8 ms·

I’m not a rocket scientist and I also don’t want to bash NASA, but the size of the budget here coupled with the lack of transparency about the failure is in sta

by JackFr 6y ago

I’m not a rocket scientist and I also don’t want to bash NASA, but the size of the budget here coupled with the lack of transparency about the failure is in stark contrast with what we’ve seen out of both SpaceX and Blue Origin. Maybe what NASA is trying to do here from an engineering perspective is much, much harder. I also feel there may be unjustified spin in this article. But to an untrained eye this article sure makes it look like an expensive jobs program for Alabama,Texas and Florida.

fastball 6y ago
It's not an expensive jobs program for AL, TX, and FL... it's an expensive jobs program for the entire country. NASA prides itself on sourcing components from / having a presence in each of the 50 states.
readams 6y ago
Blue Origin hasn't actually delivered anything.
sandworm101 6y ago
Transparency with the public can only happen after transparency exists within the organization. They probably don't yet know what happened. They might have ideas, some people might be confident, but at this point the organization as a whole doesn't know much. There is no point in them communicating theories or ad hoc explanations. We will all have to wait for the internal review of the data.
bob1029 6y ago
Nothing about SLS makes sense to me economically. F9 Launch Cost (without reuse): $65mm FH Launch Cost (without reuse): $150mm SLS Launch Cost: >$2,000mm How does anyone square this arrangement? What saving graces does SLS have (from an engineering perspective) compared to the SpaceX programs? There are certainly a lot of downsides and I would be really disappointed to learn that there are no upsides.
- markus_zhang 6y ago
  You gotta take care of your brothers and sisters, and you ex-colleuages too, and that's a lot of money bro. The real upside I think is that people finally figured out there are more economical choices other than the big boys alliance.
- imglorp 6y ago
  It's all about Congress, the native American criminal class. They're already $14 billion in. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/10/nasa-buying-ten-sls-rocket-launches-through-2035-in-a-show-of-washington-corruption.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/10/nasa-buying-ten-sls-ro... I'd like to point out the development process appears to be waterfall. Instead of many cheap iterations, blowing stuff up and continually improving, they want few, complete, expensive articles: that means many tests like OP article is going to need spin as a "failure" and not a learning cycle.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  It fits with the OP theory of "an expensive jobs program for Alabama, Texas and Florida." If you think of that as the actual purpose, this is a successful project.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Taking useful rocket scientists, engineers, programmers, etc, plus all of their blue collar support staff from away from productive industry sounds like the worst possible "jobs" program in the world. Calling it a success simply because the money was spent without considering opportunity costs [1] is just bad money management. It's how you end up with these blackhole gov programs in the first place. Extremely wasteful space programs at least typically get justified as also a) 'inspiring' kids into STEM + b) providing national pride. But when all you get in return is decades of doing nothing interesting I doubt many kids will be inspired. And after so many years and getting blown by competitively by private industry turns it into a national embarrassment (even things exploding is more interesting than what they've produced the last few decades with this program). When you factor in the opportunity cost, aka the alternative ares NOT getting "jobs programs", or rather the capital investment, like infrastructure or healthcare or a hundred other possibilities. Things which can employ plenty of blue collar rust-belt workers into jobs that directly support the needs of modern industry who funds these tax paid adventures (ie, transit/railways, electric grid, broadband, etc). Stuff that supports and underpins the new 'knowledge based economy' instead of drawing resources away from it. Not to mention providing a stopgap to a 'lost generation' of former typically-unionized industrial workers who couldn't compete globally after the 1980s when they could have been provided some critical time while their kids adapt and get education/skills needed for the new self-sustaining, productive, and heavily automated/software driven industries that the developed world has transitioned too. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp
Isinlor 6y ago
Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Super-Heavy-Lift-Launcher-Capabilities.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 25 600 $ - SLS: 20 000 $ - Starhip: 2 000 $ worse case scenario (Elon aims at 40$)
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for free. Unless SpaceX is given its own range, its own giant chunk of the atlantic ocean closed to everything but spaceX, massive launches are still going to cost well over 0.1B, 100 million. And... insurance.
  - credit_guy 6y ago
    Insurance, regulatory compliance, the guy with the destruct button, all these costs go down as you demonstrate higher and higher reliability. If you only launch 10 rockets per year, and you get one failure once every two years, there's a lot of risk, and not that many points to draw statistical inference. If you launch 2000 rockets per year, and only one in 500 fails, then it's a completely different picture.
  - Isinlor 6y ago
    It's reality. They do reusable Falcon Heavy flights at 90 million right now. Good chunk of that cost is second stage and fairings that are expendable. Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.
  - 6y ago
mumblemumble 6y ago
I'm guessing it has more to do with culture. A lot of big long-standing organizations develop an internal culture of being more focused on not fucking up than on achieving success. Paradoxically, this leads to more problems, and more of the costs associated with them. People stay in their swim lanes, and nobody has each other's backs. The more you keep your head down and try not to get involved, the less you can be blamed for. L. David Marquet digs pretty deep into this phenomenon in his book Turn the Ship Around! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16158601-turn-the-ship-around https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16158601-turn-the-ship-a...
mhh__ 6y ago
It is a jobs program. It's not nicknamed the senate launch system for nothing. If they were doing it now I'm sure they'd be tempted in just contracting out and just building the payloads, but when it was being laid out they didn't exist.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Now that Shelby is in the minority party in the Senate I think we may see this thing killed.
- frakkingcylons 6y ago
  As jobs programs go in the U.S., I’d rather they waste money on an obsolete launch system for space exploration rather than weapons. Unfortunately the bar is pretty low in the U.S..
  - beerandt 6y ago
    You think the US funding an alternative, government controlled launch system for redundant access to space isn't ultimately for military purposes?
    - stretchcat 6y ago
      What would the military applications of SLS be? It seems like absurd overkill for lifting military satellites. And the companies contracted to make SLS (namely Boeing) are some of the same companies already contracted to make the rockets which are used for military launches.
      - SubjectToChange 6y ago
        It's a program to retain the industrial base. For example, Aerojet Rocketdyne would have definitely been bankrupt without SLS.
    - frakkingcylons 6y ago
      The U.S. now already has alternatives in the form of SpaceX and ULA. I’m sure that the military wouldn’t mind having a third option, but I don’t think it’s the ultimate reason for the continued existence of SLS.
sidlls 6y ago
As if SpaceX has delivered anything that isn’t: a) (effectively) government funded and b) built on the back of decades of NASA engineering effort. Blue Origin hasn’t actually done anything.
- Beached 6y ago
  falcon? to my knowledge nasa has only partially funded cargo and crewed dragon, falcon 1 and 9 were developed through private funding and became profitable and stable before nasa even got their hands in the pot.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  I'm really tired of seeing this stupid argument that SpaceX is government funded. The entire aerospace industry is government funded because the government has huge amounts of money and offers large contracts to many companies. By this measure, Palantir and many younger startups are also government funded. It's a meaningless statement. Bash SpaceX for their work culture and other issues all you want, but their business model is just fine.
  - sidlls 6y ago
    And I’m tired of seeing people worship private entities whose entire success story is dependent entirely on government work. Not just funding, but work (e.g. past research). A business that lives only with government support is a de facto government entity. Sorry that facts offend you.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      You seem to be confusing a program that exists because of the government funding the development, and a commercial program that exists in part because the government is one of the buyers of its product. Falcon 9 certainly benefited from the government buying launches, but the project was done with private investment. This is very different from how Atlas, Delta, the Shuttle, etc. were developed. NASA (and DOD) continues to buy launches from SpaceX, but that's no more a subsidy than them buying pizza from Dominoes.

by JackFr 6y ago

fastball 6y ago

It's not an expensive jobs program for AL, TX, and FL... it's an expensive jobs program for the entire country. NASA prides itself on sourcing components from / having a presence in each of the 50 states.

readams 6y ago

Blue Origin hasn't actually delivered anything.

sandworm101 6y ago

Transparency with the public can only happen after transparency exists within the organization. They probably don't yet know what happened. They might have ideas, some people might be confident, but at this point the organization as a whole doesn't know much. There is no point in them communicating theories or ad hoc explanations. We will all have to wait for the internal review of the data.

bob1029 6y ago

Nothing about SLS makes sense to me economically. F9 Launch Cost (without reuse): $65mm FH Launch Cost (without reuse): $150mm SLS Launch Cost: >$2,000mm How does anyone square this arrangement? What saving graces does SLS have (from an engineering perspective) compared to the SpaceX programs? There are certainly a lot of downsides and I would be really disappointed to learn that there are no upsides.

markus_zhang 6y ago
You gotta take care of your brothers and sisters, and you ex-colleuages too, and that's a lot of money bro. The real upside I think is that people finally figured out there are more economical choices other than the big boys alliance.
imglorp 6y ago
It's all about Congress, the native American criminal class. They're already $14 billion in. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/10/nasa-buying-ten-sls-rocket-launches-through-2035-in-a-show-of-washington-corruption.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/10/nasa-buying-ten-sls-ro... I'd like to point out the development process appears to be waterfall. Instead of many cheap iterations, blowing stuff up and continually improving, they want few, complete, expensive articles: that means many tests like OP article is going to need spin as a "failure" and not a learning cycle.
BurningFrog 6y ago
It fits with the OP theory of "an expensive jobs program for Alabama, Texas and Florida." If you think of that as the actual purpose, this is a successful project.
- dmix 6y ago
  Taking useful rocket scientists, engineers, programmers, etc, plus all of their blue collar support staff from away from productive industry sounds like the worst possible "jobs" program in the world. Calling it a success simply because the money was spent without considering opportunity costs [1] is just bad money management. It's how you end up with these blackhole gov programs in the first place. Extremely wasteful space programs at least typically get justified as also a) 'inspiring' kids into STEM + b) providing national pride. But when all you get in return is decades of doing nothing interesting I doubt many kids will be inspired. And after so many years and getting blown by competitively by private industry turns it into a national embarrassment (even things exploding is more interesting than what they've produced the last few decades with this program). When you factor in the opportunity cost, aka the alternative ares NOT getting "jobs programs", or rather the capital investment, like infrastructure or healthcare or a hundred other possibilities. Things which can employ plenty of blue collar rust-belt workers into jobs that directly support the needs of modern industry who funds these tax paid adventures (ie, transit/railways, electric grid, broadband, etc). Stuff that supports and underpins the new 'knowledge based economy' instead of drawing resources away from it. Not to mention providing a stopgap to a 'lost generation' of former typically-unionized industrial workers who couldn't compete globally after the 1980s when they could have been provided some critical time while their kids adapt and get education/skills needed for the new self-sustaining, productive, and heavily automated/software driven industries that the developed world has transitioned too. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp

Isinlor 6y ago

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Super-Heavy-Lift-Launcher-Capabilities.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 25 600 $ - SLS: 20 000 $ - Starhip: 2 000 $ worse case scenario (Elon aims at 40$)

sandworm101 6y ago
>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for free. Unless SpaceX is given its own range, its own giant chunk of the atlantic ocean closed to everything but spaceX, massive launches are still going to cost well over 0.1B, 100 million. And... insurance.
- credit_guy 6y ago
  Insurance, regulatory compliance, the guy with the destruct button, all these costs go down as you demonstrate higher and higher reliability. If you only launch 10 rockets per year, and you get one failure once every two years, there's a lot of risk, and not that many points to draw statistical inference. If you launch 2000 rockets per year, and only one in 500 fails, then it's a completely different picture.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  It's reality. They do reusable Falcon Heavy flights at 90 million right now. Good chunk of that cost is second stage and fairings that are expendable. Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.
- 6y ago

mumblemumble 6y ago

I'm guessing it has more to do with culture. A lot of big long-standing organizations develop an internal culture of being more focused on not fucking up than on achieving success. Paradoxically, this leads to more problems, and more of the costs associated with them. People stay in their swim lanes, and nobody has each other's backs. The more you keep your head down and try not to get involved, the less you can be blamed for. L. David Marquet digs pretty deep into this phenomenon in his book Turn the Ship Around! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16158601-turn-the-ship-around https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16158601-turn-the-ship-a...

mhh__ 6y ago

It is a jobs program. It's not nicknamed the senate launch system for nothing. If they were doing it now I'm sure they'd be tempted in just contracting out and just building the payloads, but when it was being laid out they didn't exist.

pfdietz 6y ago
Now that Shelby is in the minority party in the Senate I think we may see this thing killed.
frakkingcylons 6y ago
As jobs programs go in the U.S., I’d rather they waste money on an obsolete launch system for space exploration rather than weapons. Unfortunately the bar is pretty low in the U.S..
- beerandt 6y ago
  You think the US funding an alternative, government controlled launch system for redundant access to space isn't ultimately for military purposes?
  - stretchcat 6y ago
    What would the military applications of SLS be? It seems like absurd overkill for lifting military satellites. And the companies contracted to make SLS (namely Boeing) are some of the same companies already contracted to make the rockets which are used for military launches.
    - SubjectToChange 6y ago
      It's a program to retain the industrial base. For example, Aerojet Rocketdyne would have definitely been bankrupt without SLS.
  - frakkingcylons 6y ago
    The U.S. now already has alternatives in the form of SpaceX and ULA. I’m sure that the military wouldn’t mind having a third option, but I don’t think it’s the ultimate reason for the continued existence of SLS.

sidlls 6y ago

As if SpaceX has delivered anything that isn’t: a) (effectively) government funded and b) built on the back of decades of NASA engineering effort. Blue Origin hasn’t actually done anything.

Beached 6y ago
falcon? to my knowledge nasa has only partially funded cargo and crewed dragon, falcon 1 and 9 were developed through private funding and became profitable and stable before nasa even got their hands in the pot.
mdorazio 6y ago
I'm really tired of seeing this stupid argument that SpaceX is government funded. The entire aerospace industry is government funded because the government has huge amounts of money and offers large contracts to many companies. By this measure, Palantir and many younger startups are also government funded. It's a meaningless statement. Bash SpaceX for their work culture and other issues all you want, but their business model is just fine.
- sidlls 6y ago
  And I’m tired of seeing people worship private entities whose entire success story is dependent entirely on government work. Not just funding, but work (e.g. past research). A business that lives only with government support is a de facto government entity. Sorry that facts offend you.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    You seem to be confusing a program that exists because of the government funding the development, and a commercial program that exists in part because the government is one of the buyers of its product. Falcon 9 certainly benefited from the government buying launches, but the project was done with private investment. This is very different from how Atlas, Delta, the Shuttle, etc. were developed. NASA (and DOD) continues to buy launches from SpaceX, but that's no more a subsidy than them buying pizza from Dominoes.