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Very unpopular opinion : every dollar spent on SLS is a dollar spent on pushing back Spaceflight. Artemis 2 is not a milestone but a monumental mourning.

pc86 4y ago
As someone completely unfamiliar with SLS: why?
- nickff 4y ago
  SLS is extremely expensive, has taken a long time, and will have a low mission frequency (if successful at all).
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  It's not perfectly efficient because it spends some of the budget on preventing congressional tampering and getting average americans interested in space. Apparently, if the government can't make a commercially competitive space program, we should just not have one at all.
  - pdabbadabba 4y ago
    > not perfectly efficient That's a bit of an understatement! It's estimated to cost $4.1 billion per launch--about double the already impressive $2 billion per launch that was originally budgeted. https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf
  - Dig1t 4y ago
    If anyone has done the job of getting Americans interested in space, it has to be SpaceX. They have a huge following of young nerds who are getting into aerospace engineering because they do such a good job publicizing their development efforts. SLS is so embarrassingly outdated when compared to SpaceX, it has done the opposite for me, it just made me realize how antiquated and bloated government projects are. Maybe it's more a reflection on how poorly the contracts were managed, idk. But comparing SpaceX vs SLS launches, SLS is a marvelous failure by every metric.
- Nekhrimah 4y ago
  While it may eventually deliver results, the primary goal of the SLS is a massive jobs programme, across the states of the politicians that support it.
nickff 4y ago
You might be correct that NASA isn't spending the money efficiently, but you need to compare this to the alternative to Artemis, which is probably a bunch of smaller programs that will either be cancelled or forgettable.
erulabs 4y ago
I used to feel similar. Now I have a 2 year old who has a good chance of having live HD color images of humans walking on the moon as one of his first memories - like his grandfather did and his father didn’t. Once I internalized that, I stopped caring about the cost.
Dig1t 4y ago
I don't see how this is an unpopular opinion, this is the only sane opinion by any objective measurement. SLS is an incredible boondoggle. The money would be much better spent flying with SpaceX, or trying to work with some other newer space startup.
zokier 4y ago
That is more like very popular opinion. But even more, SLS is still just a part of Artemis program. Notably Artemis is also planned to include Spaceship flights too.
credit_guy 4y ago
Gorillas avoid fighting if they can. They instead thump their chests and bare their fangs. The Apollo program was a chest thumping and teeth baring program. It put a healthy fear of god in the Soviets, and lead to their ultimate defeat. Viewed as such it got a phenomenal bang for the buck. Otherwise, in terms of science, it was quite useless. The SLS program and the other heavy lift programs after Apollo (like the Space Shuttle) were primarily capability maintenance programs. If you look at them like that, then their success is not measured in how many launches they do, but in how few. If you see these programs as a capability maintenance programs, they succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dream: they maintained a large and competent workforce and ecosystem which allowed startups such SpaceX to develop and flourish. But now that SpaceX exists (and quite a number of other startups) there's less of a need a capability maintenance program. Given that, my prediction is that these astronauts that were paraded in front of us today will never fly to the Moon.

pc86 4y ago

As someone completely unfamiliar with SLS: why?

nickff 4y ago
SLS is extremely expensive, has taken a long time, and will have a low mission frequency (if successful at all).
mrguyorama 4y ago
It's not perfectly efficient because it spends some of the budget on preventing congressional tampering and getting average americans interested in space. Apparently, if the government can't make a commercially competitive space program, we should just not have one at all.
- pdabbadabba 4y ago
  > not perfectly efficient That's a bit of an understatement! It's estimated to cost $4.1 billion per launch--about double the already impressive $2 billion per launch that was originally budgeted. https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf
- Dig1t 4y ago
  If anyone has done the job of getting Americans interested in space, it has to be SpaceX. They have a huge following of young nerds who are getting into aerospace engineering because they do such a good job publicizing their development efforts. SLS is so embarrassingly outdated when compared to SpaceX, it has done the opposite for me, it just made me realize how antiquated and bloated government projects are. Maybe it's more a reflection on how poorly the contracts were managed, idk. But comparing SpaceX vs SLS launches, SLS is a marvelous failure by every metric.
Nekhrimah 4y ago
While it may eventually deliver results, the primary goal of the SLS is a massive jobs programme, across the states of the politicians that support it.

nickff 4y ago

You might be correct that NASA isn't spending the money efficiently, but you need to compare this to the alternative to Artemis, which is probably a bunch of smaller programs that will either be cancelled or forgettable.

erulabs 4y ago

I used to feel similar. Now I have a 2 year old who has a good chance of having live HD color images of humans walking on the moon as one of his first memories - like his grandfather did and his father didn’t. Once I internalized that, I stopped caring about the cost.

Dig1t 4y ago

I don't see how this is an unpopular opinion, this is the only sane opinion by any objective measurement. SLS is an incredible boondoggle. The money would be much better spent flying with SpaceX, or trying to work with some other newer space startup.

zokier 4y ago

That is more like very popular opinion. But even more, SLS is still just a part of Artemis program. Notably Artemis is also planned to include Spaceship flights too.

credit_guy 4y ago

Gorillas avoid fighting if they can. They instead thump their chests and bare their fangs. The Apollo program was a chest thumping and teeth baring program. It put a healthy fear of god in the Soviets, and lead to their ultimate defeat. Viewed as such it got a phenomenal bang for the buck. Otherwise, in terms of science, it was quite useless. The SLS program and the other heavy lift programs after Apollo (like the Space Shuttle) were primarily capability maintenance programs. If you look at them like that, then their success is not measured in how many launches they do, but in how few. If you see these programs as a capability maintenance programs, they succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dream: they maintained a large and competent workforce and ecosystem which allowed startups such SpaceX to develop and flourish. But now that SpaceX exists (and quite a number of other startups) there's less of a need a capability maintenance program. Given that, my prediction is that these astronauts that were paraded in front of us today will never fly to the Moon.