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Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

arstechnica.com

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Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#21

Post by KPGv2 »

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #6
geuis wrote: post #2

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level. Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

No, it is not With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

> With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

It doesn't matter how much debt you have if taking on the debt raises your revenue by more than serving the interest payments.

Imagine telling a corporation they can't borrow money at 3% to grow 15% because "debt is bad." Or telling someone who needs a car to get to work that they should go without a car (and thus not become employed) rather than taking on a car payment because "debt is bad."

And on this front, the US has been doing great (but is currently shooting itself in the foot under the new administration)

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#22

Post by protocolture »

windows2020 wrote: post #14

Wait, so are humans actually going to the moon for the first time in my lifetime in 2027?

I wouldnt hold your breath. There was a great writeup here only a few months ago about why 2027 was already an overly ambitious target.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#23

Post by unethical_ban »

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #6
geuis wrote: post #2

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level. Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

No, it is not With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

We could

  * Not cut taxes on the very wealthy by $4,000,000,000,000 over ten years
  * Not give $500,000,000,000 to military and police expansion in the immediate future
  * Not have one person dictating global trade policy with the US that impacts our relationships and competitiveness for the next 30 years
NASA is not something we should skimp on.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#24

Post by hello_moto »

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #6
geuis wrote: post #2

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level. Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

No, it is not With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

Tax the wealth of your billionaires my dude.

Their wealth grow unchecked depressing yours.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#25

Post by somenameforme »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #11
somenameforme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight…

Need some competition to commercial near-monopolization (in the pre-to-mid 2010s when it was funded), some other program, they already funded SLS (which was funded to carry way more payload than FH), let it play out, IMO. Also, not to say it isn't a time to start acting, if we are another decade out still adding funding to SLS with the current balance sheet, we have major issues. But $30B over 10Y isn't that crazy wh…

This is the definition of throwing good money after bad. Even if SLS can be completed, it just has no purpose. The latest "estimates" (which means will likely be well below what actually happens) put the recurring per launch costs of SLS at $2.5 billion per launch, on top of the ongoing tens of billions in development costs.

That's for a system that is aiming for an initial payload of 95k kg (to LEO). By contrast the Falcon Heavy costs $0.097 billion per launch and can send 57k kg to orbit. So in other words, 1 SLS launch will costs more than 25 Falcon Heavy launches, with a payload capacity that's 67% greater.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#26

Post by naysunjr »

windows2020 wrote: post #14

Wait, so are humans actually going to the moon for the first time in my lifetime in 2027?

NASA going back to the moon and Musk to Mars is nothing but pipe dreams to sell the story mode types.

The US government has pivoted to animal husbandry of the populace through techno police state, and handing sycophants to power their own title, land and serfs

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#27

Post by saulpw »

somenameforme wrote: post #25
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Need some competition to commercial near-monopolization (in the pre-to-mid 2010s when it was funded), some other program, they already funded SLS (which was funded to carry way more payload than FH), let it play out, IMO. Also, not to say it isn't a time to start acting, if we are another decade out still adding funding to SLS with the current balance sheet, we have major issues. But $30B over 10Y isn't that crazy wh…

This is the definition of throwing good money after bad. Even if SLS can be completed, it just has no purpose. The latest "estimates" (which means will likely be well below what actually happens) put the recurring per launch costs of SLS at $2.5 billion per launch, on top of the ongoing tens of billions in development costs. That's for a system that is aiming for an initial payload of 95k kg (to LEO). By contrast the…

How about as a backup in case all other current options are unavailable?

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#28

Post by mjamesaustin »

somenameforme wrote: post #10
geuis wrote: post #2

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level. Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight…

The real tragedy is that the administration withdrew Jared Isaacman's nomination to be NASA administrator. He had bold plans for modernizing NASA and the experience to lead. But he didn't kiss the ring and instead made comments suggesting NASA's budget shouldn't be eviscerated, so his appointment was torpedoed.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#29

Post by somenameforme »

georgeburdell wrote: post #19
somenameforme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight…

Your point was stronger 6 months ago before SpaceX started regressing on their Starship test flights. The U.S. needs to have multiple horses in the race

I did not mention Starship, because I'm not comparing the SLS against future tech, but against tech that was finished 7 years ago and is commercially available at this very moment. And I'm contrasting this against SLS cost "projections", which invariably end up lowballing reality. I'm steel-manning the argument for the SLS as much as I can, but it's still just nonsensical.

The idea we need to compete against ourselves is something that came straight from Boeing after they lost their bid for commercial crew, leading to them to use their connections to Congress to force NASA to make an unprecedented decision to give bids to 2 different companies. SpaceX succeeded at commercial crew putting astronauts on the ISS in 2020. Boeing, by contrast, was allowed to skip parts of the testing phase (for Commercial Crew), failed others, and was still greenlit because of corruption. And that's precisely how you ended up with the two astronauts put on their first human launch stranded on the ISS for months, only to end up getting rescued by SpaceX.

It's a nonsensical argument - we didn't create two Apollo programs, because there's no justification. And in any case, Boeing is clearly incapable of producing anything resembling a "horse" for this race. Instead we get a 3-legged mule sold at 5-time Kentucky Derby winner thoroughbred prices.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#30

Post by somenameforme »

saulpw wrote: post #27
somenameforme wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the definition of throwing good money after bad. Even if SLS can be completed, it just has no purpose. The latest "estimates" (which means will likely be well below what actually happens) put the recurring per launch costs of SLS at $2.5 billion per launch, on top of the ongoing tens of billions in development costs. That's for a system that is aiming for an initial payload of 95k kg (to LEO). By contrast the…

How about as a backup in case all other current options are unavailable?

It's difficult to imagine any scenario where this happens. The only real possibilities are SpaceX going bankrupt or leaving the country. In either case, the government has substantial capacity to nationalize companies for the sake of national security during times of crises. It's also likely impossible for SpaceX to leave the US owing to ITAR and other regulations.
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