Hi it’s me Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
One of the questions I get asked most often
is “who do you like better NASA or SpaceX”
OK… here’s the deal.
You can’t watch this video unless you’ve
watched my other video “SpaceX VS NASA,
is that even a fair question.”
Seriously.
You can’t.
I forbid it.
I’ll wait here for you to watch that first.
It’s honestly the only fair way to paint
the full picture of the two entities.
Ok, now that you’ve watched that, although
I don’t think it’s fair to compare a government
agency to a private company in general, there
is one thing we can truly compare apples to apples.
Or shall I say rockets to rockets.
And that’s rockets.
Wait.
So in this video we’re going to look at
some rockets past, present and future from
SpaceX and NASA and check out their capabilities,
their costs and their over all designs in
an attempt to really help compare the two.
So NASAs rockets vs SpaceX’s rockets…
considering what we learned in that last video,
this one might get interesting.
Let’s get started!
Alright, since in our last video we helped
establish the differences as well as the relationship
between NASA and SpaceX in that video that
you CERTAINLY HAD TO HAVE WATCHED BY NOW,
it’s time we compare the rockets of NASA
vs the rockets of SpaceX!
So for starters let’s compare two partially
reusable launch vehicles that have similar
capabilities, NASA’s space shuttle and SpaceX’s
Falcon Heavy.
I don’t think the Space Shuttle needs much
of an introduction, but let’s tee it up
like this.
The space shuttle is a gorgeous, reusable-ish
space plane that launched between 1981 and
2011.
There were 5 operational shuttles that flew
during that thirty year span,
covering 135 missions!
The final design of the Space Shuttle was
chosen by NASA based off a proposal submitted
by North American Rockwell in 1972.
The orbiters would be built by Rockwell International,
which was later purchased by Boeing, the external
tanks by Martin Marietta, which later merged
with Lockheed.
The SRBs by Thiokol, later Morton Thiokol
and finally ATK-Thiokol.
Wait, which now is Orbital ATK, hold on, but
that’s now Orbital ATK a space division
of Northrup Grumman….
This is harder to keep track of than a royal
family.
Ok anyway, where were we?
Oh yeah.
I can’t even watch videos of the space shuttle
and not get a little emotional.
It really is beautiful and awe inspiring.
And for SpaceX we’ve got the Falcon Heavy.
Do we really need to explain the Falcon Heavy?
I feel like that’s all we ever talk about
these days.
Ok but here's a quick version.
Falcon Heavy is SpaceX’s third launch vehicle,
which is up to almost 90% reusable.
It’s basically three of their Falcon 9 rockets
put together to form a heavy lift launcher.
Its first launch was on February 6th, 2018
and put Elon Musk’s personal
Tesla in deep space.
The mission was a huge huge success, not only
for landing 2 out of the 3 boosters, or by
creating the coolest and most awe inspiring
images of a straight up car in space, but
also by making a giant display of a spaceflight
event arguably for the first time in the 21st century.
Falcon Heavy reallllly created some buzz!
I did a video about my experience seeing Falcon
Heavy from only 3 miles away and answering
the questions of WHY, why Falcon heavy and
why a tesla in space.
It’s one of my favorite videos, so if you
haven’t already watched it, definitely check it out.
Ok, it's numbers time!
The Space shuttle stood 56 meters or 184 feet
tall, which is not much taller than just the
first stage of the Falcon Heavy, which all
together stands at 70 meters or 230 feet tall.
The Space Shuttle’s diameter, is….
kinda hard to measure…
The big orange external fuel tank was a massive
8.4 meters or 27.5 feet wide, the orbiter
itself had a wingspan of 23.7 meters or 78
feet, and the each of the white solid rocket
rocket boosters on either side of the orange
tank were 3.7 meters or 12 feet wide.
And believe it or not, that’s the exact
same diameter of the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy cores.
Obviously the Falcon Heavy has 3 cores, so
all together it’s 12.2 meters or 40 feet wide.
Next let’s compare the thrust of the two
vehicles.
The space shuttle was CRAZY powerful.
More specifically, those massive solid rocket
boosters were crazy powerful.
Combined, the two solid rocket motors produced
25,000 kN’s or 5.6 million pounds of thrust!
Then the space shuttle had 3 main liquid engines
known as RS-25s which produced another 5,200 kN’s
or 1.2 million pounds of thrust for
a total of 30,200 kN’s or 6.8 million pounds of thrust.
Then Falcon Heavy, although the most powerful
rocket currently flying, it's a fair amount
less powerful than the Space Shuttle with
a total of 22.800 kN’s or 5.1 million pounds of thrust.
In the grand scheme of rockets that have flown,
the Falcon Heavy is only the 5th most powerful,
coming in after the Soviet Union's N1 moon
rocket, which techincally flewwww, but all
four flights ending in a Rapid Unscheduled
Dissaembly, NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket,
The Soviet Union's Energia rocket which carried
their Buran Space Shuttle and lastly the United
State’s Space shuttle.
Don’t get me wrong, the Falcon Heavy is
AMAZING, but it’s easy to forget about the
giants that preceded it.
So who cares about thrust, what’s the actual
capability of the vehicles?
Well the space shuttle is kind of weird, because
technically it could put the orbiter which
weighed 68,500 kg’s or 151,000 pounds empty,
PLUS up to 27,500 kg’s or 60,000 pounds
of payload into orbit.
But since the orbiter portion wasn’t part
of the payload, we’ll have to stick with
the 27,500 kg payload capacity as that’s
what was actually delivered to space.
The Falcon Heavy on the other hand can put
63,800 kgs or 140,000 pounds in orbit, when
fully expendable..
Which it probably won’t do very often.
When all three cores are to be recovered,
which it sounds like they'll probably do most
the time, the payload capability is about
half that, so around 30,000 kgs or 66,000
pounds in to low earth orbit.
And since the whole point of the Falcon Heavy
is to reuse as much of the vehicle as possible,
let’s go ahead and quote the 30,000 kg’s
as its usable payload to orbit.
So how about price?
I’m sure we have an idea where this is going…
Although the Space Shuttle was able to reuse
many of its components, due to massive refurbishment
costs, paying for the safety and the redundant
hardware required for humans on cargo, and
design compromises, the space shuttle wound
up very, very expensive.
It’s hard to really get an exact number
on this, but the entire shuttle program cost
210 BILLION dollars to design, manufacture,
run, maintain and fly.
Divide that by the 135 missions and you get
a cost of around 1.5 billion dollars PER LAUNCH.
Ok.
That might be unfair considering that’s
not the price tag a customer looking to launch
on the Space Shuttle would pay, the sticker
price for a launch was quoted as about $450
million per mission.
The Falcon Heavy on the other hand has a sticker
price of only $90 million, when being reused,
but might cost around $150 million if expended.
So we're going to stick to that $90 million reusable
price as that’s what we’re quoting for
payload capability.
Last, let’s compare the price per KG ratio
of each vehicle.
The Space Shuttle, if we’re quoting the
launch cost of $450 million and a 27,500 kg
payload comes in at $16,363 dollar per kg.
The Falcon Heavy on the other hand at a launch
cost of $90 million and a 30,000 kg payload
capability comes in at $3,000 per KG.
Woah… so more than 5 times cheaper.
Despite the Space Shuttle aiming to bring
the cost of space down by being reusable,
it took until a private company used 21 century
innovation, cost cutting manufacturing techniques
and potentially wreckless amounts of tweaking
to actually make that dream a reality.
Next let’s compare two upcoming launch vehicles
from both NASA and SpaceX.
NASA’s next generation launch vehicle is
called SLS or the Space Launch System.
SLS is NASA’s push to get Humans back into
deep space for the first time since the Apollo missions.
It’s design is rather interesting, mostly
utilizing space shuttle era components.
As a matter of fact, you can literally see
the space shuttle everywhere you look.
That big orange fuel tank, is essentially
just a stretched version of the shuttle’s
external fuel tank, the 4 main engines are
literally reused RS-25 engines from previously
flown shuttle missions, and those massive
solid rocket boosters on the sides are 5 segment
versions of the four segment boosters used
on the shuttle.
The upper stage, at least of the Block 1 version
currently being built, is the Interim Cryogenic
Propulsion Stage which is pretty much just
the upper stage off of ULA’s Delta IV rocket
with a single RL10 engine.
BTW, the RL10 engine is crazy efficient and
is a super awesome, albeit super expensive engine.
This Block 1 will fly with NASA’s Orion
Spacecraft.
A bigger and deep space ready follow up to
the Apollo spacecraft.
Rated to actually get humans out to Mars!
YES
We hope to see the first flight of the SLS
in 2020 with the first Exploration Mission
or EM-1.
SpaceX’s upcoming rocket is the BFR or Big
Falcon Rocket.
The BFR is essentially SpaceX’s Mars rocket.
Capable of sending up to 100 people to Mars
and back, this thing is full blown nuts.
The booster portion of the rocket will have
31 Methane powered Raptor engines and will
be fully reusable.
The upper stage spaceship portion will have
4 vacuum optimized Raptor engines and 3 sea
level ones for a total of 7.
The ship is primarily made of an advanced
Carbon Composite material and is designed
to be FULLY reusable.
So much so SpaceX envisions it being used
as a point to point transportation system
here on Earth.
We’ve previously done a really deep rundown
on the BFR and compared it to some other rockets.
So if you want to learn more about it’s
development, be sure and check out this video.
SpaceX hopes to test the BFR in 2019 and flying
it by 2020.
That’s pretttty ambitious.
Even for SpaceX
So let’s start with block 1 of SLS, since
that’s what we know for sure will fly here soon.
SLS block 1 will stand at 98 meters or 322
feet tall.
Not bad, but definitely shorter than the current
version of the BFR which is 106m or 348 feet tall.
Although, rumor has it, it’s probably already
grown taller than that.
Go figure.
SLS’s diameter, at least at the core of
the vehicle, is that 8.4 meters or 27.5 feet
wide, which is just slightly under the 9 meters
or 30 feet wide BFR.
Next we’ve got thrust.
The SLS’s 5 segment boosters are STUPID
powerful.
Combined, they’re almost as powerful as
the Saturn V!
Together they produce 32,000 kN or 7.2 million
pounds of thrust.
The core stage produces another 7,400 kN or
1.6 million pounds of thrust.
Together the first stage produces 39,400 kN
or 8.8 million pounds of thrust.
Dang.
But how about the BFR?
The BFR’s 31 Raptor engines produce a whopping
52,700 kN or 11.8 million pounds of thrust!
That’s more than two Falcon Heavies combined!
So how about capability?
SLS block 1 can put 70,000 kg or 150,000 pounds
in low Earth Orbit which is only about half
that of the BFR which can take 150,000 kg’s
or 330,000 pounds to LEO.
Now the realllllly big question.
COST.
To date, the development costs of SLS and
Orion capsule is an astonishing 23.8 billion.
And so far the SLS hasn’t launched yet and
the Orion Capsule has only flown once on a
heat shield test that lasted about 4 hours.
Gulp.
But we’re dealing with ONLY the SLS rocket
itself, which to date has cost around 12 billion
dollars.
That being said, once all systems are set
in place, it looks like the cost per launch
vehicle is estimated to be AROUND $500 million.
So I guess, development costs aside, we’ll
use that $500 million number.
Reluctantly.
Now here’s where things get silly.
Industry estimates show the cost of the BFR
to be around $335 million dollars per vehicle.
BUT, the real game changer is that the rocket
can be reused over and over and over again
with an actual launch cost of only around
$7 million.
SpaceX has even claimed that it’ll be cheaper
to launch the BFR than it was to launch their
first little baby rocket, the Falcon 1, due
to the primary costs of the BFR’s flight
just being the fuel.
Say the BFR winds up not even being reusable
AT ALL, which I wouldn’t bet on, even a
single $335 million dollar launch vehicle
with this kind of capability is still massively impressive.
So let’s not even do a cost per/KG ratio
on these two.
I think that’s besides the point.
These two vehicles demonstrates where I feel
like a lot of criticism comes in with NASA.
With almost 12 BILLION DOLLARS put into a
launcher that hasn’t flown once, and money
thrown around with every changing decision,
it’s easy to see why there’s strong opposition
to SLS.
I think the problem is twofold.
Number one, the SLS has no real clear cut
objective.
If NASA and congress said once and for all,
“We’re developing a moon base and a lunar
station in 5 years and we’re going to it
with SLS” I think a lot more would get done.
But what preluded SLS was the Ares 5 rocket
which was supposed to return us to the moon,
and then that turned it into SLS which was
destined for Mars, and then just an asteroid
and then maybe one Europa mission, and other
than that who knows.
Number two is the the sunk cost fallacy.
That’s the idea that we’ve already poured
over $20 billion dollars into this program….
we might as well keep going and get something
out of that investment rather than scrapping it.
But what happens when it changes every other
year and we never get to the point of actually
seeing it fly?
SLS was initially supposed to fly in 2018
with a cost of 7 billion dollars.
We’re well beyond that now, and the end
still isn’t in sight.
Despite many of the components being completed,
and most of the vehicle physically ready,
we’re still a couple years from even seeing
it fly.
BUT, put me down as a card carrying sunk cost
fallacist…
WE ARE SO DANG CLOSE TO ACTUALLY SEEING IT
FLY.
At this point, I don’t care if it flies
once, twice, or 30 times.
I need to hear those MASSIVE SRB’s rip the
sky apart, and I want to see those incredible
RS-25’s do some work instead of sitting
on a shelf to rot somewhere.
That being said, and this pains me to say
this considering I have several good friends
who work on SLS and Orion… with the inefficiencies,
the budgetary problems, and lack of a real
cut and dry purpose, I think the SLS/Orion
program needs to be reconsidered.
Either it needs a VERY CLEAR and conscience
purpose for existence, or it needs to not
exist at all.
And with the current budget of around $2 billion
a YEAR in development costs, NASA could launch
13 expendable Falcon Heavies a year or 6 expendable
BFRs.
It’s really hard to imagine a scenario where
one SLS would be better than 13 Falcon Heavies
or 6 BFRs.
And again, I don’t think it’s really fair
to just compare programs purely on a per dollar
amount like this, but I realllly do think
it needs to at least be reconsidered
It really feels like NASA and or congress
are pushing to build a rocket to nowhere.
I would much much rather they have clear mission
drawn up first, then develop the rocket based
on that mission.
Not build a rocket and hope a mission comes
up that needs it.
Speaking to this note, SpaceX president Gwynne
Shotwell, mentioned in a recent TED talk the
beauty of starting with a clean slate on a
rocket.
SpaceX’s rocket design is physics driven,
first and foremost.
There are no predefined requirements.
No one saying, “hey, we have this engine
sitting around, just use that,” or, “This
company already makes this component, use
it!”
Phew….
Ok I’m done comparing rockets… let’s
go ahead and wrap up with one final note to
chew on.
So to summarize my thoughts on NASA building
a rockets…
At one point building super advanced rockets
was something too risky, too out there and
too audacious for anyone but a massively funded
government program could do.
But now, rockets are becoming relatively easy
to build, well understood and most importantly
profitable.
So my personal belief is I think it’s time
NASA stops building rockets.
The money put into the SLS and Orion program
could do amazing things scientifically.
With the annual budget currently poured into
SLS, with each year NASA could launch a Curiosity
rover, or send another Cassini class mission
out to a gas giant, or even launch another
Hubble Space Telescope.
The universe is BIG, there’s SO much exploring
to do, and I think that’s what NASA’s
primary mission should be.
To explore space, do the science that’s
pushing our understanding of the universe,
and continue to employ the greatest minds
to make massive breakthroughs in propulsion,
habitats, exoplanets, human’s health in
space, and even what it takes to live on other planets.
And SpaceX, you just keep being SpaceX.
Dream big, help bring that cost of space down,
and someday complete your mission of making
humans a multi-planet species.
I know of a few organizations that’d love
to help make that happen!
NASA and SpaceX, as well as all other private
companies, will continue to work together.
And they’ll continue to literally broaden
our horizon.
It’s not an us vs them thing.
Space is only an US thing.
As I say often, space is the one border us
humans share.
As soon as we step off this planet, it’s
no longer this neighborhood vs that neighborhood,
this city vs that city, this state vs that
state, this country vs that country, no, it’s
HUMANS vs the universe.
So, what do you think?
What do you see NASA’s role being in the
future?
Do you think they should continue to work
on SLS or scrap it?
Let me know if you have any other questions
on this topic.
What do you think NASA's role should be moving
forward?
Do you still think it's NASA vs SpaceX?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments
below.
As always, I owe a huge thanks to my Patreon
supporters for helping make this and other
Everyday Astronaut content possible.
I owe a special thanks to those Patrons in
our exclusive discord channel and our exclusive
subreddit for helping me script and research.
If you want to help contribute, please visit
patreon.com/everydayastronaut
Don't forget to check out my web store for
shirts, hats, mugs, prints of rocket launches
and original artwork and lots of other fun
stuff at everydayastronaut.com/shop
And as always, all the music in my videos
is original.
Feel free to check it out and download it
for free at soundcloud.com/everydayastronaut
Tell a friend!
Thanks everybody that does it for me.
I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Bringing space down to Earth for everyday
people.
