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NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

arstechnica.com

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Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#141
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its sp…

It's not like the money spent just disappears, though, someone gets it. The SLS is a huge jobs program. Me and GPT had a good discussion about it: https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972...

But how much of that ends up in the hands of shareholders and execs? If you want to provide jobs it's better to provide them directly. The shareholders have enough money as it is.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raytheon employs 12,000 people in Tucson alone, about 6% of the number of people who voted in the election for Arizona's 7th congressional district in 2022. Those people also have friends and family who would care if they got laid off.

Thanks for the numbers, that puts it in better perspective. Although I'm guessing that was an uncontested election, sounds like <10% turnout. Still, it's material.

Unclear what turnout was, but it was at least 25%; district 7 has fewer than 800 thousand people, not all of whom are registered voters.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#143
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. I donno about this. Adversaries might just as well conclude the opposite, that the US can blow that kind of cash on SLS and other dumb stuff all over the world without major problems. IIRC, UBL's thesis was A-stan is/was the graveyard of empires and woul…

I generally agree, but I don't think Afghanistan and Iraq were rounding errors by any factor. It's a major percentage of the US'es debt, as in trillions of dollars. Perhaps the US economy (and politics) is resilient enough to handle it and not crash outright, but poorer folks in the US feel the squeeze of inflation and lowered wages due to cantillion effects.

A truer measure of the [Astan & Iraq] wars’ total costs pegs them at between $4 trillion and $6 trillion.[0] (2015 article)

US debt in 2000: $5.6T, in 2022: $30.9T [1]

The larger wars of this century drove about a quarter of debt growth. Major but not the majority. That more people will risk life and limb to immigrate than emigrate indicates to me that as bad as inflation is, living elsewhere is still worse.

0. https://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187867/public-debt-of-th...

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#144
post #105
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its sp…

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. I've heard just the opposite about the similar SDI/"Star Wars" - that the US pouring billions into this blatantly impossible and pointless programme, and suffering no real consequences for doing so, was what finally convinced the USSR they couldn't win.

SDI is not really comparable. The numbers for the orbital parameters did not add up at the time, but they had Edward Teller behind them.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty fair to ask whether the joint program was the right decision in the first place, and the criticism 10 years ago was fair, but yeah it's far too late to turn back.

Yeah it seems like there's a lot of fair criticism of the politics of the program, how work was allocated and bid for, etc. I know very little about it, but it doesn't sound great. However I think a lot of the criticism focuses on things that aren't really true. The price is one aspect, where the amortisation is now paying off and it's no more expensive than alternatives. Another is the capabilities of the plane – it…

> built for how war works in the 2020s

So it's a pilotless drone?

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#146
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibility of corruption aside, these are clones of the Saturn 5 rocket engines and tech just scaled up - the whole thing is built for hydrogen which is clean burning (water is the byproduct) but you'd think SpaceX could take the design and make something for 20mil

SpaceX is on record with not wanting to use hydrogen for the "pain in the ass factor". It boils at a lower point than oxygen, so you have to insulate the tanks from each other, it's very.. undense (sparse?) per volume so you need bigger tanks, and it's the smallest molecule that exists and makes leaks and shipping harder. Methane is slightly less efficient but way easier logistically.

Don’t forget hydrogen embrittlement, a major risk in reusable rockets.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#147
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because HLS still uses SLS. Imagine if NASA used commercial fixed-price contracts to get astronauts onto HLS in addition to the existing HLS contracts.

There are various theories about architectures that use a Dragon or Starliner to transfer astronauts to the respective HLS vehicle in low Earth orbit before then departing for the Moon. There doesn't appear to be too much of a reason that shouldn't be possible, particularly since both HLS vehicles are meant to be able to perform orbital refueling, but the idea has oddly remained absent from official public documents.…

I don't think they'll cancel SLS just like they didn't cancel Starliner. They'll just buy enough alternate flights that they don't have to actually launch SLS.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#148
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess China is the obvious candidate due to reduced costs in pretty much everything but they still have immense corruption.

There’s no real way to evaluate the effectiveness of the Chinese military because they’ve not seen significant action in several generations. However that itself is not a good sign. As for their kit, Myanmar bought some of their planes but none of them are operational. The planes were a joint project by China and Pakistan, but 8 years after the deal was signed apparently have persistent unsolved technical and structu…

>Myanmar

Pretty much all negative coverage of JF17 (joint PRC+PK manufacturing but so far SOLD by PK) are sourced from Indian tabloid rags with no credibility. Myanmar airforce has 100+ PRC airframes, variety of models in the last 30 years with little issue. Pretty much the only useful piece of info so far is Myanmar doesn't have adequate experience operating tech in 4th gen fighters, most of their fleet is 3rd gen. IIRC Myanmar got the jets before they even got simluators, and then bought 4th gen trainers (JL9) from PRC.

>Thailand

Yuan subs aren't operational because PRC couldn't acquire original specified German engines after EU sanctions. There's a period where Thai Navy was deciding whether to accept PRC engines, which they did. Some analysts implied if Thai did not accept PRC engines it would imply they were unsuitable, even more retarded media then spung that as technical issues with PRC engines. Both complete misinformation narratives since there's no basis for evaluating those unintegrated PRC engines at all.

>aircraft carriers

Training carriers based off RU design that analysis suggest PLAN has more or less maximized sortie potential vs when USSR was running carrier ops on similar flight deck. Late 2022 USNI analysis on PLAN carrier ops is they're basically reached "true" blue water deployment, i.e. a few hundred nms near Guam, 1000nm+ from mainland, with no divert airfrields or aerial refueling as backup. Which is about as far as PRC none nuke carriers need to deploy given strategic considerations. Caveate being conservative sorties and pretty clean (light) load outs to compensate for lack of divertion and ski jump. The struggle with PLAN carriers is they won't have catapults and capabilites that brings until 003 and training was hectic because they only had 1-2 carriers training 3-4 crew rotations, somewhat alleviated by converted cruise/barrack ships. TLDR is I would not characterize as overall carrier ops capabilities as struggling as limited by hardware, which TBH is expected since carriers does not seem particularly high priority outside of prestige - given PRC ship building capacity, they could have rushed 10 carriers like US did Forrestal class. Basically most US analysis of various PRC military modernization is they're lacking and focusing on XYZ, but should get there in a few years. Occasionally throw in the word struggle because they watch CCTV7 where miltiary propaganda talks about how hard they work. A few years later, new analysis that they got there (i.e. asw, jointness), something something evolving, modernizing at astonishing rate, but here's the new struggle. Rinse and repeat. Combined with customary but no real combat experience (which no one has in modern peer warfare). But the underlying pattern if you look at meat of improvements year by year is PLA modernizing fast.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#149
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibility of corruption aside, these are clones of the Saturn 5 rocket engines and tech just scaled up - the whole thing is built for hydrogen which is clean burning (water is the byproduct) but you'd think SpaceX could take the design and make something for 20mil

SpaceX is on record with not wanting to use hydrogen for the "pain in the ass factor". It boils at a lower point than oxygen, so you have to insulate the tanks from each other, it's very.. undense (sparse?) per volume so you need bigger tanks, and it's the smallest molecule that exists and makes leaks and shipping harder. Methane is slightly less efficient but way easier logistically.

Yeah I bet if they could do without the LOX they'd do it too. But for the oxidiser there is no choice but to use a compressed gas, obviously.

Re: NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

#150
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but I don't think Afghanistan and Iraq were rounding errors by any factor. It's a major percentage of the US'es debt, as in trillions of dollars. Perhaps the US economy (and politics) is resilient enough to handle it and not crash outright, but poorer folks in the US feel the squeeze of inflation and lowered wages due to cantillion effects.

A truer measure of the [Astan & Iraq] wars’ total costs pegs them at between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. [0] (2015 article) US debt in 2000: $5.6T, in 2022: $30.9T [1] The larger wars of this century drove about a quarter of debt growth. Major but not the majority. That more people will risk life and limb to immigrate than emigrate indicates to me that as bad as inflation is, living elsewhere is still worse. 0. http…

A quarter sounds about right, and that's a quarter of our debt that could've been used to rebuild decaying infrastructure, increase medical care, housing, etc. Aside from the monetary cost the country will loose out on the dividends those sort of investments would've yielded long term.

Sure the US may still have a higher quality of life than many others, it doesn't mean that Americans lives couldn't have been better. Also I believe the US recently actually had decreases in both life expectancy and younger generations prospering fincially. So we didn't collapse, but we're not healthy either.

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