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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

#181

Post by _lvbh »

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…

> Chinese military because they’ve not seen significant action in several generations. However that itself is not a good sign.

I see that as a good sign. Why fight wars if there is no need to. I hope they stay that way and don’t get themselves involved in Taiwan

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #169
hkpack wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US broke a promise to the USSR of not expanding NATO There is literally zero evidence of that, except claims by the Russian propaganda itself. People who live in totalitarian countries (like Russia, where ruler is in a power for a lifetime), seems to not understand that democracies don't do promises, because leaders changes frequently, and any promise without written agreement is just plain impossible except ve…

National Security Archive at George Washington University: Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner You're welcome. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017... All of your comments are suspiciously related to US foreign policy issues btw ;)

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

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]

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by kristofferR »

wkat4242 wrote: post #141
kristofferR wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True in the logical sense, but not in the practical sense. Just giving regular people good jobs isn't popular in the US, because why would the megadonors sponsor Senator campaigns if they can't profit from it?

In the US system (oligarchic democracy) the wealthy needs to earn their hefty share, otherwise the thing in question likely won't happen at all.

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

#185

Post by PeterisP »

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]

"promise of not expanding NATO" is an invention of Russian propaganda with no basis in any treaties, and even Gorbachev personally has admitted that no such promises were made.

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

#186

Post by jessriedel »

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…

At some level of insanity it seems like NASA administrators have a duty to decline the funding and/or resign. "Our bosses [congress] made us do it" cannot be a carte blanche excuse to waste arbitrary amounts of public money without blame.

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

#187

Post by johngladtj »

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…

Because those engines aren't mandated to be used by law.

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

#188

Post by jessriedel »

credit_guy wrote: post #172

SLS is actually very affordable if seen from the correct angle: a know-how preservation program. After the end of the Cold War, the US reduced drastically its military expenditure. The danger was that some day will come (like, you know, the 2020's) when the US will need to restart the missile assembly lines. How do you keep enough people trained at an affordable cost? Well, you keep them busy building a rocket that n…

To my knowledge, the SLS program isn't preserving any appreciable amount of ICBM know-how. They are essentially non-overlapping technologies. The explanation that SLS is a jobs program seems to fit the evidence much better.

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

#189

Post by JeremyNT »

roody15 wrote: post #60
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…

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…

> This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results.

Isn't this already known though?

The US has such vast resources it can afford to squander them freely due to corruption and incompetence without the people involved ever really being held accountable. This is true of civilian infrastructure projects as well. Yet at the end of the day the country is still so massively wealthy, it makes no practical difference.

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

#190

Post by JuanPosadas »

GMoromisato wrote: post #56
bnralt wrote: post #14

While true, it's missing the forest for the trees. NASA spends almost half it's budget on human spaceflight, and there doesn't seem to be any particular goal there beyond "send people into space because we want to send people into space." Meanwhile, a measly 3.5% of the NASA budget is spent on aeronautics. Yes, the SLS is an inefficient way of performing a mission that NASA shouldn't be performing in the first place,…

This is a common sentiment, but I don't share it. Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. For many, gaining knowledge about the universe is its own reward, even if it doesn't lead to cancer cures or longer-lasting batteries. In the same way, sending people into space connects us to all those namele…

> Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions.

If you ignore the huge difference in efficacy and results, sure.

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