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Whilst its fantastic (and to be honest a little surprising) that the mission went without any major issues (and the staff at NASA are obviously to be commended
by esskay 4y ago
Whilst its fantastic (and to be honest a little surprising) that the mission went without any major issues (and the staff at NASA are obviously to be commended for their efforts), the whole project still feels like 'the wrong solution to the problem'.
I get it, SLS was started years ago before commercial space became so successful...but it should've adapted as needed. We're now stuck with a poorly planned mission that's going to cost obscene amounts of money - some of the same reasons they canned Apollo.
I just hope that SpaceX (and others - we need multiple operators) can get this right on their own and force NASA to accept that 'old space' is not the way to be doing things anymore. If we want this to last and not be a 2-3 year run of launches followed by another 50 years of NASA stagnation they'll need to adapt and stop allowing themselves to get bent over by the likes of Boeing and Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, etc.
- jakeinspace 4y agoPoint the finger at congress, not NASA. Orion itself appears to be a pretty good craft. The SLS being a boondoggle is of course true, but it’s something most engineers inside NASA accept to some degree (that was my experience). It is definitely a shame that the agency’s budget is so hamstrung by the development and procurement costs of SLS. Nobody will be happier than NASA when spacex eats ULA’S lunch and can provide them cheap lunar access.
- Gwypaas 4y agoIf after spending ~$25 billion it would be less than a "pretty good craft" then well. I don't know what to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)#Funding_history_and_planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)#Funding_his...
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoThe UK's HS2 rail system will likely cost more than £42bn to join London and Birmingham (with a bit of an extension to Crewe.) $25bn for a working moon shot is pretty good value in comparison.
- actionfromafar 4y agoBut you can go more than once to and fro London and Birmingham.
- jakeinspace 4y agoOptimistic given the ongoing rail strikes.
- esskay 4y agoYou can get there, but you'll have to take 14 trains, 7 rail replacement busses, walk 9 miles and leave last thursday to get there for christmas.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI visited the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL semi-recently, for the first time since I was a very little kid. It was disappointing all around—lots of stuff broken, outdoor exhibits clearly deteriorating, nickel-and-diming for every activity after a not-cheap entry fee, a ton of floor space dedicated to a visually (at least) hideous display that looked like someone took all the material from an aerospace defense contractor trade show and dumped it haphazardly about the place, their collection of space travel artifacts generally being unimpressive aside from the obviously-amazing turned-on-its-side-and-broken-apart Saturn V (if you could pay half the entry fee to just see that, it'd be the superior bang-for-the-buck experience by a long shot)—but the goofiest bit about it was that 100% of its depiction of the future of space flight, which was pushed on little displays and such scattered about the place, was dedicated to the obsolete money-pit SLS. Contributed to the feeling that the whole facility was paid-entry advertising for the aerospace-defense industry (I assume the SLS has been a reliable source of fat contracts for the usual suspects).