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> Not that two failed launch attempts are all that big a deal in the grand scheme The question to me is, does SLS have a grand scheme? The entire program is s

> Not that two failed launch attempts are all that big a deal in the grand scheme The question to me is, does SLS have a grand scheme? The entire program is specified and budgeted for about five missions, with extensions uncertain. Each launch is a tremendous (and tremendously expensive) affair, and this launch is the first time that all of the SLS systems are coming together. Commercial launch services (not just SpaceX) get to amortize these sorts of failures over dozens to hundreds of eventual launches, but SLS is not designed to "fail fast" as a learning experience.

SyzygistSix 4y ago
The grand scheme is to have a more than one option and path forward to a moon mission, keep the US' aerospace building capabilities fresh and available, and probably also to provide some of the usual pork barrel giveaways to the usual folks. It is both unfortunate but understandable. In an alternate timeline people might now be upset that NASA and the US put all their bets on SpaceX that could now not deliver for some reason. Yes, the price tag is an abomination and the engineering strategies outdated and frankly kind of embarrassing. But hindsight is 20/20.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > more than one option and path forward to a moon mission Then SLS is the exact opposite. Building around existing commercial crew and commerical rockets would be that. SLS/Orion is the actual both 'single point of failure'. So really SLS/Orion is the opposite of what you suggest. > keep the US' aerospace building capabilities fresh and available And by that you mean removing money from the actual productive aerospace industry and instead keeping age old infrastructure in place and rebuilding production lines for old outdated technology. Had this money actually been invested in the advanced aerospace industry, the US would have more and better aerospace capability. So again, SLS/Orion is literally the opposite of what you suggest. > provide some of the usual pork barrel giveaways to the usual folks That's its real and only goal. But again, there would have been other ways to do this. > US put all their bets on SpaceX that could now not deliver for some reason. That was never the alternative. That's just a strawman. > But hindsight is 20/20. Its not hindsight. Its actually mostly known at the time. If you look at the internal NASA studies, they all indicated that many other paths including using commercial rocket and building a Saturn style rocket would have been far, far better. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/rac_stuff_summary_kinda_idk_anymore/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...

SyzygistSix 4y ago

The grand scheme is to have a more than one option and path forward to a moon mission, keep the US' aerospace building capabilities fresh and available, and probably also to provide some of the usual pork barrel giveaways to the usual folks. It is both unfortunate but understandable. In an alternate timeline people might now be upset that NASA and the US put all their bets on SpaceX that could now not deliver for some reason. Yes, the price tag is an abomination and the engineering strategies outdated and frankly kind of embarrassing. But hindsight is 20/20.

panick21_ 4y ago
> more than one option and path forward to a moon mission Then SLS is the exact opposite. Building around existing commercial crew and commerical rockets would be that. SLS/Orion is the actual both 'single point of failure'. So really SLS/Orion is the opposite of what you suggest. > keep the US' aerospace building capabilities fresh and available And by that you mean removing money from the actual productive aerospace industry and instead keeping age old infrastructure in place and rebuilding production lines for old outdated technology. Had this money actually been invested in the advanced aerospace industry, the US would have more and better aerospace capability. So again, SLS/Orion is literally the opposite of what you suggest. > provide some of the usual pork barrel giveaways to the usual folks That's its real and only goal. But again, there would have been other ways to do this. > US put all their bets on SpaceX that could now not deliver for some reason. That was never the alternative. That's just a strawman. > But hindsight is 20/20. Its not hindsight. Its actually mostly known at the time. If you look at the internal NASA studies, they all indicated that many other paths including using commercial rocket and building a Saturn style rocket would have been far, far better. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/rac_stuff_summary_kinda_idk_anymore/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...