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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

#151

Post by 4gotunameagain »

chii wrote: post #139
lmm wrote: post #105

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'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.

> convinced the USSR they couldn't win i dont think they were convinced they couldn't win - they just realized their economic laggardness. The remnants of the USSR is still trying to win! For a real example of "they couldn't win", you'd have to look towards Japan. And is it such a bad thing to "not win"?

[flagged]

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

#152

Post by Stranger43 »

techdragon wrote: post #5

Important context… SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for in order to achieve its mission goals… it’s the rocket they were forced into using due to lobbying and senate shenanigans, there’s a reason it has the nickname “senate launch system”. The fact the pork barrel project is so bloated it’s “unaffordable” is irrelevant as far as the senators who are voting for it are concerned. My bet is that the senate wi…

Isnt it also true of every big success NASA have had, that it only existed because of lobbying and political pressure.

We like to pretend that political influence on government institutions is a new "bug" and not something build into the system from day one.

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

#153

Post by Stranger43 »

rdtsc wrote: post #52
wmf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs.

That's the answer. It's keeping the jobs (i.e. voters) in orbit around the senators. They could care less about space, as long as they can say they brought "jobs" to their state. If it does that, it works as designed.

It's probably not that simple as they could do what the EU does and create those jobs in purely civilian industries.

It's more about the political economy where funneling through certain well connected companies generate a lot of goodwill among the middlemen who then funds pac's and pay for advertisements then it's about a direct relationship between the senate and the employment status of their workers.

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

#154

Post by WeylandYutani »

simonh wrote: post #114
WitCanStain wrote: post #87

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…

The US hasn't seen action against a peer since 1945. Ofcourse there's a reason for that: nuclear weapons.

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

#155

Post by jiggawatts »

Something I've observed about catastrophically bad projects is that there can be a point where the enormity of the failure is impossible to acknowledge, and hence the failure ceases to exist in some sense. Once the double-think kicks in, it becomes strangely easy to forge ahead and commit. After all, there are no acknowledged problems!

It's essentially the "Emperor has no clothes" story, but nobody believes the little boy telling the truth, because the "emperor is naked" is such an absurd statement to make. That's just silly, so of course there must be a deeper truth, a greater story, a hidden meaning.

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

#156

Post by WeylandYutani »

elcritch wrote: post #113
adolph wrote: 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.

America is in the enviable position that the entire world is obligated to keep giving them money. Too big to fail.

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

#157

Post by torstenvl »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #151
chii wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> convinced the USSR they couldn't win i dont think they were convinced they couldn't win - they just realized their economic laggardness. The remnants of the USSR is still trying to win! For a real example of "they couldn't win", you'd have to look towards Japan. And is it such a bad thing to "not win"?

[flagged]

The United States never made any such promise, and doesn't have the unilateral ability to expand NATO in any case.

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

#158

Post by asadotzler »

elcritch wrote: post #113
adolph wrote: 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.

The pentagon's budget is pretty consistent regardless.

We'll give them three quarters of a trillion dollars every year no matter what they spend it on so in reality it doesn't matter if they're war fighting or not, they own us, well 50% of our discretionary tax dollars anyway.

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

#159

Post by martin8412 »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #151
chii wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> convinced the USSR they couldn't win i dont think they were convinced they couldn't win - they just realized their economic laggardness. The remnants of the USSR is still trying to win! For a real example of "they couldn't win", you'd have to look towards Japan. And is it such a bad thing to "not win"?

[flagged]

Russia is the best NATO recruiter in the world. Countries are actively applying to become NATO members, because they don't want to be puppets ruled entirely by the Moscow elite. Sure, American imperialism is awful, but for most countries that's a far better proposition, because it comes with way more democratic freedom and less strings. A country can leave NATO if they want to. A country can't cut ties with Russia without a war.

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

#160

Post by layer8 »

bewaretheirs wrote: post #109
belval wrote: post #3

> NASA recently said that it is working with the primary contractor of the SLS rocket's main engines, Aerojet, to reduce the cost of each engine by 30 percent, down to $70.5 million by the end of this decade. [...] And even at $70.5 million, these engines are very, very far from being affordable compared to the existing US commercial market for powerful rocket engines. Blue Origin manufactures an engine of comparable…

Rockets are not LEGO. You can't just swap engines without a significant redesign of the rocket and ground support equipment to match. the RS-25 burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen; the BE-4 and Raptor burn methane and liquid oxygen, but the Raptor uses supercooled densified propellants while the BE4 takes them at closer to their boiling point. Switching between BE-4 and Raptor would require nearly as much work as…

> Rockets are not LEGO.

For a moment there I thought that Low Earth Geostationary Orbit might be a thing.

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