
China appears to be accelerating development of a super-heavy lift rocket - AliCollins
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/china-appears-to-be-accelerating-development-of-a-super-heavy-lift-rocket/
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grecy
That's the first I have heard of SLS being ready as early as 2021. I wonder,
when it comes online will NASA stop using SpaceX & ULA for space station
supply/people missions?

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rtkwe
There's no real reason to stop using SpaceX and ULA unless they're going to
start sending MUCH more to the ISS than those rockets can handle. SLS is
really expensive per launch.

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baq
Both the BFR and the New Armstrong, based on what is currently known about
them, will be able to lift something better than the ISS (e.g. a Bigelow
habitat) to orbit in a single launch for considerably less than either ISS or
SLS.

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maxxxxx
I find it interesting how rocket development speed seems to have slowed down.
It took the US a little more than 10 years to go from barely being able to
launch any rocket to the Saturn V. With all the experience we have now it
still takes more than 10 years to develop a new heavy lift rocket. Considering
that usually everything is late this rocket will probably fly after 2030.

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TkTech
The space race was a one-time oddity. During it's peek NASA used nearly 4.5%
of the federal budget[1]. The Soviets poured so much into it, it practically
bankrupt them. The military wanted better ICBMs, the government wanted to win
the race. No one ever dreamed of making it profitable.

SpaceX for comparison only relieved about 100m a year[2], or 0.0026% of the
federal budget. Boeing and other groups have similar funding for their space
programs. They also, as a commercial company, must be profitable (or try)
which isn't as easy as it sounds.

Rocket development is slower even with better modern tooling because we just
don't put any money into it anymore.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA)
[2] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-annual-budget-of-
SpaceX](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-annual-budget-of-SpaceX)

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bloopernova
As someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I still yearn wistfully for the
space race's unity and determination of purpose.

It's hardly appropriate for HN, but I wonder how differently the world would
look if NASA had received a much larger budget. Probably taken from the US
Military's allocation, how much would the loss of half of the US Navy have
affected world politics and conflicts? Or what would the USA look like without
the Iraq war of 2003 onward?

(I'm trying to be as neutral as possible in my language here, I don't want to
start a flamewar about US and geopolitics!)

I doubt we'd have gotten further into space as some of us would like, but I do
think we'd have already proven that asteroid mining can work, and some people
would be living multi-year tenures on the Moon. Whether we'd have bootstrapped
our way to mining and using nuclear materials in space is doubtful, but
certainly possible. (in other words, building nuclear rockets that have never
been close to Earth's biosphere, which would open up large parts of the Solar
System for human exploration)

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Retric
The economics of asteroid mining is terrible. Look at the % of world GDP spent
on non organic non earth specific mining aka no coal, marble, etc and it’s
really cheap.

Now figure final prices would need to be cheaper for space mining to take off.
Even recycling electronics filled with high value atoms is difficult to profit
from.

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yellow_postit
Gold’s price collapsing when a meaningfully rich asteroid source can be mined
seems likely.

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soperj
This would be a good thing. It's a wonderful metal, just useless when it's
worth so much. Silver would be awesome to crash too, since it's more
conductive than copper.

