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>> While it might be a failure from the taxpayer's and military's point of view, it's a raving success for Congress and the contractors. The metrics for the lat
by tablespoon 6y ago
>> While it might be a failure from the taxpayer's and military's point of view, it's a raving success for Congress and the contractors. The metrics for the latter are jobs, grandstanding, campaign donations, kickbacks, crony benefits, and mountains of cash, plus guaranteed more mountains ongoing until it's killed.
> I wish this was the cynical view but it's more like reality of government procurement.
> I'd argue that three distinct aircraft could have accomplished that goal better too (as they could be assembled in different places by different companies, with different US-based suppliers).
Which I think is proof that the GP is wrong. If all Congress wanted to do was spend cash to create jobs, they could have done better than the F-35.
I think Congress and the military were honestly trying to save money by building the F-35, by getting more bang for their buck by filling more roles with it. It's just that they failed at that. Some people can't help but assuming malice when incompetence is a far better explanation.
Lockheed spread the work around to make it more politically difficult to kill, but that was for their own profit-seeking reasons.
- wisty 6y agoReminds me of the Space Shuttle, which was meant to be a combination people mover, freighter, and a construction machine. All while being reusable. The US space program is only just recovering. Multiple roles is hard when your biggest enemy is weight.
- dublin 6y agoDon't forget that after the cancellation of the earlier Space Station (the ISS came much later) the "Shuttle" had no place to shuttle things to. Even after decades, the Shuttle never came even remotely close to its cost, reuse, and turnaround time targets. On top of that, two of them blew up, accounting for 14 deaths, a figure that is 100% of all actual in-flight spaceflight deaths. By any rational measure, the Shuttle cannot be considered anything other than a failure.
- lostlogin 6y ago> 100% of all actual in-flight spaceflight deaths. How do you measure this? The USSR had deaths, including hitting the ground because parachutes didn’t open with Soyuz 1 and from faulty equipment causing asphyxiation during flight on Soyuz 11. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1
- skissane 6y agoI assume GP is talking about US space programs only. That the Space Shuttle was the only US space program with in-flight fatalities is significant. That the USSR had fatalities in its own programs as well seems less relevant. It makes sense to compare US programs to US programs. Comparing US to USSR programs makes less sense.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> That the Space Shuttle was the only US space program with in-flight fatalities is significant. It seems less significant and more of an artificial and meaningless distinction to avoid avoid space programs with launchpad fatalities in space vehicles and make the Shuttle falsely unique. The Shuttle also accounts for the vast majority of US manned space flights (only a few less total missions than Russia Soyuz.)
- dTal 6y agoTechnically Soyuz 1's fatality wasn't "in-flight"; the cosmonaut survived all the way to Earth.
- david38 6y agoShuttle is responsible for 100% of American launched in-flight space flight deaths. Ha! Shuttle is also responsible for 100% of American launched flights after a certain point. That’s like saying ICE cars are responsible for 100% of car deaths after the model T and before modern electric cars. Also, you appear to have forgotten Russian casualties and ground rocket deaths.
- TrevorJ 6y agoI'm not sure it's recovering at all, given the fact that SLS is just rummaging around in the Shuttle parts bin try and build a 'new' rocket.
- nwallin 6y agoHe's talking about SpaceX.