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"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with
by bahmboo 1y ago
"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator.
A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.
- ACCount37 1y agoThe current 2027 deadline is a sad joke. By now, a slip to NET 2030 is expected - but clearly, no one is in a hurry to break the news to Trump.
- ericmcer 1y agoI mean JFK said basically the same thing, and with way more unknowns facing him. I dunno if the reception was that he doesn't care about astronauts lives.
- WalterBright 1y agoHaving a deadline is how things get done. With no deadline, nothing gets accomplished.
- notahacker 1y agoThe (aero)space industry tends to do rather well out of it being acceptable to miss deadlines though...
- bahmboo 1y agoThis is a political deadline with no grounding in reality.
- opwieurposiu 1y agoHey, it worked when JFK did it!
- jjk166 1y agoWho was president during the moonlanding?
- tick_tock_tick 1y agoJFK got assassinated.....
- jjk166 1y agoAnd was the guy who took over after his assassination, and then won the next election, president during the moon landings?
- hypeatei 1y agoPrecisely. Trump wants to put his name on things for the history books.
- WalterBright 1y agohttps://www.obama.org/presidential-center/ https://www.obama.org/presidential-center/
- oceanplexian 1y agoJFK proposed we go to the Moon in 1962. We did it in 1969, 7 years later.
- phkahler 1y agoNot only that, he wanted to go to the moon before the end of the decade. They made it within that time.
- jjk166 1y agoWhich is kind of the key point - Kennedy's deadline was a realistic one based on the technical difficulty of the challenge.
- dghlsakjg 1y agoArtemis is scheduled to take longer than Apollo. We are in year 8 of Artemis. In year 8 of Apollo there were multiple manned missions including one that went to the moon but did not land.
- WalterBright 1y agoIt was never realistic. It turned out be possible, though. Also, corners were cut in the testing. (Full stack testing.)
- jjk166 1y agoI don't know how you can claim a deadline that was achieved was not realistic. Full stack testing was not cutting corners. After ground testing it was deemed that incremental testing would not be beneficial. Doing tasks in parallel instead of in series can introduce project risks, but that's not the same thing as cutting corners, which is where something necessary is not done at all.
- WalterBright 1y agoIt's not realistic that you can become a supermodel. But it's not impossible. The idea that rocket X not exploding in a single launch makes it man-rated is cutting corners.
- kulahan 1y agoSo just like every other deadline I'm given, then.
- colechristensen 1y agoThe entire Apollo program was a political stunt to upstage the USSR.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y agoIt was a semi-covert program to be able to get to the USSR in 25 minutes with 150ktons of carryon luggage.
- dboreham 1y agoThat was Mercury. All the ICBM systems predate Apollo.
- jjk166 1y agoA political stunt for America to upstage the USSR, not to stroke the ego of a particular American.
- echelon 1y agoI feel like that attitude has kept us on earth all this time. We let people do stupid shit and kill themselves all the time. Driving 80+ MPH, driving motorcycles, recreational drugs, alcohol, climbing Everest, etc. I think it's fine. If I were in the position, I'd sign up to do this. The moon is meaningful.
- tastyface 1y ago[flagged]
- MarsIronPI 1y ago> The moon will be desecrated by Trump planting some gaudy gilded flag with his name on it. Let's be serious, please. When has Trump ever stuck his name or face on anything nationally meaningful?
- chrisco255 1y agoThis is preferable to "we'll go back again maybe one day 5 decades from now, if we get around to it"
- nobleach 1y agoMost deadlines are completely made up to create a false scarcity of time. While I agree this one is pretty meaningless and we'll forget about it in a few days... it's not unlike any other silly deadline.
- Teever 1y agoThe point you raise is implicit in the comment that you're replying to and your response seems to intentionally ignore the very valid point that a bad deadline in this context may kill people and have other very negative consequences for the program. What part of the comment you're replying to lead you to believe that the person you're replying to does not understand the value of deadlines?
- kagakuninja 1y agoWith Trump, assume there will be massive kickbacks and corruption, most likely nothing useful will happen.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dragontamer 1y agoThe Moon directive was set by Donald Trump in 2017. This is just the same deadline being pushed another year because of failures. Deadlines that get constantly pushed aren't deadlines at all. As I recall, SpaceX and Artemis project was supposed to be Moon by 2024. At least originally. But then SpaceX blew up all the rockets (successfully testing them or something) and now we've wasted damn near a decade.
- jaapbadlands 1y agoTesting rockets that fail is still progress. Deadlines that get pushed isn't an argument against deadlines.
- dragontamer 1y agoDeadlines that get pushed is an argument against SpaceX. How many deadlines do we miss before we realize there is no actual plan to get to the moon?
- b00ty4breakfast 1y agoAny project even a quarter as complex as a manned lunar mission going to run into problems and failures and unforeseen complications (just ask anyone who's ever done any home renovation). Things go over budget, deadlines are missed, stuff doesn't work out the way you'd envisioned. This isn't always somebody's fault or the result of poor planning (though they can be). Yeah, we've been there already, but it's been many decades and we haven't exactly kept all the tech and procedures up to date in the intervening years. And that first go-round itself missed it's intended deadline by about 7-8 years.
- mikkupikku 1y agoDeadlines, political pressure to ignore issues and get it done, is how you get astronauts dead. Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia. And of course Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 / Salyut 1; it's not just a problem for America. I fear it's going to happen again; Orion isn't safe and hasn't been successfully tested. The heat shield started to disintegrate the last time they tested it and instead of testing it again with their changes they're going to put people in it next time.
- 05 1y agoTo play devil's advocate, the only purpose astronauts serve is PR. Anything that can be done is space could be done cheaper and better with automation/rovers. So it seems that having those astronauts risk their lives for a short term political win is just table stakes, because the alternative for them is to stay on Earth and maybe pay $100K for just an hour in orbit with any of the commercial space tourism companies.
- WalterBright 1y agoAutomation still cannot pick a strawberry.
- genewitch 1y agono strawberries in space
- 05 1y agoIt can't cost effectively pick a strawberry when compared to underpaid workers. It can definitely pick a strawberry cheaper when you take cost of lifting oxygen up from a gravity well into account. And with Moon 'ping' time of 2.6 seconds RTT, direct teleoperation is always an option.
- WalterBright 1y agoCost effectiveness matters, even when cost is no object.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thegrim33 1y agoThe Artemis plan was originally to return to moon by 2024, and the first crewed flight is still planned for next year, so it seems entirely reasonable for a President that's in office from 2024 and 2028 to want it to actually happen within that time frame. Since, you know, that's been the established and agreed upon plan for nearly a decade now.
- lawlessone 1y agoAre they going to give nasa the money to actually do it though?
- caconym_ 1y ago2024 was never considered remotely realistic by anybody in the "industry"---it was a purely political deadline and the will/funding was not there to achieve it. Today (AFAIK) 2028 is considered quite aggressive, mostly due to the lack of progress on Starship, and the facts driving that conclusion are not any more amenable to change via political pressure than they were last time.
- chrisco255 1y agoThere is no reason to consider anytime frame beyond what NASA did it in in the 60s "unreasonable". They were still using slide rules for goodness sake. We've got now 50+ years of space flight experience under our belt. Bean counters make excuses. Put the right people in the right places and shit gets done.
- AshleyGrant 1y agoUnless we're willing to expend resources on the level we did in the 60s then it is absolutely unreasonable. Computers instead of slide rules doesn't matter at all.
- chrisco255 1y agoI'll repeat what I said above because this is an oft-repeated fallacy: We don't expect each new nuclear warhead to cost as much as the Manhattan Project did relative to the national budget. Likewise, after 60 years of technological development beyond what we had in the 60s, there is no reason to expect a modern day lunar mission to cost the same relatively.
- buellerbueller 1y agoI suspect the first people to sail the globe did so knowing the risks. I suspect if we reduced astronaut safety thresholds by a factor of 10, we will still have a surplus of high quality candidates for space missions.
- mikkupikku 1y agoI am sure the astronauts know and accept the risks, but does that really mean the public should be funding such reckless activities? They can go paragliding or base jumping on their own dime if they want an adrenaline rush. The public has spend billions of dollars on this program, if the end result is astronauts getting cooked during reentry then how could that possibly be an outcome worth the expense?
- gg82 1y agoIt is not even "if" they should be funding these activities.... it is whether the public would "support" funding these activities, if there was a trail of deaths.
- buellerbueller 1y agoThat's the debate we should be having, but aren't. It isn't by definition "reckless." It is a calculated risk. The thing with science and exploration is that you never know what is at the end of it. Maybe we should just give up science and exploration? >The public has spend billions of dollars on this program, if the end result is astronauts getting cooked during reentry then how could that possibly be an outcome worth the expense? The public has spent [tons of 15th century money] on earth exploration. If the end result is sailors drowning, then then how could global exploration be an outcome worth the expense?
- pantalaimon 1y agoSailboats were pretty well understood by then and in contrast to rockets there is much less potential for catastrophic failure.
- 1y ago
- SteveNuts 1y agoAll they need to do now is insert a private company into the go/no-go checklist before launch and it'll be totally safe. /s
- oytis 1y agoAmerica is becoming a silly place. Lumberjack appointed as a head of NASA for his loyalty.
- tinfoilhatter 1y ago[flagged]
- oytis 1y agoWerner von Braun was competent though, as was Parsons. Being a little silly is fine as long as you can do the job.
- vlovich123 1y ago[flagged]
- aduty 1y agoHe only cared about sending rockets up. Where they came down was other people's problem.
- spankibalt 1y ago> He only cared about sending rockets up. Which extended also how exactly those rockets were produced... and by whom. EDIT: Yeah, I get it, the Zwangsarbeiter from the camps building the rockets are not very conductive to the carefully whitewashed "hero technocrat" image certain "hackers" just love to invest in. :T
- mulmen 1y agoHe was also totally ok with slave labor. He was a voluntary Nazi party insider and SS member. He deliberately chose to participate in Hitler’s totalitarian regime to advance his own goals. This kind of behavior should be remembered and condemned. He was a brilliant designer, engineer, and project leader but he is an extremely problematic person for the methods he was comfortable using to achieve his goals.
- jm4 1y agoThe silver lining is that they are operating under the assumption that he will leave office at the conclusion of his term.
- sigmoid10 1y ago[flagged]
- cyberge99 1y agoWhich will backfire spectacularly when Obama is re-elected.
- zzrrt 1y agoI get the impulse and it would be amusing, but I have a feeling people are sick of "dynasty" Dem candidates for president (Hillary after her husband, Biden/Harris after each being VPs.) Feels like his legacy and appeal has kind of faded too. He was an exciting first-time candidate and good-enough incumbent, but third term?
- simondotau 1y agoHillary sure, but they explicitly said Obama, not Clinton. Nominating a VP as President isn’t dynastic, it’s been common practice for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vice_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_ran_for_president https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vice_presidents_of_the...
- heavyset_go 1y agoSomething about powerful people handing power down being common practice for centuries seems dynasty-like to me.
- simondotau 1y agoHanding your own power down to yourself — as is the case when a VP wins the primary and presidency, or Obama running for a third term — is not a “dynasty”.
- squigz 1y agoDidn't JFK say something about going to the moon by the end of the decade?
- nkrisc 1y agoYes, and three astronauts died.
- UltraSane 1y agoa pure oxygen atmosphere was always a stupid idea.
- squigz 1y agoSure, I just don't think people reacted the way GP did when JFK said it.
- verdverm 1y agoThe current admin is different, the times are different, the people are largely different, thus the interpretations and reactions are different
- Dylan16807 1y agoDeaths are always terrible. But unless we have a reason to only care about astronauts specifically, once we zoom out to the entire massive endeavor and how much everyone sacrifices for any big project, three particular deaths aren't a big factor and don't do much to say if we went too fast or too slow.
- userbinator 1y agoNo risk, no gain.
- ks2048 1y agoJFK: "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." RFK Jr: "Measles ain't that bad, try this potion my friend came up with."
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoAt least 10 people were killed in the apollo program http://www.airsafe.com/events/space/astrofat.htm http://www.airsafe.com/events/space/astrofat.htm
- zer00eyz 1y ago> "The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. Im not sure the current admin is prepared for the risk that entails, unlike the last time we did this: https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/nixon/images/exhibit/rn100-6-1-2.pdf https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events... https://www.discovermagazine.com/if-the-apollo-11-astronauts-died-heres-the-speech-nixon-would-have-read-40666 https://www.discovermagazine.com/if-the-apollo-11-astronauts...
- gcanyon 1y ago…or a back door way of acknowledging he’s planning on a third term. :-/
- imoverclocked 1y agoTo be fair, NASA schedules and goals have historically been politically aligned. It is also a known source of catastrophic failure.
- tick_tock_tick 1y ago> A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. I mean that's how we did it last time.
- dghlsakjg 1y agoThere was an arbitrary deadline the first time we did it, and it arguably helped it happen. Artemis is projected to take longer than Apollo, unless, well, they land on the moon before Trump leaves office.
- newsclues 1y agoAmbition is scary for weak people.
- ProAm 1y agoHe was on Road Rules.... Let us not forget.
- stocksinsmocks 1y agoJFK did the same thing. Most people believe that succeeded. Obtuse, out-of-touch leadership can lead to some very interesting results when it doesn’t fail.
- dboreham 1y agoMy theory is they are shooting for an unmanned mission that allows immersive 3D 8K VR telepresence. Then they'll auction time slots to anyone who wants to golf on the moon.
- vessenes 1y agoYou may be dismayed to learn how America got to the moon the first time around as well, then.
- nashashmi 1y agoI believe Bush set the goal to go to mars. This plan was set in motion then.
- rob74 1y agoYeah, I'm sure astronauts will be thrilled to know that the thing that should bring them to the moon (and back!) was not only built by the lowest bidder (as that famous quote of uncertain origin states), but also by the one who managed to build it fastest so an arbitrary deadline could be kept. Ok, TBF Kennedy also set an arbitrary deadline when he said that Americans should land on the moon before the end of the decade (meaning the 1960s)...
- vannevar 1y agoIn this administration, government agencies are not expected to have any independence and cannot express doubts about administration goals without risking being fired. In addition, the administration has a taste for extortion and this may simply be a way to raise money from Musk and Bezos for the political and personal enrichment of the President.