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SLS has been dead for 4 years at least - landing boosters, Dragon 2, and Falcon Heavy were the nails in the coffin. After that the writing was on the wall that

SLS has been dead for 4 years at least - landing boosters, Dragon 2, and Falcon Heavy were the nails in the coffin. After that the writing was on the wall that SLS is obsolete. At this point it's some sort of society wide sunk cost fallacy that few can face.

unethical_ban 4y ago
If they were nails in the coffin, they would be launching a crew capsule around the moon by now.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  I would argue that the reason we don't have men on the moon again yesterday, let alone today, is due to the simple fact of the matter that there is no political nor economic incentive to invest the substantial time and resources into doing so. We went to the Moon already, and we know it's basically a desolate ball of regolith with nothing of interest that would surpass the costs of getting more men there in the first place. Countries that haven't landed their own men on the Moon yet have a political dick contest incentive, but the US isn't one of them, and regardless they still don't have any economic incentive anyway. I stated earlier that the SLS is a rocket to nowhere, but I will also go a step further and posit that human space exploration itself is an endeavour to nowhere for the forseeable future. We have yet to find anything out there in the black that surpasses the sheer costs of transporting live humans across space. This isn't the Age of Exploration, where the West was lured to map out the world in the hopes of landing a lucrative trade passage with the East and maybe finding some dirt to Manifest Destiny. This is the Age of Human Space Exploration, and we still haven't found any reason to engage in it beyond idolized dreams and dick size contests that we graduated from over 50 years ago.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    Not a fan of high availability, eh? At this point we have no common ground.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > Not a fan of high availability, eh? There's not really any scenario where a post-apocalypse Earth is more inhospitable than the moon. If your only option for backup servers was lowering them into an active volcano, then you'd need to ignore it and buff up your primary datacenter.
  - bottlepalm 4y ago
    The crux of your argument is the ‘sheer cost’ and what people like Elon is arguing is that the cost is orders of magnitude higher than what it should be given 50 years of advancement. Would you be more open to exploring the Moon and Mars if it was 100x cheaper? Yes/no
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      If the costs make sense? Yes. Absolutely. The problem is human space exploration as it stands today makes no sense anymore compared to 50+ years ago. Exploring the unknown is a good thing, but that takes substantial time and resources. Sending live humans out into space is very, very, very, very expensive and challenges the absolute limits of our logistics. There must be a net positive return on all that investment for human space exploration to make any sense.
      - bottlepalm 4y ago
        Fundamental R&D by the government is always about the long term. Longer than any business can stay solvent - that’s why the government does it. Think of this scenario. We give up on space exploration. 20 years from now China or some other county did not give up, they created economic ways to reach, build and sustain outposts on the Moon and Mars. They are now able to perform R&D in low gravity and environments with low EM interference. Possibly advancements in manufacturing, biotechnology, weapons, chemistry and physics. Those advancements give their industries an economic advantage on Earth. Maybe, maybe not, that’s the gamble we take when we stop pushing things forward in one sector and allow others to catch up and surpass us. We may not see the net return for 100 years but if it’s out there you probably want to get it first.
        Dalewyn 4y ago
        I'm not saying we should ditch R&D, that's ridiculous and stupid. I'm saying the SLS is a tremendous waste of time and money we could be spending on proper R&D instead. I'm saying we haven't gotten human space launch and habitation costs to be economical and practical enough (and/or found something immensely worthwhile out in the black) yet to be fantasizing about Moon bases.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  The nail is that Heavy + Dragon working effectively proves that capability.

unethical_ban 4y ago

If they were nails in the coffin, they would be launching a crew capsule around the moon by now.

Dalewyn 4y ago
I would argue that the reason we don't have men on the moon again yesterday, let alone today, is due to the simple fact of the matter that there is no political nor economic incentive to invest the substantial time and resources into doing so. We went to the Moon already, and we know it's basically a desolate ball of regolith with nothing of interest that would surpass the costs of getting more men there in the first place. Countries that haven't landed their own men on the Moon yet have a political dick contest incentive, but the US isn't one of them, and regardless they still don't have any economic incentive anyway. I stated earlier that the SLS is a rocket to nowhere, but I will also go a step further and posit that human space exploration itself is an endeavour to nowhere for the forseeable future. We have yet to find anything out there in the black that surpasses the sheer costs of transporting live humans across space. This isn't the Age of Exploration, where the West was lured to map out the world in the hopes of landing a lucrative trade passage with the East and maybe finding some dirt to Manifest Destiny. This is the Age of Human Space Exploration, and we still haven't found any reason to engage in it beyond idolized dreams and dick size contests that we graduated from over 50 years ago.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Not a fan of high availability, eh? At this point we have no common ground.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > Not a fan of high availability, eh? There's not really any scenario where a post-apocalypse Earth is more inhospitable than the moon. If your only option for backup servers was lowering them into an active volcano, then you'd need to ignore it and buff up your primary datacenter.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  The crux of your argument is the ‘sheer cost’ and what people like Elon is arguing is that the cost is orders of magnitude higher than what it should be given 50 years of advancement. Would you be more open to exploring the Moon and Mars if it was 100x cheaper? Yes/no
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    If the costs make sense? Yes. Absolutely. The problem is human space exploration as it stands today makes no sense anymore compared to 50+ years ago. Exploring the unknown is a good thing, but that takes substantial time and resources. Sending live humans out into space is very, very, very, very expensive and challenges the absolute limits of our logistics. There must be a net positive return on all that investment for human space exploration to make any sense.
    - bottlepalm 4y ago
      Fundamental R&D by the government is always about the long term. Longer than any business can stay solvent - that’s why the government does it. Think of this scenario. We give up on space exploration. 20 years from now China or some other county did not give up, they created economic ways to reach, build and sustain outposts on the Moon and Mars. They are now able to perform R&D in low gravity and environments with low EM interference. Possibly advancements in manufacturing, biotechnology, weapons, chemistry and physics. Those advancements give their industries an economic advantage on Earth. Maybe, maybe not, that’s the gamble we take when we stop pushing things forward in one sector and allow others to catch up and surpass us. We may not see the net return for 100 years but if it’s out there you probably want to get it first.
      - Dalewyn 4y ago
        I'm not saying we should ditch R&D, that's ridiculous and stupid. I'm saying the SLS is a tremendous waste of time and money we could be spending on proper R&D instead. I'm saying we haven't gotten human space launch and habitation costs to be economical and practical enough (and/or found something immensely worthwhile out in the black) yet to be fantasizing about Moon bases.
bottlepalm 4y ago
The nail is that Heavy + Dragon working effectively proves that capability.