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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

#211

Post by klooney »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #198
klooney wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it makes much sense to worry about carriers for the war in Taiwan that everyone expects- their aircraft can use their airfields. Peacetime armies are generally bad, but turnover tends to be high when the fighting starts, and the second or third set of generals is often much better. The most important advantages China has are pretty overwhelming- a giant population, and they own the global supply chain fo…

The state of the peacetime supply chain hardly matters. In a major conflict it should be expected that western democracies revert to the centrally planned economic system they used to win the second world war.

The peacetime supply chain determines the possibilities of the wartime supply chain. You can't open a mine overnight, refineries are incredibly expensive and fiddly and require a lot of very specific knowledge, tool manufacturing capacity is incredibly difficult to bootstrap- you don't want to be like WWII Australia, digging up lathes out of junkyards.

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

#212

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #209
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to see more countries join NATO. NATO is just a cool idea. Having the militaries from 31 countries all under one command structure. I genuinely would like to see them try.

I don't understand why people think this. NATO does not mandate a unified command structure. France pulled out in 1966. It didn't rejoin until the 21st century.

I just assumed that's one of the things NATO did. I haven't actually read the treaty. I probably should.

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

#213

Post by mannerheim »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #194
peoplearepeople wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a bigger fairing in dev for the military, and the gateway launch

Exactly. But not at the time of the "f9h is not heavy lift" quote

The quote didn't say Falcon Heavy wasn't heavy lift, which was my point. It said Falcon Heavy was just something on the drawing board, versus SLS which was real. Except then Falcon Heavy ended up flying years before SLS eventually did.

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

#214

Post by jjk166 »

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…

This doesn't match the data. First, the development of SLS began in 2011, two decades after the missile production had stopped. Second, SLS is designed around the use of shuttle era components which not only are very different from what would be used in missiles, but also specifically reduce the amount of practice that the next generation of engineers can get on developing these systems. Third, the actual rocket and the launches are a miniscule part of the program budget not launching doesn't save much money. Finally, the source of the high price tag is delays and reworks that would be wholly unnecessary if the goal were never to produce a working vehicle and which do not contribute to knowledge retention at all.

Basically, if this is a know-how preservation program, it is horribly mismanaged. And there's no reason why you couldn't have a know-how preservation program that also produced useful results. As with so many things, they're not playing 5D chess, they're just playing poorly.

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

#215

Post by _kbh_ »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #171
tryauuum wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling invading a neighbor country "defending Russia's interests" sounds weird

When viewed from afar, war is just an extension of diplomacy. I am against any invasion whatsoever, but using any means necessary to ensure Ukraine does not join NATO (something that the US fought for), is indeed a defence of Russian interests.

> When viewed from afar, war is just an extension of diplomacy. I am against any invasion whatsoever, but using any means necessary to ensure Ukraine does not join NATO (something that the US fought for), is indeed a defence of Russian interests.

Russia already got multiple assurances that Ukraines NATO membership would be vetoed.

They clearly don't care about NATO or about defending Russian interests, this is plain and simple imperialism.

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

#216

Post by GMoromisato »

JuanPosadas wrote: post #190
GMoromisato wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ultimately, we spent billions on (e.g.) JWST because it makes us feel good. We're not going to get new cancer cures or end homelessness, right? We're just going to get knowledge about the universe. But why? Why do we need to know the shape of the earliest galaxies? It's not going to improve the GDP. We seek that knowledge only because it makes us feel good to know. That's it.

In the same way, we send humans into space because it makes us feel good. We like to see people strap themselves to a controlled explosion and head out into space to explore.

Just as seeing pictures of the universe makes us feel awe, inspiration, and perspective, seeing humans in space gives us perspective on our beautiful, fragile world, and our role in the universe.

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

#217

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole.

Accurately

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

#218

Post by jjk166 »

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…

Those engines didn't exist, their development wasn't publicly announced, and their developers had little if any reputation for successful engine development when NASA locked in their design.

How quickly we forget that just a few years ago the space industry looked very different from how it does today.

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

#219

Post by lukas099 »

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…

Honestly I would love the US to stop being the biggest spender in so many categories, I just don't think anyone else is really poised to take that spot other than China, which I find even more troubling.

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

#220

Post by TheRealPomax »

vxNsr wrote: post #15
TheRealPomax wrote: post #13

Not sure how this is "unaffordable"? Just buy one fewer F35's, done, you just funded the whole thing.

When people talk about the cost of f35s they’re often including the amortized cost of the whole project. Most that money has already been spent.

An F35 is estimated to cost around $30,000 to fly, per hour. Then there's maintenance cost which over the lifetime of the jet packs on millions, and ordinance cost for both practice and deployment, which is insanely high: none of that money has been spent yet, and easily gets us to "we could have funded NASA with this" for just a single jet.

I'm sure some people only look at "omg look at how much it costs to buy one!" and then forget that there's a life after the purchase that costs mind boggling amounts of money that, by simply not buying even a single jet, can actually fund a stupid amount of societal progress, from paying teachers to funding an entire NASA project.

But of course the comment itself wasn't about F35s. It was about "maybe spend less on death toys and more on the parts that make society a good thing like space exploration, the arts, education, health care, etc."

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