Why Is NASA Using Old Technology To Go Back To The Moon? I saw an article which said commercial space companies were telling the government to cut the red tape or we will lose our lead in space. I couldn’t agree with this more than I do. Red tape has gotten much worse over the last few years. Along with this is the governments instance on going with some of the legacy space companies. I say this because they are often years late and far over cost when they finally deliver their goods. This perpetuates their behavior. Then there is the rewards they get when they are years behind. The government actually gives them different types of bonus awards for doing a good job. If the government would go more with companies like SpaceX, I am sure the legacy companies would have to take note to stay competitive. The NASA Space Launch System has cost, as of November 2022, 11.8 billion dollars so far. SpaceX paid to develop its Starship rocket not the government and it cost them about 10 billion dollars. As they were developing the rocket they were set back many times by government red tape. I couldn’t help but feel it was being done to not embarrass the government for the delays in their SLS program. This is just my opinion. Meanwhile, other countries are making incredible progress. Much of it seems to be based on what we have accomplished in the past, giving them a leg up. It is always faster to develop something if you have information on how it was done before. Russia didn’t pay the proper attention to their space program settling for so many years to just be a shuttle to the space station. Meanwhile, other countries like China, India and Japan have continued to have improved in their space endeavors. As of today, it seems to me China has moved in second place but still is yet to catch up to us, but they are getting closer. Russian failures in trying to get to Mars hurt them, but the most embarrassing failure was when their moon rover crashed and India succeeded. It seem to punctuate how far they have fallen. India succeeding with their rover on their first try was very impressive, so much so that NASA invited them to take part in our space projects. The sad part of this was the Soviets had put the first rovers on the moon years ago. They had sent Lunokhod 1 to the moon way back in 1970. When I look at the current NASA space program I tend to feel we are not making much progress in our rocket systems. The rocket used in the SLS is about 15 percent more powerful than the Saturn rocket. What bothered me was we were told we had to build a whole new system to go back to the moon. When people asked if we had anymore Saturn rockets, we were again told no and the plans were lost, meaning we had to build another rocket from scratch which in turn meant many billions of dollars for legacy space companies. Even if we didn’t have any more Saturn rockets to use, there are three of them on display. There is one at NASA Johnson Space Center and it is said it is the only one comprised of all flight certified hardware. We could have taken it apart and used it as our blueprint saving billions of dollars. No one mentioned that fact. We decided to go ahead and start from scratch and build a rocket which on paper seems to be inferior to the SpaceX Starship. I admit it has not been fully tested yet but this may have been because holds were put on it so many times by the government. The Starship is not only cheaper, it is reusable and as far as I know the Artimis is not. Then there is the fact some space shuttle parts were used. It has been said NASA will not even recover the booster engines. There have been a few suggestions in the past stating NASA should go with the more powerful Starship rocket, not only because it is more powerful and cheaper, but the launches are far cheaper. In 2019 it was estimated it could cost up to 2 billion dollars to launch the SLS system. Starship has been estimated to cost 40 million per launch in 2019. How can we even compare this huge difference and decide to go with the SLS? Why did NASA go with a system that is not reusable? Was the selection of legacy companies because they had powerful lobbies in Washington? Elon Musk has said he wants to get the launch price down to 2 million dollars. Starship will have 16.7 million pounds of thrust. The SLS has 8.8 million pounds of thrust. Starship still has to finish all its test however. Could there be any reason, other than politics for the government to go with old technology over newer and cheaper technology? I can’t find any, but that is just me. If we were talking about aircraft, would the government buy a one use fighter plane or bomber if they were others which could be flown again and again? It just doesn’t make sense to me. SpaceX uses some 3D printed parts in some of their rockets. This just indicated to me they will eventually get around to using it on the Starship and make it even cheaper. In 2014 SpaceX admitted they had been using 3D printing for over 3 years. The idea was to perfect the technology for spaceflight. 3D printed rockets have far less parts to assemble. One company named Relativity Space is using it for their rockets and said their Terran 1 rocket only has about 10% of the parts a rocket would ordinarily need assembled. It is said 3D printed rockets can have flaws and have to be checked very carefully and this can be time consuming. One has to balance the time taken and the cost against building a rocket the old way. A 3D printed part can contain what would have been many parts in one piece. NASA is developing a new type of rocket engines. It is called a rotating detonation rocket engine. Some are saying this new engine could change the way rocket engines are built. The engine produces more power and uses less fuel. Anytime you can use less fuel that is a big win for a rocket. NASA states it is powerful enough to power rockets not only to the moon, but also to Mars. So, it seems NASA does do some things right and has made some amazing discoveries over the years.
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