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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

#91

Post by woooooo »

vkou wrote: post #86
woooooo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. Is it a senate cultural thing that they all tell themselves despite tenuous links to reality? Is it kickbacks? Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable?

> I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. You never see a senator take credit for a plant opening/expanding on their re-election blurb/townhall? You must be in an incredibly safe state. > Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable? It applies to them, too. Again, if you're not seeing this, either your s…

I didn't say that, I said I've never seen it swing a vote. I'm sure people working at the missile factory vote but it's a relatively small number.

Re: infra, you're right, I guess I'm just letting my personal bias in when wondering why they don't do more of that compared to the weapons. It seems like such an easier sell to voters, but the emphasis seems to go the other way.

(Also, in my limited sample size, all of this has taken a smaller and smaller back seat to culture war stuff in modern day campaigning)

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

kristofferR wrote: post #73
roody15 wrote: 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...

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by justin66 »

woooooo wrote: post #75
rdtsc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. Is it a senate cultural thing that they all tell themselves despite tenuous links to reality? Is it kickbacks? Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable?

I can assure you that the people who live in Lima are aware of the politics surrounding the tank plant. If you don't live in Lima, I wonder why you believe you would have heard "anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing."

The way it works is, the politicians who got the plant created out there earned some cachet with voters, and politicians today would get crucified by voters and the unions if they tried to move the plant. It's important enough that presidents give speeches there. (to put that fully into context: there is absolutely no other reason for politicians to give speeches there or even to be there, except perhaps some obscure form of self-flagellation) And of course voters in the entire surrounding state are pretty sensitive to the notion of losing industrial jobs, which earns the plant some protection from the state's US senators as well. People on the other side of the state might not be talking about it today, but they'd be talking about the plant if it got closed. Politicians understand this.

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

#94

Post by DennisP »

mcny wrote: post #42
danpalmer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point, but to extend it a bit, changing the fuel means changing the chemistry of the whole system, changing tradeoffs and thresholds, changing capabilities, all sorts. Rockets very much need to be designed around a particular fuel, it defines so much of the rest of the rocket either directly or indirectly.

At a savings of USD 80 million or more per engine, I'd say it is well worth it to push deadlines or whatever we need to do to consider the cheaper options. Right now it looks and smells like corruption.

Methane is a lot more dense than hydrogen. You'd have to completely redesign the rocket.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

danpalmer wrote: post #79
mcny wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a savings of USD 80 million or more per engine, I'd say it is well worth it to push deadlines or whatever we need to do to consider the cheaper options. Right now it looks and smells like corruption.

I think it's a false comparison to say 80m per engine today. When SLS was being architected 10+ years ago, I believe the idea was that the RS-25 engines would be cheaper, and there were spares around. Also there were no $1m engines, not even close. Perhaps there might have been a competitor for 1/2 the price, but would that be worth it over an engine that you already have flight ad maintenance experience with? Probab…

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by unethical_ban »

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,…

I see this argument enough that I will need to make a form response.

Humans should gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably. If we don't work on that now, then when?

We gain understanding of the human body and of numerous technologies through the novelties and challenges of human spaceflight.

The idea of pushing out civilization forward physically through space is an inspiration for engineers and explorers of all kinds. Even if a child doesn't end up being an astronaut, they end up more curious than if we only sent rovers. Because we are human.

It just seems sadly cynical to hear people think "there is no utility to human exploration".

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

#97

Post by mannerheim »

woooooo wrote: post #91
vkou wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. You never see a senator take credit for a plant opening/expanding on their re-election blurb/townhall? You must be in an incredibly safe state. > Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable? It applies to them, too. Again, if you're not seeing this, either your s…

I didn't say that, I said I've never seen it swing a vote. I'm sure people working at the missile factory vote but it's a relatively small number. Re: infra, you're right, I guess I'm just letting my personal bias in when wondering why they don't do more of that compared to the weapons. It seems like such an easier sell to voters, but the emphasis seems to go the other way. (Also, in my limited sample size, all of th…

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.

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

#98

Post by itsoktocry »

marcusverus wrote: post #44
mannerheim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If/when Starship flies (which, if it doesn't, raises other questions as to the future of Artemis), one has to wonder what the point of SLS will be.

Do we have to wait? Falcon Heavy already has ~75% of SLS Block 1's payload capacity (to LEO). For the $11.2 Billion that's earmarked for the next 4 years of SLS, you could buy 112 Falcon Heavy launces--one every ~17 days for four years. In contrast, the wiki lists a single planned flight for SLS during that period.

It's cheaper to buy, for sure. But we don't know the costs. It's possible that these launches are far less expensive than SLS, but equally unsustainable.

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

#99

Post by avhon1 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #19
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…

> SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for Any source?

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directed NASA to develop a new rocket called the Space Launch System. It set performance requirements for the rocket (use just two stages to lift 70 tons into low-Earth orbit, use a third stage to lift 130 tons to LEO, carry cargo and astronauts to ISS, carry deep-space crew capsule, support gradual increase in performance by "evolutionary growth" with new stages), and required that, "where practicable", NASA should maintain existing Space-Shuttle and Ares contracts, workforces, infrastructure, and technologies, and that the rocket be scheduled to launch no later than the end of 2016.

The precise requirements were written to force NASA to design a rocket that maintained lucrative Space Shuttle-era contracts.

https://spaceref.com/press-release/hatch-passage-of-nasa-rea...

Also, the requirement to upgrade existing infrastructure ensured that billions of dollars went into Bill Nelson's district in Florida. (He is now the highest-ranking official at NASA.)

The law did not establish long-term funding for the development of the rocket. As with all NASA projects, money is granted one year at a time in Congress's annual budget. In 2011, NASA announced the plan to build this rocket. In accordance with the law's requirements and intention, it re-used almost all core technologies, infrastructure, and major subcontractors of the Space Shuttle. There was actually some fuss about this at the time:

https://spacenews.com/shelby-nasa-hold-competition-sls-boost...

but the strategy of "give Congress what they want" has worked: the Planetary Society shows that Congress has consistently granted NASA more money than asked for to fund SLS.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls

In particular, Richard Shelby (senator from Alabama, which is home to many NASA facilities, and Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2018–2021) was a powerful political supporter of the SLS, ensuring its continued funding, and attacking anybody who even suggested it might not be necessary.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shel...

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