NASA'S Boondoggle

This has a good chance of going PWEC but I'll give it a shot here anyway, it deserves a wide audience. NASA today isn't the same NASA that met JFK'S challenge to land men on the moon in the 1960's.

After nearly $50 billion, NASA’s deep-space plans remain grounded

The fundamental issue here is that NASA is run by a bureaucracy under the auspices of an even larger bureaucracy. This often leads to the phenomena known as "misallocated funds".


To be fair though, the 1950's and 1960's were a unique and ideal time for an endeavor like space exploration. It was virgin territory plus there was the Cold War with the Soviets which greatly added incentive to competition.

That article sums it up quite nicely


I'm glad to see the current administration is willing to look beyond their own term period and has reignited the plan to get to the moon in 2028, but will all the red tape around NASA and the unwillingness of the public to risk human lives for space exploration, I doubt they'll be succesful to reach the 2028 deadline

50 billion and still nothing tangible to show for it. Imagine if we had given Space X that money...

50 billion should have gotten us halfway to an alcubierre drive--the new planned Large Hadron Collider ring, at 100 kilometers long, has been budgeted at 22 billion. 22 billion to discover further subatomic particle properties, and potentially unlocking the mechanism for how the Higgs boson attaches to spacetime. 22 billion to turn the keys to understanding how we, ourselves and deform spacetime in new ways which could lead to a true, working alcubierre drive. 22 billion would leave us 28 billion to take what we discover and turn it into something useful.

Not a #%&*$# rocket.

50 billion wasted on a capsule and a rocket is a farce.


How much influence should a single president have on NASA's programs? Bush proposed one thing, Obama cancelled and then another, Trump a third... NASA depends on science to achieve the impossible, and much research depends on long-term continuity. Should we revise how NASA is directed, too?

+1 Blastman.

Well said!

If SpaceX had that money, we would have bases on the moon and Mars.

SpaceX is in it for the money. The USA didn't go to the moon for the money.

I agree with Mr_Blastman, the lack of continuity results in huge waste. The Canadian military is experiencing exactly this due to frequent leadership rotation without continuity planning (at least, this is what it looks like on the surface) for certain things. Changes that take longer to implement than the current leader's term might not survive a change of leadership.

I think the money is a means to an end for Elon Musk getting SpaceX to Mars. Obviously, it won't break his heart to make a profit along the way, but I get the sense he really is driven by a strong desire to make humanity a multi-planet species.

If the satellite based internet service works out for SpaceX, they will likely be able to afford to do what they want.

As for NASA... I think they should concentrate more upon commercialization of the manned exploration efforts. In other words, dump the Orion / SLS and let SpaceX, Boeing, et al compete to accomplish the goals.

NASA / JPL have done well on robotic / unmanned exploration, which should continue. Their accumulated expertise on training astronauts is worth preserving and sharing of that knowledge with the private sector is a good thing.

Keep in mind on the political aspects, it's not just the presidential administrations... there is a lot of money getting spread around various congressional districts / states that factors into things, too.

+1

If Musk were all about the money he never would have started SpaceX, or Tesla for that matter.

Wasn't part of NASA's problem the fact that today's human spaceflight missions and hardware were not being designed (or at least put into action) long before the shuttle retired?

It's been a few years, but for some reason that point comes to memory, regarding a general expression of uselessness and waste around NASA around that time.

I'm not very close to this area, but I would imagine that anything we'd hope for NASA to be doing in the 10 years after the Shuttle retirement, probably would have been in-works going back to what... the mid 1990s?

1 - The SLS was supposedly to be built utilizing shuttle componentry, IE the external tank with shuttle engines underneath and other existing hardware. That would make it cheap, and quick.

2 - Back in the 1960's we went from practically nothing to the surface of the moon in ten years. That entailed developing Mercury, Gemini, the Apollo command module and lunar module along with all the boosters. Plus worldwide tracking systems, launch pads at the cape etc. as well as just figuring out how to do this "space stuff" for the first time with various probes to orbit/land on the moon etc. SLS / Orion is just one rocket and one capsule. Yes NASA's budget was bigger back then but adjusted for inflation we did all of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo plus everything else it took to land 12 Americans on the moon for $200 billion, SLS/Orion has cost 25% of that amount and hasn't put anyone in space yet.

the function of NASA is to collect funding for NASA. same as every other government function.

NASA has labored under the whims of the political purse string holders. They are not provided an unlimited budget (nor should they be), and must prioritize and allocate accordingly. Things get further complicated when a fatal mishap occurs... as it becomes not only an engineering problem, but also a political problem.

Whatever NASA may have been working on in parallel to the shuttle / ISS programs most likely was adversely affected by the Columbia mishap, for instance.

That concept is so esoteric and involves so many obstacles that even individually are so likely to be insurmountable that we may as well focus instead on the march toward a technological singularity (which itself is a very debatable possibility) and let it have a crack at the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Difficulties

Let's see - WITHOUT GOING PWEC take a look at cost estimates for a BORDER WALL!

Also, the ISS cost around $100 billion - and that's a lot "simpler" than sending people to Mars, landing, staying, then returning - oh, and NASA had, well, international help on that one...

I think most people vastly underestimate the difference in difficulty between the lunar missions and a manned Mars mission. Moon and back = days. Mars and back = nearly two years!!! Moon and back = half a million miles, and never more than a quarter million away from Earth. Mars and back = what, north of 100 million miles? Moon landing = a gentle descent to the surface. Mars landing = atmospheric entry, and at speeds far higher than for Earth due to thinner atmosphere, so then you need way more stopping power for the same reason. Lunar departure = straight up, very low gravity, no atmosphere to fight. Mars departure = much more gravity, and an atmosphere to fight. Lunar mission = days worth of radiation exposure. Mars mission = nearly two years.

And I'd strongly bet I'm just barely scratching the surface compared to what the NASA people know.

But hey, "Joe Public Armchair Experts" know better, right?

But with all that said I think this is the wrong century to be spending money on manned Mars missions in the first place. Put the money into unmanned missions - NASA has been having GREAT success with that on so many fronts for far less money...

And what would be gained by sending people back to the moon that rovers couldn't do? We did this NINE times! We brought back 800+ pounds of lunar material!

And since when do we trust politicians more than scientists - oh wait, nevermind, too many "other cans of worms" might get opened there...

Apart from a testing bed for Mars technology, low-gravity hub for space mining, observation of solar winds, research of exosphere symbiosis, research of organic behavior, finding out more about the history of the moon, observation of objects inside the solar system, and god knows what else I can't think of off the top of my head?

Putting your money in rovers is like putting your money is a straw to look through, rather than a pair of spectacles. Furthermore, Earth won't last forever. To continue mankind we must leave the confines of our solar system, which means we need to take a step forward.

And where did you get the idea that the ISS was a simpler project than a Mars mission?

Going from the bottom up - it's a lot easier to get people back to Earth from the ISS than from Mars. I'd say that's number one. I won't go into the many, many other things.

Next up - I maintain that technology should be allowed to progress much further before we worry about being responsible for the fate of humanity after the Earth is gone.

And going to to the top of your post - testing bed for Mars technology? Survival on the lunar vs Martian surfaces are complete apples and oranges. If you want to go down that road let's test that in ANTARCTICA, where water and air are limitless! Oh sure we have "colonies" there, but self sustaining? Nope.

Low gravity space mining? I'll give you that one - but what's to mine on the moon, economically, right now? Nothing.

Observation of solar winds? We're already doing that, no "moon base" needed, and no advantage doing it from the moon.

All the rest you cite, this has already been done, and is being done, and no "moon base" needed.

I'm going to repeat something here - if anyone thinks the moon is the place to start testing survivability technologies/strategies in terms of MARS they're on the wrong track.

Do it in ANTARCTICA, and self sustaining or self supplied for return operations and then we can talk.

Send a crew to ANTARCTICA for nearly two years, on a ship that cannot be restocked, cannot be supported by other ships, planes, etc, and has to get back to just another CONTINENT on it's own...

Can't do that? Then we're not ready for doing it with either the moon or Mars.

Which has nothing to do with SLS / Orion. They're not designed to go to Mars.

NASA has no plans to send humans to Mars. They have aspirations, desires, goals even. But they have zero actual, concrete, defined plans to send humans to Mars.




The surface of the Moon is equivalent to the entire country of Russia. And Canada. And China. Combined. Six human landings on an area this size is a good start but nothing more. There are many unique, distinct areas of lunar geology humans have never visited.

Oh and for the $50B thus far spent SLS / Orion can't visit any of those areas on the moon either, since no lander has been funded as of yet.

Oops, said 9 manned lunar landings, forgot my facts there...

It was 6...

But SLS and Orion are indeed partly designed for a potential manned Mars mission. And for other things.

Go to Mars to stay there, not just visit. Send supplies, etc. ahead of time.

Some ships stay to be support mechanisms, or even a life boat. Other ships return to Earth to be reloaded with people/supplies and sent to Mars again.

People staying on Mars, whether permanently or for some tour of duty, work their butts off to establish habitat(s) and do science.

It's not easy, but it is do-able. There are plenty of people who want to go, and enough of them are probably skilled/suited enough to make it work. Robotics will be a key to making it more feasible.

A Mars colonization will eventually happen but not in my lifetime.

I think one has to adjust expectations on what NASA does and can do now versus the heyday of the Mercury-Apollo era.

The Moon program was the right program at the right time, jump starting the technological timeline from tube to transistor technology. The economic rewards from the spin-off technology underwritten by NASA simply can't be understated.

Hell, as a kid in the early 1970's we had a black and white TV that had tubes in the back of it. Yes, it was a bit of a relic, but while rare at that time not exactly shocking to discover. There were still TV repairmen that would make house calls for them.

The Moon program was about making a technological leap, with the fundamental tools for that leap just within grasping range. We had radar; making microwaves a medium for communication rather than location finder was a concept that was understood, but unfunded (for an example). The Moon program did this, and now we have cell phones.

Huge jumps like this are very, very rare in human history. This is a Bessemer refining the way to mass produce steel of high and consistent quality event, one we take for granted.

Still, it's not like NASA has been resting on their laurels. We think nothing of having our portable devices tracking their position down to a few yards thanks to GPS, but 25 years ago this was still a dream. I remember very well standing in the desert in 1990 while the new fangled box sought a third satellite to obtain a location - and this was only available to the military. We didn't even refer to it as GPS...we talked in terms of the name of the receiver.

Both the Europeans and the Russians are struggling today to replicate the US GPS system.

Yes, tons of money are going to be spent on ground systems for the next generation of rockets. One either does this or later laughs at NASA for having 1970's or '80's tech in the control centers. Hell, the Space Shuttle's computers were criminally out of date at the end of the program's life and was subject to much conversation.

If a return to the Moon were the only goal, we could do that in pretty short order. It's not like we've forgotten how to make the Saturn V rocket, after all. Heck, we do maintenance on a big bunches of a variation of the same thing in our ICBM program.

NASA's mandate is a bit broader, and because of it a bit muddier. SpaceX is a single purpose program; the same can't be said of NASA.

Sounds a lot like SpaceX plans. I fully expect SpaceX to put people on Mars before NASA or anyone else. In my lifetime.

Eoved this to this thread,,We have come a long way

Seems light light years ago,John Glenn orbited the Earth,I live about 100yards from his old house I was 12 years old at the time and can still remember the excitement..It's something we need to get back


https://www.onthisday.com/photos/john-glenn-orbits-the-earth

BEST POST IN THIS THREAD.

The human race is actually being pretty stupid about this.

I can get the concept of "Not Contaminating Mars" in order to maybe discover if life existed there before us, or now, I can...

But if we're really going to look millions of years into the future when Earth WILL burn and consider Mars as a place to (temporarily in relative terms) continue our survival as a species we should simply "bombard" it with bacteria, algae, fungi, whatever, and hope it takes hold, and starts up an ecosystem that we can later (MAYBE) survive off of...

The potential answering of the question of "origins of life" takes a far back seat relative to ensuring future survival - what good is such knowledge if we are doomed to extinction anyway?

+1 Excellent post

Yes, way too much. I am rushing to go to work right now, but if you do a bit of Google-foo you'll see what NASA spent on updating one of the Apollo era launch pads. if memory serves is was about $500 million. That's nuts.





We've forgotten how to do anything quickly, efficiently. Is returning to the Moon the goal? I really don't know, and I been following this for decades. The "goal" keeps changing. Mars. Asteroid. Moon. Mars again. "Gateway".

Pssstt.... the real goal is to keep the money flowing into the same congressional districts that shuttle did.





NASA overall does a LOT of things. Aerodynamics, unmanned probes, ISS etc. But when it comes to manned space exploration beyond earths orbit SpaceX has a better defined, and loftier, goals than NASA. NASA can't decide (in part because of chaning White House goals, but not just) where it's going or what 's doing with it's manned program.

Think link below is to a blog post concerning the future of SLS, maybe things are starting to turn around. The comments on the post are "enlightening".


http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=72795#comments

NASA to consider use of private rockets for first Orion lunar mission

NASA'S SUPER-SIZED SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM MIGHT BE DOOMED

NASA auditioned the Congress Hearings, this secret document reveals:

NASA's $17-billion moon rocket ...eholders are asking if there are

"But the orange-and-white rocket has fallen three years behind schedule — and is way over budget. Almost $17 billion has been spent so far on the space vehicle, which was projected to cost $10.6 billion when its construction was approved in 2011. Experts say each SLS flight will cost at least $1 billion, or about 11 times more than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, which made its debut last year."

NASA has ceased being a goal orientated and valuable asset in our US space goals. Because they are government funded, they've lost focus and have been surpassed by private companies in results. Time to dial them back to an advisory group, with these successful private companies doing the grunt work. Fixed-priced contracts instead of open ended budgets.

+1 Storm

The Cold War against the Soviets provided the perfect motivation for NASA for a few decades but once that was over, the cracks and flaws in the agency became quickly apparent.

Agreed, NASA needs to return to its NACA roots.

After a “corrective action,” Boeing back at work on SLS rocket core stage



Read the comments, they are brutal. And rightly so.

They better get out the shoehorn and contract to Santa's elves, sounds like a tough job!

But are those elves certified? They might need to file an inspection report in triplicate after requesting a t-99 review and credentialed background check, uniform safety code assessment and hammer and nail augmentation approval.

NASA in its current state has very little to do with actual space exploration.

Not to defend NASA, but their unmanned stuff generally does that, and I think has been doing it pretty well. The Mars rovers, asteroid visits, etc.

Turn the insanity up to eleven!

NASA will award Boeing a cost-plus contract for up to 10 SLS rockets

I'm not surprised by this at all. I'm sure someone in Congress is getting lubed by some Boeing exec.

If not lubed directly there is one Senator in particular who is determined that the jobs this keeps in his state will remain there, otherwise he might lose the votes those jobs represent.

See comments from above article:

Orion capsule has no room for Moon rocks

Communication between government and private industry is fricking worse than communication in a very bad marriage.

Even as cynical as I am about SLS and Orion I never would have imagined the cost was going to be this high....

The White House puts a price on the SLS rocket—and it’s a lot



But wait! There's more!!

NASA does not deny the “over $2 billion” cost of a single SLS launch

As much as I'm in favor of the James Webb telescope, this is insanity.

The Mars Decision by Robert Zubrin

A fairly long article but worth the read, an excerpt:

The Cold War ending and thus no more USSR to compete against in the space race really took out most of the wind out of NASA's sails. The political will to spend the money and to push NASA to do new things disappeared.

Zubrin addresses that assumption, read the article

Zubrin has been pushing the Mars Direct thing for a long time, and while I think he makes some good points, I also think he is a bit blinded by what he wants to do.

I think going back to the Moon makes a lot of sense, because we could, in theory, go back with a lot more technology and accomplish a lot more than the first visits, which really were more publicity stunts than science. The missions were designed to get there as quickly as possible (development time, not travel time), so things were cut to the bone as far as what the craft could do (separate lander and ascent modules, for example). Getting there was the important thing, doing stuff there was secondary.

Going to Mars is a lot more involved than going to the Moon, and without building up some kind of capability, and testing it out before we go, we're open for a lot of potential issues. Going to the Moon and spending time there seems like the best way to work out a lot of those details. Two manned missions went to the moon before actually landing to test things out, but we wouldn't have that opportunity with Mars, so doing as much as possible with the Moon seems like our best bet for practice. Apollo 17's mission lasted 12 days, with three of those days being on the Moon. Just getting to Mars would take months, then of course the travel time back, and then however long someone would need to stay there. That's a lot more travel time, a lot more exposure to the hostile environment of space, a lot longer time in microgravity, and just a lot more time for something to go wrong (imagine an Apollo 13-like issue on the way to Mars).

Again, given all that, I think going to the Moon and spending time there seems like good practice for a longer mission to Mars, and has it's own benefits as well.

I don't see how it's any surprise that something being designed to TAKE PEOPLE TO MARS and back ends up being one of the most expensive things ever...

I believe there is already a long list of volunteers for whenever the first manned expedition to Mars is done by SpaceX.


I'm not nearly that brave!

My guess is that most of those volunteers, when the time actually comes to make a commitment, won't be that brave either .

Well there is expensive, more expensive, too expensive, extravagantly expensive and then you start getting into SLS territory.

Try 60+ billion for a few hundred miles of "high speed" rail - when the ISS cost 100 billion. (49 year lifetime California resident here so I think I can talk that smack...).

SLS not looking so bad now is it?

Name one unmanned mission in the past 40 years that would have made more sense manned...

During those 40 years we've learned a lot more about space than the Apollo missions taught us - even from the ground...

Whataboutism doesn't make SLS any better. But if it did what California does matters not to me, NASA does.

That makes no sense. No one wants to send people to Pluto, Jupiter or Saturn.



Learned more about "space"?

Well we learned a good bit about various bodies in space, but the six manned landing missions to the moon collected more data specific to the moon than could have been collected in decades by dozens of unmanned missions to the moon. And it done it cheaper than the same amount of data could have been collected unmanned.

Why Space Exploration Is a Job for Humans

I saw that same article and chart, but I am not sure we can really tell what that means for future space exploration. First, those are publications, and without knowing what they're writing about, some of them could be rehashing old data, revising things, etc., which isn't necessarily dependent on the original data, but more on how the data was originally analyzed. Additionally, the manned missions were a lot more complex, and of course included humans, so some of those publications could be about things that just simply don't apply to unmanned missions, like what is involved in human space flight, or the processes that resulted in the spacecraft design, and so on. Maybe they're not, maybe they're all about the Moon itself, but I can't tell.

Also, something that is mentioned in the article but I think dismissed too easily, it what's planned for the future, and how technology will improve and allow for unmanned missions to do a lot more. Also, that chart only shows what was published about two rovers, but many of the Mars missions work together, so it might make more sense to combine more of those missions together to get a better feel of the publishing rate. Additionally, we wouldn't know what we know about Mars without the unmanned missions, which will help in planning the manned missions, so those unmanned missions could potentially be added to the costs of any future manned missions.

We should also not measure space exploration solely on the basis of scientific discoveries made. It is important for humans to move out into space and to live on other worlds on the merits of expansion of the human presence in the solar system alone.

And when we do have a permanent colony on Mars the rate of scientific discovery about that planet will explode to such an extent that many proponents of unmanned exploration will regret that they had not instead pushed for man to go there sooner as it will quickly overshadow everything learned by probes and rovers.

I agree that there is value in sending humans into space, for a variety of reasons. I'm a sci-fi nerd, so I love this stuff, and I think we might just differ on the process. I was more responding to the Mars Direct approach and Zubrin's take on it.

I think we need to use the Moon to practice and build proficiency in extended human operations in space and on other celestial bodies. If something goes wrong on a Mars flight, there's a much greater chance that it could result in loss of life because of the distances and time involved. Apollo is the only manned space flight we've done beyond Earth orbit, and that was a long time ago, and as mentioned was more about getting there than doing anything. I think we need to build up a capability before taking that larger step to Mars. If something catastrophic happened on the first Mars mission and the crew were lost, you'd have to wait a very long time before people would support giving it another try. Best to reduce the chances of that happening and provide the best odds of success.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to the long-term goal but objectively spoken there is no urgency in this. The sun will last another 4 BN years which is an unfathomly long (if finite) time, which leaves resilience against large scale asteroid impact as the next big threat as the prime justification. Which could still take several million years to happen, and even then it might be more practical to detect them far out and to alter their courses subtly to prevent collision.

The reality is that terraforming is a very hard and very expensive method, with a potentially huge return on an equally huge investment, but over a time exceeding a human life span considerably. We haven't yet developed a finance market for centuries-long investments; this is a very serious impediment because states/politicians simply do not have the patience to pour huge sums into a money sinkhole from which neither the current voters will profit nor their children, or grandchildren - nor do pension funds who only want to stay invested for the duration of the average person't work life.
Admittedly, terraforming is also the only known (theoretical) method to expand the available amount of real estate. In order to make it possible we need to develop a zero-/low G space based industry as the prime motivation to invest into long-term deep space habitats. And that requires that we first discover things that can only be produced in such an environment in an economically feasible manner that it justifies the expense of building all the needed deep space infrastructure.

Someone will have to pay for all this, so you have to convince those people. Effectively you'd be selling uninhabitable rock to people who can't reach it, with the unenforceable promise that their great-great-great-great grandchildren might inherit a piece of land that is suitable for colonization by lichen. I'm a space enthusiast, but good luck with that.

Well I'm not necessarily worried about creating an offworld backup in case of disaster on earth, just that is has always been in humans fundamental nature to expand into new territory and bring human life to areas where there was none before. Now that we've occupied most of the dry surface of earth and we are in need of new territory to exploit for living purposes as well as raw materials we need to start looking to space. And it IS a good thing to have a backup in case of some earth disaster, which could come in many more forms than what you've listed. Disease, war, super volcanoes etc. could wreak havoc on earth's population.

Nor is terraforming necessary, at least not in the short term (and short term in this case would be the next 100 years or so). Underground tunnels or pressurized habitats made for local raw materials on mars would suffice for a long, long time.

As for financing, I think Musk is on the right track. I think most of us would be surprised at just how many people would be willing to sell everything they have on earth to invest the proceeds ($100k, $200k etc) and move to Mars.

I disagree with you on several points. For one, I believe that the population growth will stop sooner than most people believe, and the human population on Earth will contract afterwards faster than most believe. This is not necessarily a bad thing if it resuces pressure on our ecosphere while keeping a high standard of living for the individual, but I think that the global economy will hit a severe global recession of unprecedented magnitude and duration in the second half of this century (see "Empty Planet" for further reference).
That we're running out of raw materials is another myth. Hydrocarbons may be depleting but I think that we'll have surplus energy in the future to create synthetic fuels from electrolyte hydrogen and atmospheric or sequestered CO2 storage for our air transportation needs where the high energy density of kerosene appears irreplacable.
The historical analogy with the settlement of The West falls flat because people were moving into inhabitable and arable land inside the best ecosphere that we have (and will have for centuries to come).

Elon Musk's proposal is, frankly, to export pensioners to let them die on Mars. They might create bigger habitats there for more pensioners to die there until some young cave dwellers might be willing to go there and spend the rest of their lives in artificial Mars caves. But I just don't see this to become "a thing" and in any case supporting people in artificial caves over a distance 35...100 million miles is unsustainable. Sooner or later the pool of Mars enthusiasts will be exploited, at which point the whole settlement is doomed to die. It might take a hundred years, but even if the problem of self-sustaining artificial ecosystems is being solved they will still be be "complex simple" ecosystems with next to no reserves to compensate for more than small disturbances.

The current data doesn't back this assertion up in any way. While the population growth rate for Western and other first world countries has indeed leveled off or even decreased, the population growth rate for almost all developing and third world countries is still very high by comparison. Unless the are some unforeseen major cultural shifts that occur, the high population growth in the developing world will not be changing for a long time...if ever.

And yet, the growth rate is declining steadily. What's more, I know of no exception from the rule that the reproduction date is a function of the per capita income. Wherever the per capita income grows beyond the 12,000 USD threshold (per year), the birth rate falls under the sustaining rate of 2.1 children, and wherever the birth rate has dropped under 1.5 it has never recovered to anywhere close to 2.1. The USA are still growing exclusively thanks to immigration. If left to itself, like western Europe or Japan (and soon, China), the existing population is unable or unwilling to have as many children as would be required for a stable population number.
With shrinking population numbers will decline the relative economic importance the currently largest economies. The economic growth will be more and more generated ion the emerging markets, which will accelerate the prosperity (and therefore shrinking birth rates). This effect will percolate to even the poorest countries by the end of this century, at which point no country is left that produces a continuous surplus of young people. The world population will shrink, and it will shrink fast.

Like I wrote, not necessarily a bad thing for the global ecosphere, but a development for which neither we nor our children (and probably not the grandkids either) are preapred.

NASA spent a decade and nearly $1 billion for a single launch tower

NASA will pay a staggering $146 million for each SLS rocket engine

More than an entire Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.

And then they're expendable? That's crazy. I thought part of the cost of the original shuttle engines was that they needed to be reusable. How does making them expendable make them MORE expensive? (that's a rhetorical question)

SpaceX waits in the wings as NASA risks maiming Jupiter probe to pinch pennies

NASA’s inspector general report roasts Lockheed Martin for Orion fees

NASA just announced in a blog post that SLS will cost 30% more

Component failure in NASA’s deep-space crew capsule could take months to fix


"The component is difficult to reach: it’s located inside an adapter that connects Orion to its service module — a cylindrical trunk that provides support, propulsion, and power for the capsule during its trip through space. To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation."

I like this one:

NASA spends $.72 of every SLS dollar on overhead costs

Oh well, good enough for government work...right?

NASA currently gets just under 1% of the total Federal budget. Can you imagine how the incompetence would be magnified if we ever allowed the Feds to run a healthcare system for 330+ million people?

OK, let's not get into that juicy topic in here...

Fifteen years and $24 billion later, very little to show for it.

Orion spacecraft is now 15 years old and has flown into space just once

Like I keep saying...keep em away from SpaceX.

edit: Oh, but you can bet they have wiped out a few thousand acres of trees with studies, reports and commendations...Oh yeah, and printing all those bonus checks for how well they are doing!

The SLS / Orion story would not be believable if written as fiction.

NASA's summation of their 2020 activities:
NASA Discoveries, R&D, Moon to Mars Exploration Plans Persevere in 2020

After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

"It's not everything we hoped it would be."




Note the engines used in this test are not a new design, they're the RS-25 used on the Space Shuttle since 1981. NASA can't get an engine they used for 30 years to operate for a full duration test.

Ayup... here is another applicable link: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/01/16/sls-green-run-hotfire-mission-status-center/

SpaceX and some other entities are looking better all the time.

Well to be fair it was a first test (of the 4 engines at once), and configured for a completely different rocket. I'm sure a lot of "the book" on running 3 of them configured for the Space Shuttle had to be re-written from near scratch.

Boeing and the magical world of contractors and outsourcing. How's that employee loyalty working out?

What a cluster f**k. Government bureaucracy + contracting hell = rocket not fly.

gg Space X. Wp.

They've had roughly 10 years and $20 billion to figure it out.

In before NASA says..."Because Covid"

Clearly they only need another 10 years and another $30 billion.

So the test didn't even reach 15% of the desired full duration time but you want to just go ahead with a full up launch anyway? Wow.

Hydraulic system issue triggered early engine shutdown during SLS test-firing

LOL

That guy should not be in charge, he's a liability to the program.

I fail to see why fixing the problem and doing another test firing would be less prudent than dragging it down to the pad and pressing the red button.

He's the best NASA has had recently, but he will be gone soon.

Yeah, he's gone when the next director is confirmed.

Replacing him doesn't fix the Boeing problem, though, who has huge internal structural issues.

So far about twice as much time and money as an aircraft carrier....

For something that is intended to eventually TAKE HUMANS TO MARS AND BACK.....

10 billion for an aircraft carrier? What data are you basing this on?

Who knows if it's accurate, but multiple articles have stated the cost for the Ford at over $13B, but that could be due to it being the first of its type.

Like most complex weapons systems, costs can be looked at different ways. For the basic carrier, the next one is supposed to be under $4B, but by the time it's fully outfitted it will be over $10B.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...eeps-up-after-first-one-hit-13-3-billion

There are exactly ZERO plans to use SLS to take anyone to Mars.

I guess it might depend on what you mean by plans, as in, they have a working plan or are they just intending it to be used for that, but NASA clearly feels it is the rocket they would use for going to Mars:

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marsha...-is-the-rocket-for-the-ride-to-mars.html

NASA’s Space Launch System is the Rocket for the Ride to Mars

The SLS will be NASA’s first exploration-class vehicle since the Saturn V took American astronauts to the moon more than 40 years ago. It will expand our reach in the solar system, launching crews aboard the new Orion spacecraft to explore multiple, deep-space destinations. A fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers are already on and around Mars, but to fly to and land humans safely on Mars requires a next-generation spacecraft – Orion. SLS will ensure it gets there.

If the program survives how ever many Whitehouse administrations and Congressional sessions necessary to get an operational SLS / Orion to Mars... I suspect SpaceX will have people waiting on Mars ready to greet the Orion's arrival.

Bingo.

Any use of SLS to go to Mars, by NASA PAO or anyone else, is purely speculative and conjectural. There are no plans for such usage.

In fact, there are no plans for any SLS beyond: one unmanned test, one lunar flyby test with crew and one crewed lunar landing. SLS was intended to launch a large probe to Jupiter in 2025 but that is much in doubt now.

I'm curious to hear your expert punditry on what NASA's real "agenda" is then...

NASA's "agenda" for SLS is as already stated: 3 planned flights. The fourth SLS launch was recently, after being in doubt for some time, rescheduled for a different launcher: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...-launch-europa-clipper-commercial-rocket

And one doesn't have to be an expert, one only needs the ability to read.

NASA to Taxpayers: The Boeing/Lockheed Space Launch System Is "Unaffordable"