NASA's Replacement for the Shuttle Likely to be Delayed Due Lack of Funding

Discussion in 'Techforge' started by Tuckerfan, Apr 15, 2017.

  1. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    If everything goes perfect, they'll be fine, but if it doesn't, then they're screwed.
  2. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

    Joined:
    Mar 29, 2004
    Messages:
    101,078
    Ratings:
    +81,581
    :brood:
    • Agree Agree x 2
  3. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2004
    Messages:
    51,920
    Location:
    Norphlet, Arkansas
    Ratings:
    +5,412
    The Space Launch System is not actually a shuttle replacement is it?

    Though it uses hardware designed for the shuttle system like the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs).
  4. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Given that it's designed to be NASA hardware to send people into space, yes, it is.

    Not any more. That part of the design was scrapped some time ago.
  5. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2004
    Messages:
    51,920
    Location:
    Norphlet, Arkansas
    Ratings:
    +5,412
    NASAs Manned Mars mission plans look needlessly complex. They should simply adopt the Mars Direct Mission plan and take their chances.

    People make things more complex than they need to be.
    • Facepalm Facepalm x 1
  6. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Unlike Zubrin, NASA has to deal with working in the government. If NASA's plans don't benefit an important campaign contributor to certain politicians, they're going to have a very hard time getting the funding they need to do something.

    Perhaps, but wishing things were simpler, without actually doing anything to make them simpler is useless.
  7. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2004
    Messages:
    51,920
    Location:
    Norphlet, Arkansas
    Ratings:
    +5,412
    No doubt. Bureaucracy's a bitch.
  8. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    There's been some progress.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  9. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
  10. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    • Happy Happy x 1
  11. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    • popcorn popcorn x 1
  12. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

    Joined:
    Mar 29, 2004
    Messages:
    50,154
    Location:
    Spacetime
    Ratings:
    +53,511
    We better get our ass in gear. Apparently, no one in charge remembers that landing on the moon was a huge public relations coup in the Cold War. If China beats us there, it won't really matter that they weren't first; they'll effectively be first for everyone under 55 years of age. And they'll have shown they can accomplish a huge goal faster than we--the people who did it half a century ago--can today.
  13. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Super Guppy, you're the one! Super Guppy, you're such fun!
  14. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    March looks to be the launch date.
  15. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    • Agree Agree x 1
  16. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    • Disagree Disagree x 1
  17. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2004
    Messages:
    21,441
    Location:
    Canada
    Ratings:
    +36,232
    By comparison, the U.S. spends roughly $700-billion annually on death and destruction.

    $4.1-billion is a lot of smackeroos, but advancing human spaceflight and exploration is never a waste of money.

    If there is indeed enough water on the moon, and we play this correctly, a mission to Mars is going to cost a whole hell of a lot less than an earth-bound launch.
    • Agree Agree x 2
  18. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    for comparison, Elon sez starship should go for $10 million per launch. Sure that might be puffery, but even if it's off by an order of magnitude, it's still cheap.

    That 4.1 billion per launch would fund lots of other stuff, including manned exploration. SLS has jumped the shark before ever launching.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  19. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

    Joined:
    Mar 29, 2004
    Messages:
    50,154
    Location:
    Spacetime
    Ratings:
    +53,511
    Cancel it and give the business to Elon Musk.

    It's literally costing a third the price of an aircraft carrier per launch.

    This is a monumental failure, a testament to bureaucratic sclerosis. The NASA that put men on the Moon is looooong gone.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  20. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    NASA has contracted SpaceX to provide the lunar lander for Artemis mission to the moon.

    What's hilarious is it will fly there independent of SLS and Artemis. I'll bet they send it with a full crew to conduct them to the surface.
  21. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Musk says a lot of things, and some of them actually happen. That $10 million per launch is contingent on a lot of things happening. Most notably, it being used for transcontinental flights. No shit. The only way you can get flights down to $10 million per is if you're doing a lot of them. This article explains in detail how you can drive down the costs of rocket launches, with disposable rockets, if you're willing to launch one a day. The cost drops even more if you're using reusable craft, but still adhere to the schedule of launching one a day (mind you, that article suggests sending rockets up even if you don't have cargo, simply because it'll keep the cost of sending stuff up on the days when you do have cargo very low). BTW, while the author of that article couldn't have known it, NASA used the same methodology to fudge the numbers for the performance of the space shuttles. Here's a link to a news article discussing how that came out in the wake of the Columbia disaster. However, if you'd prefer the long-form version of what happened, here's a link to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report, so you don't have to worry about reading someone's short summation of what happened.

    Back to the SLS, it'll be able to put nearly 300,000 pounds into orbit. Musk has said that he'll be able to put 220,000 pounds into orbit. (He's also said that he'll make sure that he can put heavier cargo into orbit than anyone else, but who knows?) If we go with those quoted weights, regardless of cost, then NASA can put up more than Musk can. Musk has the advantage in that he might be able to do so at a lower cost, but even if he can't, his payload can have a larger diameter (by two feet) than that which the SLS can. Depending upon what you're wanting to send up, that difference can be really fucking important.

    However, and while it's not a situation that I'd ever want to see happen, the fact that NASA owns the SLS, while they'd basically be chartering Musk's Starship (and/or the Falcon Super Heavy rocket needed to put Starship into LEO or beyond), is actually kind of important. This means that NASA doesn't have to worry about Musk suddenly deciding that he doesn't want to let NASA charter one of his rockets, or having to elbow their way into his launch schedule. Sure, NASA could probably get the government to invoke something like the Defense Production Act to force Musk to bump them to the head of the line, how do you think Fox News is going to react to such a thing? We know that they're not exactly fans of Presidents taking reasonable steps to stop COVID, you want to lay money that they'll act differently if in 2029 the Harris Administration says they need to use Musk's rockets to stop a civilization-ending asteroid headed towards the Earth?

    Now, there's absolutely a conversation to be had about how NASA needs to have its own vehicles that can be launched for the same price that Musk claims he'll be able to do with Starship, but in order to start have such a discussion, one needs to recognize a few important facts:
    1.) SpaceX is a privately held company, so nobody knows WTF the actual costs are. Is Musk operating the thing at a loss? How significant to its operations are the billions NASA pays it every year for launch services?
    2.) NASA does more than just launch people and probes into space. Even if Musk was putting the ~$25 billion/yr that the US government does into NASA, into SpaceX, he can do more towards building rockets, etc. than NASA can, simply because he doesn't have to worry about doing things like studying the environment, maintaining various telescopes, and spending time and money on explaining to an ignorant fucking population that spending money on science is one of the most important fucking things that we can do as a species.
    3.) By law, any technologies that NASA develops must be made freely available to anyone, while Musk can patent the stuff he develops and demand royalties on it if anyone else wants to use it.
    4.) Musk has a captive market for some of his services. You want to be able to have updates to the software to your Tesla, or have the dealership diagnose the problems with your car remotely? You've got to subscribe to Musk's Starlink service.
    5.) Musk gets to use NASA's globe-spanning Deep Space Network, without having to contribute to the upkeep of that network. (The DSN is how all the various spacecraft NASA, and companies hired by NASA, send information back to Earth. As it stands now, NASA doesn't have enough resources to handle the data being sent back to it, so every unmanned probe NASA puts out there, has to discard vast amounts of information, that would otherwise be sent to Earth.)
    6.) If Musk kills astronauts (since, you know, space is a dangerous business), folks will be more likely to shrug it off than if NASA does it, because tax dollars are overtly involved (folks forget that tax dollars are involved in SpaceX sending astronauts to the ISS).
    7.) If you adjust for inflation, NASA's budget has been flat since the 60s, while the number of things they're required to do has increased.

    I could go on, but my point is that even if you just hand NASA Musk's rockets, they can't do the kinds of things that Musk can, because they're forced to do things that Musk doesn't have to worry about (though can take advantage of). I'm not saying that the SLS is great, but just as I think we can all agree that it'd be a bad idea for the US military to have to rent every aircraft it needed, instead of having their own planes/helicopters, I'd hope that we can all agree that NASA ought to have its own spacecraft as well, even if they do rent rockets from folks like SpaceX from time-to-time.
    • popcorn popcorn x 1
  22. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    Heh. Posted before you did.
  23. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2004
    Messages:
    21,441
    Location:
    Canada
    Ratings:
    +36,232
    :clap:
    • Agree Agree x 1
  24. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Yeah, because I opted for long-form content and not something that could have been a tweet. :bailey:
    • Funny Funny x 3
    • Winner Winner x 1
  25. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    I agree with that point, but I'd much prefer NASA spend it on probes to Europa.
  26. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Good luck with that. Not only do you have to deal with issues like corporations bribing Congress to bend government expenditures to their bidding (regardless of who's building them, crewed vehicles are more expensive than robotic probes), but you also have to deal with a populace that doesn't grasp why sending probes to other planets is a good fucking idea. And I'd be willing to be that the latter group comprised a shitload of the folks who stormed the Capitol on 1/6.
  27. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    If we spend too much money on an obsolete rocket the public better fucking well question it.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  28. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Is it obsolete, though? And what's the cost breakdown vs Starship? Without an independent audit of SpaceX's finances, we can't say.
  29. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2004
    Messages:
    15,797
    Location:
    Dead and Loving It
    Ratings:
    +13,862
    All that matters is what SpaceX charges.
  30. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Messages:
    76,624
    Location:
    Can't tell you, 'cause I'm undercover!
    Ratings:
    +154,180
    Until they go bankrupt. Or decide that they don't want to sell slots to NASA.