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The whole Constellation program was a complete failure from the beginning. And it was rightfully killed, in fact, it lived far to long, was a complete failure i

The whole Constellation program was a complete failure from the beginning. And it was rightfully killed, in fact, it lived far to long, was a complete failure in literally every aspect. Obama tried to kill it. But congress couldn't let the money river go, so they rescued Constellation and turned it into "Constellation 2.0: Even Dumber". Instead of actually having a mission it was literally just 'continue to build more or less the same thing' but without any mission. This resulted in SLS and continued Orion. And for years they didn't have a mission. Literally just build to keep existing contractors. So this whole architecture is literally just 30 years of gigantic waste of money without any result. The resulting rocket sucks, is incredibly weak and has a terrible launch rate. To even match the Saturn V it would take another 5-10 years and cost another 10 billion. So really, I don't like Trump. But finally get rid of these terrible milestone that have been holding NASA back for literally 25 years is worth any short inconvenience and will improve NASA in the long term. The worse parts are the science cuts.

anovikov 1y ago
I wouldn't agree with you if there was no alternative. But since there is an alternative - the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now - continuing this waste made no sense at all.
- yakz 1y ago
  > the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now The Starship isn't ready now in expendable form: during the last two tests, it blew up during the initial burn.
  - anovikov 1y ago
    Because that was the new version of it, tried for the first two times. Previous ones flew just fine on 3 attempts.
- jordanb 1y ago
  > the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now After 8 tries starship hasn't successfully gotten its second stage to orbit. The starship-based plan is the most bonkers part of Artemis. They haven't gotten the "easy" parts done (getting to orbit and getting back again) and haven't even started on the "hard" parts (in-flight refueling, a launch cadence to overcome boil-off, actually landing on the moon and taking off again, etc).
  - avmich 1y ago
    The Starship in non-reusable stage didn't get to orbit purely to avoid problems with deorbiting, should they happen. Energiya rocket, a Saturn-V class launcher which flew twice in 1980-s, deliberately was not getting to orbital speed, for the same reason - don't need to pollute the orbit in the case deorbiting burn fails. Starship has a disadvantage that it's not that easy to release the payload, so Starship has first to get to full orbit, and then take time to release the payload, and then deorbit, and we can have problems there with what to do with Starship which malfunctioned on the deorbiting stage. However to just get to orbit Starship needs to work a few seconds longer than it did already several times - a rather small change. So it's not quite accurate to accuse them "they didn't get the easy part of getting to orbit done".
    - jordanb 1y ago
      They haven't gotten to orbit because they haven't achieved the preconditions to enter orbit. And yes, rocket science is hard, but getting to orbit and getting their second stage back again is the easy part. The Space Shuttle did it on its first try. The rest of the Artemis plan is stuff nobody has ever done before.
  - anovikov 1y ago
    With the rest of Artemis cancelled they won't even need to do any of that. Starship v3 could deliver astronauts to the Moon and back in a single-shot, expendable configuration with direct ascent method, by far the simplest, using Dragon as the only crew capsule (adding a 3rd stage with one Raptor Vacuum, and some sort of a landing and ascent stage).
- panick21_ 1y ago
  This is a bad way of thinking about it. Starship is not necessary for any of this. Constellation and friends were terrible programs long before SpaceX even existed. Investment in distributed launch and refueling is what should have been the bases of all planning since the 90s.
decimalenough 1y ago
I'm curious why this is getting downvoted, since it's hard to disagree with any of it. Has HN reached the stage where agreeing with any Trump admin decision is unacceptable, even when padded with "I don't like Trump" disclaimers?
- panick21_ 1y ago
  Anything that isn't just a pessimistic outlook crying about the state of the world isn't welcome.
  - pmags 1y ago
    That's a bizarre interpretation if you bother to take a few minutes to look at the flagged/dead posts on 'newest' of late. Almost anything policy-adjacent gets shut down almost immediately even if it has a strong tech or science angle.

anovikov 1y ago

I wouldn't agree with you if there was no alternative. But since there is an alternative - the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now - continuing this waste made no sense at all.

yakz 1y ago
> the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now The Starship isn't ready now in expendable form: during the last two tests, it blew up during the initial burn.
- anovikov 1y ago
  Because that was the new version of it, tried for the first two times. Previous ones flew just fine on 3 attempts.
jordanb 1y ago
> the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now After 8 tries starship hasn't successfully gotten its second stage to orbit. The starship-based plan is the most bonkers part of Artemis. They haven't gotten the "easy" parts done (getting to orbit and getting back again) and haven't even started on the "hard" parts (in-flight refueling, a launch cadence to overcome boil-off, actually landing on the moon and taking off again, etc).
- avmich 1y ago
  The Starship in non-reusable stage didn't get to orbit purely to avoid problems with deorbiting, should they happen. Energiya rocket, a Saturn-V class launcher which flew twice in 1980-s, deliberately was not getting to orbital speed, for the same reason - don't need to pollute the orbit in the case deorbiting burn fails. Starship has a disadvantage that it's not that easy to release the payload, so Starship has first to get to full orbit, and then take time to release the payload, and then deorbit, and we can have problems there with what to do with Starship which malfunctioned on the deorbiting stage. However to just get to orbit Starship needs to work a few seconds longer than it did already several times - a rather small change. So it's not quite accurate to accuse them "they didn't get the easy part of getting to orbit done".
  - jordanb 1y ago
    They haven't gotten to orbit because they haven't achieved the preconditions to enter orbit. And yes, rocket science is hard, but getting to orbit and getting their second stage back again is the easy part. The Space Shuttle did it on its first try. The rest of the Artemis plan is stuff nobody has ever done before.
- anovikov 1y ago
  With the rest of Artemis cancelled they won't even need to do any of that. Starship v3 could deliver astronauts to the Moon and back in a single-shot, expendable configuration with direct ascent method, by far the simplest, using Dragon as the only crew capsule (adding a 3rd stage with one Raptor Vacuum, and some sort of a landing and ascent stage).
panick21_ 1y ago
This is a bad way of thinking about it. Starship is not necessary for any of this. Constellation and friends were terrible programs long before SpaceX even existed. Investment in distributed launch and refueling is what should have been the bases of all planning since the 90s.

decimalenough 1y ago

I'm curious why this is getting downvoted, since it's hard to disagree with any of it. Has HN reached the stage where agreeing with any Trump admin decision is unacceptable, even when padded with "I don't like Trump" disclaimers?

panick21_ 1y ago
Anything that isn't just a pessimistic outlook crying about the state of the world isn't welcome.
- pmags 1y ago
  That's a bizarre interpretation if you bother to take a few minutes to look at the flagged/dead posts on 'newest' of late. Almost anything policy-adjacent gets shut down almost immediately even if it has a strong tech or science angle.