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Tell me again, why has NASA budgeted $30 billion for SLS?

by boznz 9y ago

nickik 9y ago
Because the goal of government action is not to efficiently achieve a goal, but rather build a political coalition capable of capturing and defending budget requests. The SLS specifically was designed to build a coalition between NASA centers who were involved with the SpaceShuttle, a group of large influential companies who produce the core components for the Shuttle and the SLS and a group of senators who are well located to defend these private and NASA jobs in their state. Together the bureaucracy, business and the political can enforce this utterly foolish project to continue. This goes for both SLS and Orion, two of the biggest pork projects in US space history.
- ChelloYello 9y ago
  Look, you can't complain about government inefficiency like you can complain about corporate inefficiency because you are granted real power over the government by way of the constitution. If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose.
  - nickik 9y ago
    First of all I'm not american. Second, the US was not created democratically. With a corporation I can just not use their product, they don't get my money and beyond that I don't really care what goals they have in space. > If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose. Like what channels? Writing a congressmen? You vote every couple of years on a small group of people and those people are responsible for lots of things, not just space. So when you vote space is a small priority and most people care more about other issues. NASA needs to given more independence and change the process of NASA budgeting. ESA does a lot better in many ways because they have a longer planning cycles. NASA should use more competitive contracting like they did for Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo. These changes require evolutionary and sometimes revolutionary change and this is happening a little in NASA now. The Shuttle group has already lost out, the SLS is defensive effort. The best thing we can do is point out how bad the current system is and oppose the pork projects. Moral outrage compared with workable efficient solutions that save money have the ability to potentially form alternative coalition.
    - woodandsteel 9y ago
      Once the BFR starts flying and putting comparable-sized payloads into space for 1/100 the cost, I imagine there will finally be enough public protest to shut the SLS project down.

Tell me again, why has NASA budgeted $30 billion for SLS?

by boznz 9y ago

Tell me again, why has NASA budgeted $30 billion for SLS?

Because the goal of government action is not to efficiently achieve a goal, but rather build a political coalition capable of capturing and defending budget requests. The SLS specifically was designed to build a coalition between NASA centers who were involved with the SpaceShuttle, a group of large influential companies who produce the core components for the Shuttle and the SLS and a group of senators who are well located to defend these private and NASA jobs in their state. Together the bureaucracy, business and the political can enforce this utterly foolish project to continue. This goes for both SLS and Orion, two of the biggest pork projects in US space history.

ChelloYello 9y ago
Look, you can't complain about government inefficiency like you can complain about corporate inefficiency because you are granted real power over the government by way of the constitution. If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose.
- nickik 9y ago
  First of all I'm not american. Second, the US was not created democratically. With a corporation I can just not use their product, they don't get my money and beyond that I don't really care what goals they have in space. > If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose. Like what channels? Writing a congressmen? You vote every couple of years on a small group of people and those people are responsible for lots of things, not just space. So when you vote space is a small priority and most people care more about other issues. NASA needs to given more independence and change the process of NASA budgeting. ESA does a lot better in many ways because they have a longer planning cycles. NASA should use more competitive contracting like they did for Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo. These changes require evolutionary and sometimes revolutionary change and this is happening a little in NASA now. The Shuttle group has already lost out, the SLS is defensive effort. The best thing we can do is point out how bad the current system is and oppose the pork projects. Moral outrage compared with workable efficient solutions that save money have the ability to potentially form alternative coalition.
  - woodandsteel 9y ago
    Once the BFR starts flying and putting comparable-sized payloads into space for 1/100 the cost, I imagine there will finally be enough public protest to shut the SLS project down.