I am sad to say that NASA has asked for Boeing to produce 10 of the rockets. These giant rockets reminiscent of the Apollo program produce 8.8 million lbs of thrust significantly more than the Apollo’s 7.5 million lbs. In contrast SpaceX’s “spaceship” is planned to have 16 million lbs of thrust.

SLS is here:

SLS is not reusable. If I were head of NASA and wanted to have competitive programs to develop redundant capability to launch I would ask Boeing to redesign the SLS as a reusable vehicle. That would be difficult for a number of reasons. It would likely require a complete redesign of the program.

The SLS is expected to cost anywhere between $1.9 billion to $5 billion per launch. This is an obscene amount and unsustainable. SpaceX launches will be 10% of SLS and be reusable. Stop spending money on this insane stupid waste of a program.

SpaceX spaceship below:

Spaceship and SuperHeavy are reusable.

The cost of flying the SpaceX would save the US government many billions of dollars immediately on the first launch.

NASA has paid Boeing a huge amount to build SLS and it has not even tested one of the rockets or built any of it.

SpaceX on its own dime is building 2 of the Spaceships and has tested a hopper using a first version raptor engine. Granted they are far away from a full rocket with the SuperHeavy booster phase but the SpaceX program is hugely better and NASA and America would gain years by intensifying development of Spaceship and SuperHeavy over the SLS.

I have no bias against SLS or Boeing. I am just stating what I think is obvious.

NASA, get rational. Sit down with Elon, work out details of a plan to go to the moon or mars and let’s make progress.