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It's not a problem of engineering talent but of politics. They made the problem harder to solve by choosing architecture that makes congresscritters happy at t
by kiba 4y ago
It's not a problem of engineering talent but of politics.
They made the problem harder to solve by choosing architecture that makes congresscritters happy at the expense of making the rocket way more expensive than it needs to be.
- ethbr0 4y ago> that makes congresscritters happy Read: prevents program cancellation Many politicians don't care about science. No politicians ignore high paying jobs in their districts. People throw stones at NASA for optimizing within its system of funding, but it was a fairly brilliant move in the 50s and 60s, and is still a brilliant move today. Both NASA and SpaceX et al. can be optimal in their own funding landscapes.
- panick21_ 4y agoThat would be true if that's what they were doing. But NASA can't actually optimize the way you suggest. NASA is hard locked in particular architectures and locations. They are not free to make a design and then allocate it to different districts. If NASA could actually optimize like that, they could actually make rational choices, but they can't.
- _fat_santa 4y ago> choosing architecture that makes congresscritters happy at the expense of making the rocket way more expensive than it needs to be Do you have a source for this "architecture"? Not calling you out, I'm genuinely curious. EDIT: I found an article about the contractors and how it all got put together, interesting read for those outside of the defense contractors world https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/08/28/artemis-i-and-the-contractors-sending-nasa-back-to-the-moon/ https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/08/28/artemis-i-and-the-...
- black6 4y agoWhile I was a NASA engineer for the past five years, NASA loved to brag that thousands of businesses from all 50 states of the union have a hand in SLS. It's not popularly known as the Senate Launch System for no reason.
- panick21_ 4y agoI mean there are lots of resources: Essentially the Senate in 2011 wrote a bill that mandated NASA to build a rocket by 2016 AND that uses existing contractors. So there was literally no way other then just using exiting Shuttle components to even attempt to do that. This reddit thread has a lot of resources about the actual design of what SLS ended up being and how the design process clearly suggest to NOT DO what they eventually did: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/rac_stuff_summary_kinda_idk_anymore/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r... Eric Berger form Ars Technica has lots of articles on the topic, see: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/former-nasa-official-on-trying-to-stop-sls-there-was-just-such-visible-hostility/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/former-nasa-official...