Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 248 posts

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

#31

Post by 7e »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #28
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…

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.

A tragedy avoided given his close ties to SpaceX and Musk, which would have been inappropriate at best and corruption at worst.

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

#32

Post by autobodie »

trostaft wrote: post #5

I hope they manage to do something similar for the NSF. The proposed cuts there are crushing. The NSF funds great science in all parts of the country, and subsequently tons of jobs to the area.

That would be a great way to spend the money saved by taking away millions of peoples' healthcare.

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

#33

Post by somenameforme »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #28
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…

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.

The administrator is definitely one of the weakest links in the system. Bridenstine was looking amazing for NASA then at one point he did a hard 180 and suddenly just became an unthinking Boeing cheerleader, and is largely responsible for the catastrophe that is Boeing's Starliner. And then as soon as he left office he suddenly is in a senior advisory role for some military industrial complex orgs, probably pulling 7 figures for a Zoom call now and then.

But Isaacman? Well he's already a billionaire, and highly ideological towards progress in space. Yeah 0 chance he gets appointed.

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

#34

Post by notfish »

naysunjr wrote: post #26
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

My ex coworkers at spacex are pretty damn motivated to get to mars, many of them despite all the Musking happening. I wouldn’t bet against them.

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

#36

Post by moab »

Dig1t wrote: post #35
trostaft wrote: post #5

I hope they manage to do something similar for the NSF. The proposed cuts there are crushing. The NSF funds great science in all parts of the country, and subsequently tons of jobs to the area.

[flagged]

You clearly did not look at the proposed cuts for the coming years---it guts the NSF.

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

#37

Post by Panzer04 »

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?

Just build a second Falcon Heavy.

If there was a genuine possibility of SLS being competitive, that's one thing. It's another when it's worse in basically every way.

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

#38

Post by musicale »

trostaft wrote: post #5

I hope they manage to do something similar for the NSF. The proposed cuts there are crushing. The NSF funds great science in all parts of the country, and subsequently tons of jobs to the area.

NSF funds tons of underpaid grad students who are the source of US research productivity per dollar.

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

#40

Post by oivey »

Dig1t wrote: post #35
trostaft wrote: post #5

I hope they manage to do something similar for the NSF. The proposed cuts there are crushing. The NSF funds great science in all parts of the country, and subsequently tons of jobs to the area.

[flagged]

Where did you read this?
Post reply on HN