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Important context… SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for in order to achieve its mission goals… it’s the rocket they were forced into using due to lo

Important context… SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for in order to achieve its mission goals… it’s the rocket they were forced into using due to lobbying and senate shenanigans, there’s a reason it has the nickname “senate launch system”. The fact the pork barrel project is so bloated it’s “unaffordable” is irrelevant as far as the senators who are voting for it are concerned. My bet is that the senate will just raise the budget because and continue to make SLS happen as they have always done since the SLS program began.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago
> SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for Any source?
- acegopher 3y ago
  https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls
  - archgoon 3y ago
    Note, NASA has a copy of the original 2010 funding legislation here: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf Which can also be found here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/3729 https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/372... The key part is: > (2) MODIFICATION OF CURRENT CONTRACTS.—In order to limit NASA’s termination liability costs and support critical capabilities, the Administrator shall, to the extent practicable, extend or modify existing vehicle development and associated contracts necessary to meet the requirements in paragraph (1), including contracts for ground testing of solid rocket motors, if necessary, to ensure their availability for development of the Space Launch System. Which explains why NASA isn't necessarily getting engines from Blue Origin or other cheaper new comers for example. The senate law dictates that they should continue using existing contracts. Now, could a NASA administrator argue that they should drop Aerojet (as cited in the ars technica article)? Potentially, but Aerojet could possibly sue, claiming that NASA is in violation of the law. -- From the Shadows
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  You can just google “Senate Launch System” and find numerous references. Here are a few, including Wikipedia’s chronicle of its funding cycles: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/08/24/nasas-space-launch-system-is-yesterdays-rocket https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/08/24/... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-artemis-delays-fuel-controversy-over-rocket-design/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-artemis-del... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Developmen...
- Sharlin 3y ago
  Honestly, that's like asking for a source for the fact that people need oxygen to live. Fuck, they weren't even allowed to finally correct the design flaw in the solid rocket boosters that was the direct cause of the Challenger disaster – namely the fact that they were made of several segments not for any engineering reason but simply because they were manufactured in Utah (due to pork barrel) and could not be transported to Florida in one piece. For twenty years now they have tried to build a launcher based on recycling as many ~parts~jobs from the Shuttle program as possible and thus far have flown exactly zero people and exactly zero kilograms of cargo. The Senate doesn't mind, because the STS is a jobs program, not a spaceflight program. (Although it's not like the market for SRBs in particular has been very hot lately given how few of them have been in fact launched, so I dunno. Probably the govt is paying ATK just to keep the plant running so they'll be able to build/refurbish a pair of boosters every two or three years which is the expected STS launch rate.)
  - labster 3y ago
    Water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, the SLS is a boondoggle. Imagine being told to design Google in 2000, but in order to save money you have to reuse old software: database from Oracle, OS from IBM, and design around the code from AltaVista. That should only take a few hundred man-months, right?
  - archgoon 3y ago
    > Honestly, that's like asking for a source for the fact that people need oxygen to live. I find this attitude "It's just obvious" to be generally unhelpful. Your sibling comments do a much better job at helping the grandparent get up to speed with context about the SLS program, and associated Senate Legislation. Being able to cite documents in support of your position is a valuable skill and both helps your own understanding, by clarifying what your understanding is based on, and that of the questioner. -- From the shadows
    - hinkley 3y ago
      The attitude of "I've never heard of this before" has been a common internet troll for at least 25 years. At some point it's not on me to educate you about things that are widely common knowledge, and there's an art to asking for citations without sounding like you're being dismissive, or shifting all of the effort onto the other person. The top level comment did not achieve this art, but I've seen worse.
- avhon1 3y ago
  https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directed NASA to develop a new rocket called the Space Launch System. It set performance requirements for the rocket (use just two stages to lift 70 tons into low-Earth orbit, use a third stage to lift 130 tons to LEO, carry cargo and astronauts to ISS, carry deep-space crew capsule, support gradual increase in performance by "evolutionary growth" with new stages), and required that, "where practicable", NASA should maintain existing Space-Shuttle and Ares contracts, workforces, infrastructure, and technologies, and that the rocket be scheduled to launch no later than the end of 2016. The precise requirements were written to force NASA to design a rocket that maintained lucrative Space Shuttle-era contracts. https://spaceref.com/press-release/hatch-passage-of-nasa-reauthorization-takes-utahs-solid-rocket-industry-off-life-support/ https://spaceref.com/press-release/hatch-passage-of-nasa-rea... Also, the requirement to upgrade existing infrastructure ensured that billions of dollars went into Bill Nelson's district in Florida. (He is now the highest-ranking official at NASA.) The law did not establish long-term funding for the development of the rocket. As with all NASA projects, money is granted one year at a time in Congress's annual budget. In 2011, NASA announced the plan to build this rocket. In accordance with the law's requirements and intention, it re-used almost all core technologies, infrastructure, and major subcontractors of the Space Shuttle. There was actually some fuss about this at the time: https://spacenews.com/shelby-nasa-hold-competition-sls-boosters/ https://spacenews.com/shelby-nasa-hold-competition-sls-boost... but the strategy of "give Congress what they want" has worked: the Planetary Society shows that Congress has consistently granted NASA more money than asked for to fund SLS. https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls In particular, Richard Shelby (senator from Alabama, which is home to many NASA facilities, and Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2018–2021) was a powerful political supporter of the SLS, ensuring its continued funding, and attacking anybody who even suggested it might not be necessary. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shelby-key-architect-of-sls-rocket-wont-seek-reelection/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shel...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mannerheim 3y ago
If/when Starship flies (which, if it doesn't, raises other questions as to the future of Artemis), one has to wonder what the point of SLS will be.
- wmf 3y ago
  Jobs.
  - rdtsc 3y ago
    That's the answer. It's keeping the jobs (i.e. voters) in orbit around the senators. They could care less about space, as long as they can say they brought "jobs" to their state. If it does that, it works as designed.
    - woooooo 3y ago
      I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. Is it a senate cultural thing that they all tell themselves despite tenuous links to reality? Is it kickbacks? Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable?
      - vkou 3y ago
        > I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. You never see a senator take credit for a plant opening/expanding on their re-election blurb/townhall? You must be in an incredibly safe state. > Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable? It applies to them, too. Again, if you're not seeing this, either your senator isn't doing much of it, you're not paying much attention to their campaign, or they are in such an incredibly safe district that their only challenger is Bozo the Clown.
        woooooo 3y ago
        I didn't say that, I said I've never seen it swing a vote. I'm sure people working at the missile factory vote but it's a relatively small number. Re: infra, you're right, I guess I'm just letting my personal bias in when wondering why they don't do more of that compared to the weapons. It seems like such an easier sell to voters, but the emphasis seems to go the other way. (Also, in my limited sample size, all of this has taken a smaller and smaller back seat to culture war stuff in modern day campaigning)
roody15 3y ago
This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results. So yes we may have the best tech/gear in the world but may be spending way too much to only get a slight edge and find this edge is not even sustainable.
- bombolo 3y ago
  [dead]
- kristofferR 3y ago
  It's not like the money spent just disappears, though, someone gets it. The SLS is a huge jobs program. Me and GPT had a good discussion about it: https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972bb832e https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    But how much of that ends up in the hands of shareholders and execs? If you want to provide jobs it's better to provide them directly. The shareholders have enough money as it is.
    - themadturk 3y ago
      So what would it take to give NASA the manufacturing infrastructure and expertise to start building its own rockets? Such programs have always been done by contractors, non-government industrial partners. That's part of working in a capitalist economy.
    - 3y ago
gumby 3y ago
> My bet is that the senate will just raise the budget because and continue to make SLS happen as they have always done since the SLS program began. A phrase I learned at NASA: "With enough thrust anything can fly".
cyanydeez 3y ago
SLS works because the pork is evenly distributed around the country.
Stranger43 3y ago
Isnt it also true of every big success NASA have had, that it only existed because of lobbying and political pressure. We like to pretend that political influence on government institutions is a new "bug" and not something build into the system from day one.
jessriedel 3y ago
At some level of insanity it seems like NASA administrators have a duty to decline the funding and/or resign. "Our bosses [congress] made us do it" cannot be a carte blanche excuse to waste arbitrary amounts of public money without blame.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

> SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for Any source?

acegopher 3y ago
https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls
- archgoon 3y ago
  Note, NASA has a copy of the original 2010 funding legislation here: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf Which can also be found here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/3729 https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/372... The key part is: > (2) MODIFICATION OF CURRENT CONTRACTS.—In order to limit NASA’s termination liability costs and support critical capabilities, the Administrator shall, to the extent practicable, extend or modify existing vehicle development and associated contracts necessary to meet the requirements in paragraph (1), including contracts for ground testing of solid rocket motors, if necessary, to ensure their availability for development of the Space Launch System. Which explains why NASA isn't necessarily getting engines from Blue Origin or other cheaper new comers for example. The senate law dictates that they should continue using existing contracts. Now, could a NASA administrator argue that they should drop Aerojet (as cited in the ars technica article)? Potentially, but Aerojet could possibly sue, claiming that NASA is in violation of the law. -- From the Shadows
SkyMarshal 3y ago
You can just google “Senate Launch System” and find numerous references. Here are a few, including Wikipedia’s chronicle of its funding cycles: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/08/24/nasas-space-launch-system-is-yesterdays-rocket https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/08/24/... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-artemis-delays-fuel-controversy-over-rocket-design/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-artemis-del... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Developmen...
Sharlin 3y ago
Honestly, that's like asking for a source for the fact that people need oxygen to live. Fuck, they weren't even allowed to finally correct the design flaw in the solid rocket boosters that was the direct cause of the Challenger disaster – namely the fact that they were made of several segments not for any engineering reason but simply because they were manufactured in Utah (due to pork barrel) and could not be transported to Florida in one piece. For twenty years now they have tried to build a launcher based on recycling as many ~parts~jobs from the Shuttle program as possible and thus far have flown exactly zero people and exactly zero kilograms of cargo. The Senate doesn't mind, because the STS is a jobs program, not a spaceflight program. (Although it's not like the market for SRBs in particular has been very hot lately given how few of them have been in fact launched, so I dunno. Probably the govt is paying ATK just to keep the plant running so they'll be able to build/refurbish a pair of boosters every two or three years which is the expected STS launch rate.)
- labster 3y ago
  Water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, the SLS is a boondoggle. Imagine being told to design Google in 2000, but in order to save money you have to reuse old software: database from Oracle, OS from IBM, and design around the code from AltaVista. That should only take a few hundred man-months, right?
- archgoon 3y ago
  > Honestly, that's like asking for a source for the fact that people need oxygen to live. I find this attitude "It's just obvious" to be generally unhelpful. Your sibling comments do a much better job at helping the grandparent get up to speed with context about the SLS program, and associated Senate Legislation. Being able to cite documents in support of your position is a valuable skill and both helps your own understanding, by clarifying what your understanding is based on, and that of the questioner. -- From the shadows
  - hinkley 3y ago
    The attitude of "I've never heard of this before" has been a common internet troll for at least 25 years. At some point it's not on me to educate you about things that are widely common knowledge, and there's an art to asking for citations without sounding like you're being dismissive, or shifting all of the effort onto the other person. The top level comment did not achieve this art, but I've seen worse.
avhon1 3y ago
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directed NASA to develop a new rocket called the Space Launch System. It set performance requirements for the rocket (use just two stages to lift 70 tons into low-Earth orbit, use a third stage to lift 130 tons to LEO, carry cargo and astronauts to ISS, carry deep-space crew capsule, support gradual increase in performance by "evolutionary growth" with new stages), and required that, "where practicable", NASA should maintain existing Space-Shuttle and Ares contracts, workforces, infrastructure, and technologies, and that the rocket be scheduled to launch no later than the end of 2016. The precise requirements were written to force NASA to design a rocket that maintained lucrative Space Shuttle-era contracts. https://spaceref.com/press-release/hatch-passage-of-nasa-reauthorization-takes-utahs-solid-rocket-industry-off-life-support/ https://spaceref.com/press-release/hatch-passage-of-nasa-rea... Also, the requirement to upgrade existing infrastructure ensured that billions of dollars went into Bill Nelson's district in Florida. (He is now the highest-ranking official at NASA.) The law did not establish long-term funding for the development of the rocket. As with all NASA projects, money is granted one year at a time in Congress's annual budget. In 2011, NASA announced the plan to build this rocket. In accordance with the law's requirements and intention, it re-used almost all core technologies, infrastructure, and major subcontractors of the Space Shuttle. There was actually some fuss about this at the time: https://spacenews.com/shelby-nasa-hold-competition-sls-boosters/ https://spacenews.com/shelby-nasa-hold-competition-sls-boost... but the strategy of "give Congress what they want" has worked: the Planetary Society shows that Congress has consistently granted NASA more money than asked for to fund SLS. https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls In particular, Richard Shelby (senator from Alabama, which is home to many NASA facilities, and Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2018–2021) was a powerful political supporter of the SLS, ensuring its continued funding, and attacking anybody who even suggested it might not be necessary. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shelby-key-architect-of-sls-rocket-wont-seek-reelection/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shel...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mannerheim 3y ago

If/when Starship flies (which, if it doesn't, raises other questions as to the future of Artemis), one has to wonder what the point of SLS will be.

wmf 3y ago
Jobs.
- rdtsc 3y ago
  That's the answer. It's keeping the jobs (i.e. voters) in orbit around the senators. They could care less about space, as long as they can say they brought "jobs" to their state. If it does that, it works as designed.
  - woooooo 3y ago
    I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. Is it a senate cultural thing that they all tell themselves despite tenuous links to reality? Is it kickbacks? Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable?
    - vkou 3y ago
      > I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever. You never see a senator take credit for a plant opening/expanding on their re-election blurb/townhall? You must be in an incredibly safe state. > Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable? It applies to them, too. Again, if you're not seeing this, either your senator isn't doing much of it, you're not paying much attention to their campaign, or they are in such an incredibly safe district that their only challenger is Bozo the Clown.
      - woooooo 3y ago
        I didn't say that, I said I've never seen it swing a vote. I'm sure people working at the missile factory vote but it's a relatively small number. Re: infra, you're right, I guess I'm just letting my personal bias in when wondering why they don't do more of that compared to the weapons. It seems like such an easier sell to voters, but the emphasis seems to go the other way. (Also, in my limited sample size, all of this has taken a smaller and smaller back seat to culture war stuff in modern day campaigning)

roody15 3y ago

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole. The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is. This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results. So yes we may have the best tech/gear in the world but may be spending way too much to only get a slight edge and find this edge is not even sustainable.

bombolo 3y ago
[dead]
kristofferR 3y ago
It's not like the money spent just disappears, though, someone gets it. The SLS is a huge jobs program. Me and GPT had a good discussion about it: https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972bb832e https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wkat4242 3y ago
  But how much of that ends up in the hands of shareholders and execs? If you want to provide jobs it's better to provide them directly. The shareholders have enough money as it is.
  - themadturk 3y ago
    So what would it take to give NASA the manufacturing infrastructure and expertise to start building its own rockets? Such programs have always been done by contractors, non-government industrial partners. That's part of working in a capitalist economy.
  - 3y ago

gumby 3y ago

> My bet is that the senate will just raise the budget because and continue to make SLS happen as they have always done since the SLS program began. A phrase I learned at NASA: "With enough thrust anything can fly".

cyanydeez 3y ago

SLS works because the pork is evenly distributed around the country.

Stranger43 3y ago

Isnt it also true of every big success NASA have had, that it only existed because of lobbying and political pressure. We like to pretend that political influence on government institutions is a new "bug" and not something build into the system from day one.

jessriedel 3y ago

At some level of insanity it seems like NASA administrators have a duty to decline the funding and/or resign. "Our bosses [congress] made us do it" cannot be a carte blanche excuse to waste arbitrary amounts of public money without blame.