn't really help reduce the amount of arguments on Twitter. Sorry, Joe Barnard. I have a quick list of people I need to thank for helping with this video. First of all, Boca Chica Mary and NasaSpaceFlight for providing some of these wonderful images of Starship's development. I'm sure you're already following them, but in case you haven't, head over and follow their work.

Then I must thank Kimi Talvitie, Caspar Stanley and Martian Days, who helped provide some of the beautiful performances you've seen. So definitely follow them. But also thanks to Declan Murphy from Flightclub.io for helping me generate some of these numbers and analyze some things. He started working on a yeet calculator, which is just fantastic. Thanks to some of the things we were working on, trying to figure out which rockets could do what things. So definitely check out Flightclub.io and his Patreon page if you want to help him do the amazing work he's doing. Speaking of Patreon, I definitely owe a huge thank you to my patrons who already listened to this video so many times before it came out.

They fact check and do a lot of work for me on the backend, and it's just amazing. We have an amazing community, so thank you all for all your help. If you want to help add your voice, your opinion, fact-check some facts, or just hang out with like-minded people in the space, definitely consider becoming a supporter on Patreon where you'll get access to our dedicated Subreddit, our dedicated Discord channel, and streams live monthly exclusives. That's patreon.com/everydayastronaut. Thank you. And while you're online, be sure to check out my webstore, because we have some really cool products, like Lunar Mission t-shirts, which, by the way, you couldn't even see the back of yet.

Look at this. There's actually a little Easter egg in this shirt. Notice it says Lunar Mission in this photo, but there is actually more to this photo. So if you can figure it out, if you can figure out what else there is besides Lunar Mission, not taking off your shoes before entering the cabin, but the additional words of Lunar Mission. If you can figure out what everyone else is saying, enter it at checkout for a coupon code and you'll get 10% off this shirt, so good luck. We have some really great products, they are all hand printed here in the USA, with hand sewn patches.

We are constantly doing new things. Get ready, there will be a lot of really interesting new things. So check back often, because some of this stuff is so cool that even Elon Musk uses it, seriously. That's dailyastronaut.com/shop. Thank you all, that will be enough for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, bringing space closer to Earth for everyday people. (upbeat music)