4 ms·

Make that two somebodies. I'm a huge space fan, follow everything worth following, and grew up with the Shuttle program, which was amazing despite its many, man

Make that two somebodies. I'm a huge space fan, follow everything worth following, and grew up with the Shuttle program, which was amazing despite its many, many flaws. I'll be watching tomorrow morning hoping for a spectacular explosion that takes out ground facilities along with the rocket. Perhaps then the ensuing government finger-pointing will expose this mess for what it really is -- a poorly conceived, incredibly expensive jobs program masquerading as a "moon rocket". People have made the inevitable comparisons to SpaceX's Superheavy/Starship, and there have naturally been responses pointing out that Starship is far from proven. That's absolutely right, but think about this: If SpaceX never reuses a single nut, bolt, or hunk of stainless steel, SH/Starship is by far the better launch system. Fully expendable, it would cost somewhere in the range of 10-25% of an SLS launch, while delivering something like twice the payload to orbit. I'm super-excited about the growing enthusiasm for going back to the moon, landing on Mars, building larger and more capable orbital installations, and who knows what else. SLS enables none of that. It is both too expensive, and too rare, to be a part of any effective program. By merely existing, SLS sucks money out of other programs that could show real results. I promise you this: If we go back to the moon with SLS, it will make Apollo look like the better program. That, in spite of 50+ years of technological advancement. I'd rather sit here on earth than let our spacefaring dreams die that way. The other day I turned 50, which means I'm too young to remember any of the moon landings. If we rely on SLS now, it's unlikely that I'll live to see the next attempts.

unethical_ban 4y ago
Thinking that SLS getting us to the moon will set us back? Thinking that the enthusiasm of SLS is worthless? Somehow ignoring that SLS is getting it done, not SpaceX, to the moon first? Do you think SpaceX literally dies if SLS succeeds? What kind of logic are you using to think that a successful SLS moon mission sets humanity back? I would assume you know that government space programs take a fuckton of money to operate on, and that they take years if not a decade or more to execute. SpaceX wasn't anywhere near proven 10 or 15 years ago. Cutting SLS doesn't mean SpaceX and BO suddenly get $30b in funding. By such logic, we should have wished the other shuttles had blown up in the 90s too.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  SpaceX has proven there have been economical paths to space the entire time for a fraction of 20 billion/year. If anything NASA has been holding back progress into space for the past 50 years by handing out billions to build expendable systems. Economics was never prioritized (briefly with Shuttle, but it was never iterated on over its 20 year life) And even when SpaceX proved reusability was possible, NASA still continues on the SLS death march.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    That's a fallacy. Many of those engineers working at SpaceX had been working for NASA or at their contractors at NASA funded projects. All of them are standing on the shoulder of giants. Space flight is hard, and probably most of what SpaceX knows it knows either because NASA found out some time in the past decades or paid SpaceX to find out since. And the whole reuseability of SpaceX's rockets would be impossible without modern computers, software and fabrication technology. No, NASA or anyone else couldn't have done that twenty years ago. Maybe ten years ago, with a ton of dough more, but not that long.
    - bottlepalm 4y ago
      Most SpaceX engineers are pretty young not old NASA/Boeing/ULA/Lockheed engineers, funny enough a lot of those people went to Blue Origin. Also I don’t know what kind of supercomputers you think are running on falcon, but we’ve been landing robotic probes on many planets for decades. All it would have taken would be NASA funding the R&D and making it part of the requirements. Unfortunately cost effectiveness was never high on their list.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        At the very least the "young" engineers have been educated with materials from and by NASA engineers. I don't know what you think Falcon is running on, but they are definitely using more advanced and faster computers than those used for landing probes on planets. Even those raptor engines are quite complex in terms of regulation. Also, SpaceX certainly used lots of computing power for simulation of all sorts. Neither the computing power nor the algorithms have been around for decades, necessarily. Point is reuseability isn't easy. Nor necessarily cheaper. SpaceX can't do it on the scale of SLS, by the way. They had more trouble than anticipated with Falcon heavy at "only" 26t to LEO. SLS can do almost four times as much. Starship may be able to do it. But it is far from ready for prime time.
Sakos 4y ago
If this fails, it will basically kill any interest the US has in space exploration past LEO. You think they'll keep throwing more money at space if 23 billion goes down the drain? Lmao. I have no idea how you or anybody else can say with a straight face that they're a space fan. What a laughable idea.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  If space exploration beyond LEO requires SLS, killing it would be a mercy. We wouldn't lose anything real, and at least we'd save money.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
If Artemis works as designed, no, Artemis will be a lot better than Apollo. Longer duration, much more science.

unethical_ban 4y ago

Thinking that SLS getting us to the moon will set us back? Thinking that the enthusiasm of SLS is worthless? Somehow ignoring that SLS is getting it done, not SpaceX, to the moon first? Do you think SpaceX literally dies if SLS succeeds? What kind of logic are you using to think that a successful SLS moon mission sets humanity back? I would assume you know that government space programs take a fuckton of money to operate on, and that they take years if not a decade or more to execute. SpaceX wasn't anywhere near proven 10 or 15 years ago. Cutting SLS doesn't mean SpaceX and BO suddenly get $30b in funding. By such logic, we should have wished the other shuttles had blown up in the 90s too.

bottlepalm 4y ago
SpaceX has proven there have been economical paths to space the entire time for a fraction of 20 billion/year. If anything NASA has been holding back progress into space for the past 50 years by handing out billions to build expendable systems. Economics was never prioritized (briefly with Shuttle, but it was never iterated on over its 20 year life) And even when SpaceX proved reusability was possible, NASA still continues on the SLS death march.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  That's a fallacy. Many of those engineers working at SpaceX had been working for NASA or at their contractors at NASA funded projects. All of them are standing on the shoulder of giants. Space flight is hard, and probably most of what SpaceX knows it knows either because NASA found out some time in the past decades or paid SpaceX to find out since. And the whole reuseability of SpaceX's rockets would be impossible without modern computers, software and fabrication technology. No, NASA or anyone else couldn't have done that twenty years ago. Maybe ten years ago, with a ton of dough more, but not that long.
  - bottlepalm 4y ago
    Most SpaceX engineers are pretty young not old NASA/Boeing/ULA/Lockheed engineers, funny enough a lot of those people went to Blue Origin. Also I don’t know what kind of supercomputers you think are running on falcon, but we’ve been landing robotic probes on many planets for decades. All it would have taken would be NASA funding the R&D and making it part of the requirements. Unfortunately cost effectiveness was never high on their list.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      At the very least the "young" engineers have been educated with materials from and by NASA engineers. I don't know what you think Falcon is running on, but they are definitely using more advanced and faster computers than those used for landing probes on planets. Even those raptor engines are quite complex in terms of regulation. Also, SpaceX certainly used lots of computing power for simulation of all sorts. Neither the computing power nor the algorithms have been around for decades, necessarily. Point is reuseability isn't easy. Nor necessarily cheaper. SpaceX can't do it on the scale of SLS, by the way. They had more trouble than anticipated with Falcon heavy at "only" 26t to LEO. SLS can do almost four times as much. Starship may be able to do it. But it is far from ready for prime time.

Sakos 4y ago

If this fails, it will basically kill any interest the US has in space exploration past LEO. You think they'll keep throwing more money at space if 23 billion goes down the drain? Lmao. I have no idea how you or anybody else can say with a straight face that they're a space fan. What a laughable idea.

pfdietz 4y ago
If space exploration beyond LEO requires SLS, killing it would be a mercy. We wouldn't lose anything real, and at least we'd save money.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

If Artemis works as designed, no, Artemis will be a lot better than Apollo. Longer duration, much more science.