I think that back in its days Constellation made a lot of sense. The end of the Space Shuttle was looming, and it seemed rational that we need to use shuttle hardware as much as possible. The Ares I Stick had to use one booster, one SSME for a second stage and we hoped it was going to be developed easily. Only later the problems started, when the SSME turned out to be inadequate, and a larger solid booster had to be developed, so the Stick in the end was an entirely different rocket...2004 was a different year compared to 2010 (when Obama canceled Constellation) and much different than 2017. Back then SpaceX was too young, the private sector seemed immature, Elon started launching rockets in 2006... and it was like one rocket per year. There were three failures in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It was hard to believe that the private companies were going anywere. And Falcon 9 didn't debut until 2010... And you keep to forget that even though we already had Falcon 9 in 2010, Elon Musk said that there was going to be no gap. Seven years later, the manned flights of Dragon are still nowhere to be seen. Yes, there were a lot of delays of Constellation during the first 5 years, but there are a lot of delays in the private sector within a 5-year period too. Things are comparable.
The only commercial alternative to SLS at time would be twin engine Atlas or Delta 4H.
Being government funded projects with same contractors I doubt they would be any cheaper than SLS. Distributed launch or fuel depots would need to be developed, not bad thing but another large expensive.
Cost overruns and long delays have been and will most likely always be part of large difficult engineering projects, civil, structural or aerospace.
...And it's also worth considering who's going to bear the overruns. With SLS, it's NASA. With commercial cargo and crew, NASA still incurs costs when its suppliers fail to keep to schedule, but it by no means bears the full brunt.
Has the White House (or Congress) gotten any less delusional about NASA funding in the last 13 years, ya think?
I really think congress got the wool pulled over their eyes by Griffin.
"those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"Reading this thread one gets the sense that there is little agreement on what should be learned from the past. Therefore we must be doomed.My immediate reaction on listening to President Bush's speech - which I told to Bill Gerstenmaier then the ISS Program manager - was: "The only part of this that will come true is that the shuttle will be retired."
Quote from: Wayne Hale on 07/05/2017 04:38 pm"those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"Reading this thread one gets the sense that there is little agreement on what should be learned from the past. Therefore we must be doomed.My immediate reaction on listening to President Bush's speech - which I told to Bill Gerstenmaier then the ISS Program manager - was: "The only part of this that will come true is that the shuttle will be retired."I posted on this thread earlier, then got tired of all the baloney--and also disagreed with moving it to the policy section (hint: policy history is also a thing)--so I quit and deleted my posts.But I'd just point out that the Bush folks actually did try to learn from the past. They had people research the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative and try to take action to avoid that. I'm not convinced that debating this or discussing it makes sense on NSF, because too many people have decided on their conclusions and simply want to engage in the same arguments over and over again. It's an issue common to most discussion forums, where people want to play the same four notes rather than learn a new tune.
Quote from: Blackstar on 07/05/2017 05:06 pmQuote from: Wayne Hale on 07/05/2017 04:38 pm"those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"Reading this thread one gets the sense that there is little agreement on what should be learned from the past. Therefore we must be doomed.My immediate reaction on listening to President Bush's speech - which I told to Bill Gerstenmaier then the ISS Program manager - was: "The only part of this that will come true is that the shuttle will be retired."I posted on this thread earlier, then got tired of all the baloney--and also disagreed with moving it to the policy section (hint: policy history is also a thing)--so I quit and deleted my posts.But I'd just point out that the Bush folks actually did try to learn from the past. They had people research the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative and try to take action to avoid that. I'm not convinced that debating this or discussing it makes sense on NSF, because too many people have decided on their conclusions and simply want to engage in the same arguments over and over again. It's an issue common to most discussion forums, where people want to play the same four notes rather than learn a new tune.If you have the "sheet-music" for that "new tune", I for one would be happy to hear it!
I made a judgment call that this topic was degenerating into yet another rehash (as you noted, same arguments over and over), and that it fit space policy. I invited people to PM me before doing the move. If you disagreed, the thing to do was to report to mod. Not delete posts. I've seen this "deleted all my posts" behavior (by others, in other places) and it's often perceived as not helpful... at best. But if we do end up continuing to go round and round (and comments calling people pinheads, as we have seen others (not you) do suggest we may be stuck) then even moving it here won't save it.
This is a highly useful and valuable thread but it's primarily space policy. If you're not an L2 member please PM me now because I'm not seeing a reason not to move it there other than that.Edit: It has been moved.
So why didn't President Obama horsetrade the Big Booster and Capsule for the tech development stuff? This is what I don't understand, and I know someone will say it wasn't a priority...
Still want to know what people think should be the fate of the program- not just what went wrong!
But I'd just point out that the Bush folks actually did try to learn from the past. They had people research the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative and try to take action to avoid that.