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posted by martyb on Wednesday May 06 2020, @05:05AM   Printer-friendly
NASA will pay a staggering $146 million for each SLS rocket engine:

NASA has previously given more than $1 billion to Aerojet to "restart" production of the space shuttle era engines and a contract for six new ones. So, according to the space agency, NASA has spent $3.5 billion for a total of 24 rocket engines. That comes to $146 million per engine.

The NASA news release says that Aerojet has "implemented a plan to reduce the cost of the engines by as much as 30 percent," noting the use of more advanced manufacturing techniques.

[...] NASA designed these brilliant engines in the 1970s for the space shuttle program, during which they each flew multiple launches. A total of 46 engines were built for the shuttle at an estimated cost of $40 million[*] per engine. But now these formerly reusable engines will be flown a single time on the SLS rocket and then dropped into the ocean.

There are four engines on a Space Launch System rocket. At this price, the engines for an SLS rocket, alone, will cost more than $580 million. This does not include the costs of fabricating the rocket's large core stage, towering solid-rocket boosters, an upper stage, or the costs of test, transportation, storage, and integration. With engine prices like these, it seems reasonable to assume that the cost of a single SLS launch will remain $2 billion into perpetuity.

[...] There are a lot of things one could buy in the aerospace industry for $146 million. One might, for example, buy at least six RD-180 engines from Russia. These engines have more than twice the thrust of a space shuttle main engine. Or, one might go to United Launch Alliance's Rocket Builder website and purchase two basic Atlas V rocket launches. You could buy three "flight-proven" Falcon 9 launches. One might even buy a Falcon Heavy launch, which has two-thirds the lift capacity of the Space Launch System at one-twentieth the price[...]

[...] SpaceX is building the Raptor rocket engine to power its Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage. The Raptor has slightly more power at sea level than the RS-25, and is designed for dozens of uses. According to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, it costs less than $1 million to build a Raptor engine. The company has already built a couple dozen of them on its own dime. So there's that.

[*] Not adjusted for inflation.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @07:10PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @07:10PM (#991783)

    I still partially disagree. Iridium went up in the 90s and Orbital was launching about 20 flights a year back then. They could have done more since they had several different vehicles. I'd say the biggest killer was cell phones (killed Iridium) and lack of sophisticated micro sats (tech problems back then). There just wasn't the market like today and we've had a whole evolution of the tech.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2020, @09:30PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2020, @09:30PM (#991818) Journal
    Orbital's peak launch rate [wikipedia.org] was six flights in 1998. OSC had other launch vehicles [wikipedia.org], but only the Minotaur I was active back then - it launched twice in 2000.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2020, @04:53AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2020, @04:53AM (#991961)

      Wrong. PEGASUS peak launch rate was 6. That is hardly the whole fleet. And nothing in your links list the military launches except in passing. Here shows some, but many are still missing:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_in_spaceflight [wikipedia.org]
      and also other years. Incomplete though. Can't find a better site showing the whole fleet (~35 vehicles in the 90's).
      Also, I said 90's and Minotaur was just being developed during that time and was the beginning of the end IMNSHO. We were discussing events 25-35 years ago that woulda/coulda/shoulda, but didn't. Orbital and Coleman Research were the Space-X of their day. Young and growing fast. You can hardly find evidence of Coleman online anymore in the launch business, and Orbital has been swallowed by ATK and NG and are a shadow of their former selves. If Iridium had been successful, it might have been a different world, but cell phones stole the business and the rest is history. And again, none of it had anything to do with NASA.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 10 2020, @12:22AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 10 2020, @12:22AM (#992172) Journal
        I only count Pegasus since they were the only orbital launch vehicles. There were 5 such launches. The other 5 were suborbital with one failure and one partial failure.