After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test • Hacker News Board

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#151

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #149

pfdietz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I was making was there was no plausible way the shuttle could have been designed so it would have been successful.

Totally disagree. With the same budget a much more successful vehicle could have been built. Simple changes like not going for hydrogen, separating main engines from Shuttle itself, not using hydrogen on the first stage, vertically mounted shuttle and so on.

No, I don't think so. The underlying problem was the Shuttle was a One Big Bite attempt at developing a very complex technology. That doesn't work. Development of something like that has to be iterative. Shuffling the deck chairs with different propellants wouldn't have made any difference.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#152

Post by beerandt » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #133

beerandt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically... government could be as efficient as the private sector if it wasn't government?

The private sector fails all the time. The problem is not government/private. The problem is large organisations with wrong incentives.

My point isn't so much that private sector can do things efficiently (certainly not always), so much as government generally can't, especially starting from a point of inefficiency.

Yes it's a matter of incentives. The problem is saying incentives for government work could change, is very different than them actually changing. Some of those incentives are inherently rooted as part of what makes government... government.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#153

Post by Animats » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #134

Animats wrote: post #54

NASA forgot how to make rockets: “Both NASA and contractor officials explained that nearly 50 years have passed since development of the last major space flight program—the Space Shuttle—and the learning curve for new development has been steep as many experienced engineers have retired or moved to other industries.”

Apparently that wasn’t a problem for SpaceX. The problem with NASA is its corporate culture and political micro-management not lack of engineering skills.

Space-X had to start over from the beginning. They built a small booster, and then a bigger booster, and then a better version of the bigger booster, then an even bigger booster and a spacecraft. Took 18 years. That's longer than it took NASA in the 1950s and 1960s.

NASA is trying to do a giant booster without anybody who built a booster recently.