The pull quotes that Berger had in his piece on Ars were interesting, to say the least.
And aggravating, too, since “top officials” acknowledge the program is a disaster and unsustainable, yet nobody will put the thing out of its misery.
They’ve tried multiple times, but Congress keeps reviving it. It’s hard to kill something when the people supposedly in charge of the budget want to spend the money.
“The SLS is the world’s most powerful rocket and will enable NASA to return humans to the moon.”
The first sentence doesn’t inspire confidence that truth will be found in the rest of the study. Maybe that was a goal at sometime, but I’m concerned about the definition of “is”, “most powerful”, and “enable”.
What GAO Recommends
GAO has made three past recommendations in this area—two of
which GAO considers priority recommendations. GAO maintains that implementing these recommendations would provide necessary insight to improve program affordability.
That’s the nonjudgmental way of saying NASA has ignored us three times in the past, and until they implement anything we recommend, then it is impossible for us to do our job. When you are NASA, they let you spend money without regard to affordability or cost transparency.
The very first sentence tells all:
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
Shut it down. Now.
Doc, you read right to left?
But yeah, either way, the GAO nails it one sentence but, like the role model they demand to be; they still write 18 more pages of filler with a request to recycle at the end.
Oh… scrolling through I glimpsed:
“Achieve Learning Curve Efficiencies. The program plans to reduce costs by achieving manufacturing efficiencies.”
The program plans to build one no earlier than every two years. That is not how you achieve either a learning curve or foster incentive to gain efficiencies in manufacturing from it. See SpaceX launch rate for how it is done, and if the thought of “new space” or “commercial space” is triggering; See Henry Ford and the Model T production rates. Put down the buggy whip and Apollo program manual.
I do, but only in עִברִית. I haven’t read the rest of the report yet. Still trying to get wrapped around this one sentence.
Yeah, I didn’t get much past that first sentence either. Was kinda busy with more informative things yesterday.
For the NASA bureaucrats, one launch every two years is a feature, not a bug. If, as they want, they set up a program for 10 launches, that’s another 20 years of employment. It’s like they took a lesson from the people who do road construction in Alabama – stretch out every job as long as possible and ride it to retirement. Look at the Shuttle and ISS programs as examples.
Maybe NASA should put out an RFI to see if anyone in the industry can identify a way to accomplish the same objectives as the Artemis missions but at a lower price.
And upset their sinecure?
Go ahead, pull the other one
““The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
Because it’s pointless. It was never ever about costs.
All this NASA bashing is totally off target. NASA does what Congress tells them to do. NASA can make suggestions but these are always biased by the DC machinery.
NASA is Congress’s whipping boy on this.
And guess what? NASA doesn’t care what the GAO says and Congress doesn’t care what the voters say. DC is out of control and NASA will continue to piss away your tax dollars as long as it can.
Congress will never have the guts to shut it down.
Space Dog gets it.
^^ This
–pawn
September 9, 2023 at 6:00 AM
““The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
Because it’s pointless. It was never ever about costs. —
Well we know the process didn’t lower costs- and it’s quite likely it increased costs.
You might imagine it was about NASA understanding what are the costs of SLS. But everyone knows because the rocket is built too slow.
It seems the only rational reason for solid rockets is one should to able to build a rocket faster.
But it seems solids add a lot time to it.
It seems a lesson for Space Shuttle was not to use solids.
But as we know, the only reason for SLS is to build solid rockets.
“ But as we know, the only reason for SLS is to build solid rockets.”
No, the only reason for the SLS was to send tens of billions of dollars to favored political districts and companies. The SLS would’ve been a political success even if it had never flown because building a rocket was ever the point. Crony politics and pork barrel spending is why the SLS exists.
Isn’t that what I said?
They are also pitching nuclear rockets- that could be worse than SLS.
Nuclear rockets are, right now the ultimate sinecure: The watermelons will never let them be built so NASA will be able to spend decades ‘researching the issue’ without having to produce.
NASA doesn’t need SLS or Nuclear Rockets for sinecure, when they now have this!
No, you said, “ But as we know, the only reason for SLS is to build solid rockets.”
I’m saying the only reason for SLS was to spend money.
So, you mean congress critters would lower NASA budget by about 5 billion dollars, if NASA didn’t spend it on SLS?
That seems like a nice way to say it. I just saying without solid boosters, there is no SLS.
More likely, they’d just direct NASA to spend the money on something else with the same effect.
This report is the reason SpaceX will be delayed until well into next year. It going to take a while for this turd to cool. You can’t have the prospect of a fully reusable rocket that is truly the most powerful looming over this pork barrel. They may ignor finance, but they are lazer focused on optics.
The pull quotes that Berger had in his piece on Ars were interesting, to say the least.
And aggravating, too, since “top officials” acknowledge the program is a disaster and unsustainable, yet nobody will put the thing out of its misery.
They’ve tried multiple times, but Congress keeps reviving it. It’s hard to kill something when the people supposedly in charge of the budget want to spend the money.
“The SLS is the world’s most powerful rocket and will enable NASA to return humans to the moon.”
The first sentence doesn’t inspire confidence that truth will be found in the rest of the study. Maybe that was a goal at sometime, but I’m concerned about the definition of “is”, “most powerful”, and “enable”.
What GAO Recommends
GAO has made three past recommendations in this area—two of
which GAO considers priority recommendations. GAO maintains that implementing these recommendations would provide necessary insight to improve program affordability.
That’s the nonjudgmental way of saying NASA has ignored us three times in the past, and until they implement anything we recommend, then it is impossible for us to do our job. When you are NASA, they let you spend money without regard to affordability or cost transparency.
The very first sentence tells all:
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
Shut it down. Now.
Doc, you read right to left?
But yeah, either way, the GAO nails it one sentence but, like the role model they demand to be; they still write 18 more pages of filler with a request to recycle at the end.
Oh… scrolling through I glimpsed:
“Achieve Learning Curve Efficiencies. The program plans to reduce costs by achieving manufacturing efficiencies.”
The program plans to build one no earlier than every two years. That is not how you achieve either a learning curve or foster incentive to gain efficiencies in manufacturing from it. See SpaceX launch rate for how it is done, and if the thought of “new space” or “commercial space” is triggering; See Henry Ford and the Model T production rates. Put down the buggy whip and Apollo program manual.
I do, but only in עִברִית. I haven’t read the rest of the report yet. Still trying to get wrapped around this one sentence.
Yeah, I didn’t get much past that first sentence either. Was kinda busy with more informative things yesterday.
For the NASA bureaucrats, one launch every two years is a feature, not a bug. If, as they want, they set up a program for 10 launches, that’s another 20 years of employment. It’s like they took a lesson from the people who do road construction in Alabama – stretch out every job as long as possible and ride it to retirement. Look at the Shuttle and ISS programs as examples.
Maybe NASA should put out an RFI to see if anyone in the industry can identify a way to accomplish the same objectives as the Artemis missions but at a lower price.
And upset their sinecure?
Go ahead, pull the other one
““The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
Because it’s pointless. It was never ever about costs.
All this NASA bashing is totally off target. NASA does what Congress tells them to do. NASA can make suggestions but these are always biased by the DC machinery.
NASA is Congress’s whipping boy on this.
And guess what? NASA doesn’t care what the GAO says and Congress doesn’t care what the voters say. DC is out of control and NASA will continue to piss away your tax dollars as long as it can.
Congress will never have the guts to shut it down.
Space Dog gets it.
^^ This
–pawn
September 9, 2023 at 6:00 AM
““The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
Because it’s pointless. It was never ever about costs. —
Well we know the process didn’t lower costs- and it’s quite likely it increased costs.
You might imagine it was about NASA understanding what are the costs of SLS. But everyone knows because the rocket is built too slow.
It seems the only rational reason for solid rockets is one should to able to build a rocket faster.
But it seems solids add a lot time to it.
It seems a lesson for Space Shuttle was not to use solids.
But as we know, the only reason for SLS is to build solid rockets.
“ But as we know, the only reason for SLS is to build solid rockets.”
No, the only reason for the SLS was to send tens of billions of dollars to favored political districts and companies. The SLS would’ve been a political success even if it had never flown because building a rocket was ever the point. Crony politics and pork barrel spending is why the SLS exists.
Isn’t that what I said?
They are also pitching nuclear rockets- that could be worse than SLS.
Nuclear rockets are, right now the ultimate sinecure: The watermelons will never let them be built so NASA will be able to spend decades ‘researching the issue’ without having to produce.
NASA doesn’t need SLS or Nuclear Rockets for sinecure, when they now have this!
No, you said, “ But as we know, the only reason for SLS is to build solid rockets.”
I’m saying the only reason for SLS was to spend money.
So, you mean congress critters would lower NASA budget by about 5 billion dollars, if NASA didn’t spend it on SLS?
That seems like a nice way to say it. I just saying without solid boosters, there is no SLS.
More likely, they’d just direct NASA to spend the money on something else with the same effect.
This report is the reason SpaceX will be delayed until well into next year. It going to take a while for this turd to cool. You can’t have the prospect of a fully reusable rocket that is truly the most powerful looming over this pork barrel. They may ignor finance, but they are lazer focused on optics.