…weighs in on the monster rocket:
“I would emphasize that I don’t know the background of what has happened. With that caveat, I would observe that even as powerful as the United States Congress is, it can’t legislate engineering. Engineering deals with Mother Nature. And Mother Nature is a very fair, but unforgiving judge. You just cannot legislate engineering.”
Congress doesn’t care. It can legislate jobs, and the engineering is a distant second. I wish that he had been willing to tell it more like it is in the report, but I guess he could not do that, and still get a consensus.
Rand, while I agree with the content, …a nit. There should be a “not” in the last sentence, between “could” and “do”.
the RS-25E, a cheaper engine due to its expendable nature.
How does that work exactly?
“This is the biggest thing for space exploration in decades,” said Senator Bill Nelson…”
…in much the same way as the atomic bomb was the biggest thing for Japan in…well, ever I suppose.
Of course the SLS follows the recommendations of the committee Augustine chaired. Naturally he is not going to openly oppose it.
How does that work exactly?
Expendable engines are cheaper to produce than reusable ones.
Of course the SLS follows the recommendations of the committee Augustine chaired.
Only on Planet Whittington.
That’s Senator Astronaut Bill “Major Tony” Nelson.
When I saw the phrase “monster rocket,” Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle popped into my head.
So politicians have dictated cost, schedule, and performance, all three legs of the program development stool, even though one of those is always a dependent variable. This will not end well.
Even if it goes according to plan, NASA says it’ll be 2021 before a human rides on it, assuming no schedule slips (and what are the odds of that?). So, if all goes according to plan, it will first fly a man 17 years after Bush said we had to move away from the Shuttle and develop a replacement (Jan 2004). That’s about as long as it took to go from the end of the Mercury program, through Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, to the first flight of the Space Shuttle. I could see that, if the new ship was a fully reusable SSTO with VASIMIR deep-space engines and a quantum flux power system, but it’s just a rocket re-using essentially the same parts that we’ve been flying for 30 years, or in the case of the J-2, for about 50 years.
I am underwhelmed.
Kinda makes you wish they stuck with Constellation don’t it 🙂
And going with COTS-D on it’s original schedule.
Stuck with Constellation? I wish they stuck with SaturnV…proven design on the books, use that while developing truly new technology like SSTO
Kinda makes you wish they stuck with Constellation don’t it 🙂
Not in the least. This is just another dead-on-arrival program, but at least it doesn’t make another EELV.
And going with COTS-D on it’s original schedule.
COTS still draws air. So there’s still hope for some sort of productive manned space flight effort from NASA.
Politicians are eventually going to discover that you an’t legislate jobs either, because the money eventually runs out.
Kinda makes you wish they stuck with Constellation don’t it
Tomorrow, of course, the Troll will deny he ever posted this.
Then, he will accuse me of “lying,” demand that I “post a link” to words are right in front of him, yadda, yadda, yadda —
And going with COTS-D on it’s original schedule.
The original schedule for COTS-D, of course, was “never.” Apparently, the only schedule for human spaceflight that will please Tom.