Nie da sie ukryć, że od pewnego czasu trwa wyraźne ograniczanie możliwości przyszłych wykorzystań SLS.
Na razie administrator NASA powołuje się na opóźnienia w rozpoczęciu pierwszego lotu SLS, ale kropla drąży skałę...
Utrzymywanie w przyszłości całego systemu dla prawdopodobnie 1. startu rocznie będzie bardzo kosztowne.
Szansą dla SLS, jak można sądzić, jest stosowanie tej rakiety przed wdrożeniem komercyjnych rozwiązań ciężkich rakiet.
Później będzie coraz trudniej bronić jej ekonomiczności. Ta kwestia była już wcześniej przedstawiana.
Może właśnie propozycja o użyciu do EM-1 komercyjnego rozwiązania spowoduje obniżenie kosztów programu (a może zwiększenie, gdy opracowanie rozwiązań dla nowej architektury misji EM-1 okaże się bardziej kosztowne).
Jeśli ostatecznie propozycja zostałaby zaakceptowana i 2 starty z dodatkowym opracowaniem odpowiednich rozwiązań okażą sie tańsze od 1 startu SLS to pojawią się zintensyfikowane propozycje podważające sens istnienia SLS.
Industry and lawmakers go to defense of SLSby Jeff Foust — March 14, 2019
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a supporter of the SLS, said that Orion should launch on the SLS and not alternative commercial vehicles as NASA is now considering. Credit: American Association for Cancer Research(...) The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, an industry group whose members include companies involved in development of both SLS and Orion, also defended the use of the SLS for Orion missions. “No launch vehicle other than the SLS can enable the launch of a fully-outfitted Orion, including the [service module], to the moon,” it said in a March 14 statement. “As a result, the Administrator noted that this approach would require at least two launches of heavy-lift vehicles.”
The group added that it “is also clear that this approach would require additional funding, since the idea is to undertake both this mission and to continue development of the SLS apace.” Bridenstine, in his Senate testimony, offered no estimate of the cost of this alternative approach to EM-1 but said it “might require some help from the Congress.” (...)
(...) Larry James, deputy director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted the potential use of SLS for other missions. “It opens up the outer planets for exploration,” he said. “From a science perspective, you open up a whole new domain of rapid exploration of the outer planets with the SLS.”
James didn’t note that the administration’s budget proposal for 2020 proposed moving the Europa Clipper mission, one such outer planets mission that had been planning to use the SLS, to a commercial launch vehicle, citing a savings of more than $700 million. (...)
https://spacenews.com/industry-and-lawmakers-go-to-defense-of-sls/Bridenstine reiterates commitment to SLSby Jeff Foust — March 14, 2019
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee March 13, said NASA is studying the option of using commercial launch vehicles for launching on Orion on EM-1. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky(...) Speaking at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here March 14, Bridenstine said the ongoing study to use commercial launch vehicles rather than the SLS for Exploration Mission (EM) 1 was motivated by a desire to maintain a schedule that called for flying the mission in mid 2020, and that it was a stopgap measure only.
“This is a fix to a problem,” he told an audience of aerospace executives, congressional staffers and representatives of other space agencies of that potential alternative approach to EM-1. “This is not the solution. This is not sustainable.”
Bridenstine told members of the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing March 13 that the agency was looking at that alternative approach, which would involve using one commercial launch vehicle to launch the Orion and another to launch an upper stage that, once docked to Orion, would propel it to the moon. In the day since that hearing, some have speculated that the proposal could be an attempt to demonstrate that the SLS was no longer necessary, particularly after the administration’s budget request for 2020 deferred work on the more powerful Block 1B version of SLS and moved some payloads, including elements of the lunar Gateway and the Europa Clipper mission, to other vehicles. (...)
https://spacenews.com/bridenstine-reiterates-commitment-to-sls/