In which Drew Johnson doesn’t know WTF he’s talking about.

#ProTip, Drew. If you’re worried about taxpayer money being wasted on space progress, go dig into SLS/Orion.

Six years after its maiden (and only) flight, Eric Berger has some thoughts.

[Update a few minutes later]

From a comment over there:

Probably the most salient points:

A mockup lacking many critical systems flew into space once, six years ago.

The next test flight is basically another mockup, lacking even life support systems.

The first full-up complete vehicle launch is supposed to be with crew trusting their lives to a vehicle which has never been flight tested with systems complete, and also a similarly never-flown service module. Because for all the expense and mass, Orion doesn’t have much duration without a service module.

NASA safety culture at work. Mountains of paperwork instead of actual testing on actual hardware.

Just getting this far on Orion has been 15 years and $24B.

Ridiculous pork capsule to match a ridiculous pork rocket in the SLS.

Yup. It’s a Potemkin space program.