NASA wants to spend over $2B per launch on a super heavy lift system called the SLS, that can only lift about twice as much as a Falcon Heavy that costs around $120M a launch.
More is always better when we are talking interplanetary travel. But the Falcon Heavy is adequate, esp. if you can do in-orbit assembly.
If NASA needs a bigger rocket, they can buy the SpaceX BFR, which has a substantially greater cargo capacity than the SLS, and if they offered SpaceX a fixed price contract at $200M a launch I'd bet Musk would jump at it.
My comment was more aimed at the political rather than technical side of the current state of the American space program.
I was more thinking about politicians not just continuing exhaling hot air through their vocal cords in front of cameras, but having them actually make concrete commitments by actually putting their money where their mouth is.
If they doubled NASAs budget and chucked that 50% increase to private contractors like SpaceX, great, that would probably have incredible results. But seriously, stop talking big and actually commit to these dreams, dammit!
"doubled NASAs budget and chucked that 50% increase to private contractors like SpaceX"
I agree. If the US said they would tax Apple's cash pile @ 10% if Apple were willing to repatriate the money, that'd bring in enough to double NASA's budget. I'm not saying 10% is the right number, but just giving an example.
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NASA wants to spend over $2B per launch on a super heavy lift system called the SLS, that can only lift about twice as much as a Falcon Heavy that costs around $120M a launch.
Maybe it's not NASA's budget, but how it's spent?
What about the extra range/energy that could be delivered to a falcon heavy size payload?
More is always better when we are talking interplanetary travel. But the Falcon Heavy is adequate, esp. if you can do in-orbit assembly.
If NASA needs a bigger rocket, they can buy the SpaceX BFR, which has a substantially greater cargo capacity than the SLS, and if they offered SpaceX a fixed price contract at $200M a launch I'd bet Musk would jump at it.
My comment was more aimed at the political rather than technical side of the current state of the American space program.
I was more thinking about politicians not just continuing exhaling hot air through their vocal cords in front of cameras, but having them actually make concrete commitments by actually putting their money where their mouth is.
If they doubled NASAs budget and chucked that 50% increase to private contractors like SpaceX, great, that would probably have incredible results. But seriously, stop talking big and actually commit to these dreams, dammit!
"doubled NASAs budget and chucked that 50% increase to private contractors like SpaceX"
I agree. If the US said they would tax Apple's cash pile @ 10% if Apple were willing to repatriate the money, that'd bring in enough to double NASA's budget. I'm not saying 10% is the right number, but just giving an example.
It would bring in triple that. Personal dividend tax is 20%.
Plus California takes another 10% off the top, so they could start their own space program!
I don't have a good idea about how this scales. What would something with twice the lift of the Falcon Heavy cost?
It costs 2 Falcon Heavy launches plus some work on on-orbit assembly.
Scale it up ... or just send a brace of falcon heavies