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It is wrong to compare these two very different eras. The Apollo program was an ideological race, so there was a mush higher tolerance of risk and financial and
by altacc 4y ago
It is wrong to compare these two very different eras. The Apollo program was an ideological race, so there was a mush higher tolerance of risk and financial and human costs. Remember, people died on the US & Soviet space programs as they were figuring things out. There might not have been many launch scrubs but there were plenty of failures.
Today, the tolerance for risk is much lower, the costs higher and the budget much more controlled. There are many politicians who want to greatly reduce NASA's budget in favour of private ventures. A failed launch is ammo for their cause. So whereas Apollo could proceed (with some delays) after people burnt to death in a capsule, if that happened today the whole program would be halted indefinitely and NASA heavily questioned as to why it needed to take such risks. 50 years on from Apollo, NASA has learnt that an abundance of caution is needed.
- panick21_ 4y ago> There are many politicians who want to greatly reduce NASA's budget in favour of private ventures. No actually they want to give NASA more money so NASA can buy what it needs from private ventures.
- zmgsabst 4y agoHow many versions of Starship did Space X explode or crash? They seem to have produced better results on less money — so if NASA can’t follow the strategy that works, why should we throw more into the money pit?
- mavhc 4y agoSpaceX want to produce the least rocket they need, NASA want 0 failures, so they'll always have too much rocket Also SpaceX plan to make 1000 Starships, and NASA plans to make about 5 of theirs
- dotnet00 4y agoUnfortunately NASA doesn't have the ability to even appear to fail explosively while SpaceX can afford to laugh about it. Any significant explosion would have the tech illiterate Congress breathing down their necks.
- Majromax 4y ago> Unfortunately NASA doesn't have the ability to even appear to fail explosively while SpaceX can afford to laugh about it. It's the curse of waterfall budgeting. A democratic government with typical constraints wants to minimize spending and to have all spending fully accounted for in advance. "I dunno, maybe it will blow up this time?" is not an acceptable line-item under either standard. Therefore, budgets must plan for success and design failure out of the process. Minimizing risk maximizes process and cost, ironically sacrificing the very low-cost public policy goal at the feet of risk intolerance. Instead of fifty SLS launches, of which the first dozen or so might fail as learning experiences, we get five that all must go flawlessly. True "risky" development is reserved for programs of true national urgency (e.g. the original defense focus of the space race) or for programs that can operate well outside the public's watchful eye.
- sashahrzg 4y agoThis. This right here. I absolutely hate seeing the two compared. They're doing two very different things with two very different goals.
- zmgsabst 4y agoWhat do you think is different about their goals?
- sashahrzg 4y agoSpaceX is a profit motivated company with large degrees of flexibility. They move fast and break ships. NASA is a research institution focused on scientific advancement and space research. They also are very rigid due to the way they receive funding. NASA cannot afford to move to a starship style system because the SLS contract was locked in.
- bottlepalm 4y agoAll that scientific advancement to end up 50 years later with a Moon vehicle not much more different than Apollo.
- wffurr 4y ago>> why should we throw more into the money pit? You don’t get to decide where the money goes at all. Senators do so they can boast about bringing jobs to their state in reelection campaigns.
- melling 4y agoblah, blah, blah, and after the first mishap with the new system… No amount of money will make the system perfect. We’ve heard the same story for 50 years. Cancel the project now. There should be a price for taking the wrong path.
- bnralt 4y agoThere was an article from The Economist that was posted on Hacker News earlier today, arguing the SLS wasn't a good use of resources[1]. It got flagged and was removed, for some reason. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32636643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32636643
- _dain_ 4y ago
- PaulHoule 4y agoThey'll send one who is both so they can satisfy the requirement at least cost.
- altacc 4y agoOne, that’s not a race so is false equivalence. Second, if you’re an institution that for decades actively restricted active astronauts to be solely white men, acknowledging that there should be a fair representation of people on space missions is a good thing. Some people might incorrectly conclude that this means that more qualified white men will be sidelined by a quota. But that would be a rather prejudiced and simple view, making some nasty assumptions and ignoring the current wide variety of highly qualified astronaut candidates.
- _dain_ 4y agoThe first black astronaut went up in 1983, so it's been nearly 40 years since NASA "actively restricted active astronauts to be solely white men".
- Zecc 4y agoDoesn't seem to me to be any more challenging than putting a "man not-of-color,whatever-that-means" on the moon. Put a teen, on the moon. Or some other random person without having them go through extensive training, really. I'll be more impressed.
- belter 4y agoI agree that the tolerance for risk is different today. But the argument would seem to imply, that NASA was then somehow more willing to endanger the lives of the crew. As mentioned, people died, so the increased caution was already a part of the program. Let's not diminish the brilliant, flawless execution of the Apollo program, with the argument that they cared less for the lives of Astronauts.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoSorry, they were more willing to endanger the lives of the crew, and they even admitted it. I remember watching a documentary where they were estimating the percentage chance of the loss of the crew, and comparing that to the chance the Russians would beat them to the moon. The comment you replied to is correct. Every launch has a non-zero chance of death, and the Apollo program was simply willing to tolerate a higher probability of loss than we are today. I think if you want to call that "they cared less for the lives of Astronauts" that that's your own interpretation.
- foobarbecue 4y agoBrilliant, but certainly not flawless.
- eropple 4y ago"Flawless execution"? Apollo 1 burned three astronauts to death during a rehearsal test. They had astronauts back on top of a rocket in under twenty months. Acknowledging that their risk tolerances were higher than politics necessitates today doesn't "diminish" anything.
- cratermoon 4y ago> They had astronauts back on top of a rocket in under twenty months. In a redesigned spacecraft (based on the Block II that was already in development) that replaced the pure oxygen environment at launch with a Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere that was slowly bled off to pure O2 at the desired partial pressure once it was in space.
- macinjosh 4y agoNever launching is also a risk and a mode of failure.
- fallingknife 4y agoThis is dangerous. It's going to kill people. We need to make a decision on whether or not it's acceptable and proceed or not. But this seems to be politically not possible. Really the only people's opinions that I care about at all about this are the actual astronauts that are putting their lives at risk, but somehow it always seems to come down to some bureaucrats whose definition of risky is leaving blanks on a form unfilled.
- ekianjo 4y ago> Today, the tolerance for risk is much lower, yet SpaceX can launch a lot more often and a lot more reliably, and cheaper too. Strange, huh?
- btilly 4y agoFrequency and cost yes, but reliability is more complicated. ULA has 148 launches with NO accidents. SpaceX has put up more, but had an accident in flight with the Falcon 9 in June 2015, and another on the pad in September 2016. Mind you, ULA started with a known rocket design. While SpaceX has been iterating as it goes. But still, we don't have significant statistical evidence about which is actually more reliable.
- panick21_ 4y agoAs you said, ULA when it started already had mature rockets. You need to compare rocket families not operators. And ULA had a number of issues in that time. For example a failure in an Atlas first stage and the only just managed to deploy the sat because the upper stage had just enough margin. And ULA had major delays, way longer then what SpaceX could afford for things like their Delta 4 Heavy launches. ULA of course also got 1 billion $ in subsidies per year to ensure launch safety, a luxury SpaceX never had. > But still, we don't have significant statistical evidence about which is actually more reliable. Actually we do. It you look at the launch rates and how often Falcon 9 has launched already the statistical significant of the results gets bigger and bigger. Unfortunately I can't find the list that shows this data and explains the methods used right now. But Falcon 9 is very clearly on top of the list.
- philistine 4y agoEvery time they do a run-of-the-mill Starlink launch that goes without a hitch, Falcon 9 becomes safer and more valuable. Every time Falcon 9 flies, the necessity for Starship to succeed soon decreases.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
- philwelch 4y agoI don’t think this explanation adds up very well. NASA had a manned spaceflight program after Apollo that was specifically designed for safety and efficiency—the Space Shuttle—which turned out to be expensive and unsafe. After the Columbia disaster the Shuttle was cancelled, but the subcontractors for the Shuttle cried foul and Congress pretty much forced NASA to build a new rocket out of Shuttle parts—first Ares, then SLS. If it were up to NASA, they would either build the rocket out of something other than old Shuttle parts or just outsource rocket development and focus on operations. The politicians are the ones making them build SLS.
- credit_guy 4y agoIt's not nice what I'm about to say, but maybe it would be better in the long run if the SLS blew on the launchpad. It's not manned, so it won't lead to loss of life. It would lead to program termination, which is a good outcome.
- greedo 4y agoIt wouldn't just terminate SLS though, it would probably kill Artemis, which would be a bad thing.
- credit_guy 4y agoMaybe. But then again, Musk is hellbent to go to Mars. If SpaceX indeed builds thousands of Starships, then a private-funded Artemis-like program will be possible for what will amount to spare change. We are pretty close to (if not already at) the point where we don't need Government funding for space exploration.
- greedo 4y agoGoing to Mars will cost between $100B and $10T (the latter includes building a city). There's no way that Musk can do this on his own without government assistance.
- 4y ago