SLS General Discussion Thread 8

[spacenut]

SLS might have been great or cheaper than Saturn in the 1970's, but it is proving to be obsolete today.  There are existing commercial rockets that can do the same thing with distributed launch using all of them, and much cheaper.  Congress has no conception of how to get the most bang for the buck.  Thus, we are 31 trillion in debt as a nation.  With the existing reusable rockets and the onset of new reusable rockets, fuel depots, and much lower launch costs, SLS makes no sense to continue the madness. 

[clongton]

SLS might have been great or cheaper than Saturn in the 1970's, but it is proving to be obsolete today.  There are existing commercial rockets that can do the same thing with distributed launch using all of them, and much cheaper.  Congress has no conception of how to get the most bang for the buck.  Thus, we are 31 trillion in debt as a nation.  With the existing reusable rockets and the onset of new reusable rockets, fuel depots, and much lower launch costs, SLS makes no sense to continue the madness. 

Emphasis Mine.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. Congress has no desire to get the best bang for the buck - on ANY expenditure. SLS is totally irrelevant to Congress. I'd be willing to wager that a significant number of the members of Congress couldn't even tell you what SLS is. Congress is only interested in providing more than enough funding to keep certain voting districts well greased. The product provided for the greasing is irrelevant. It doesn't even have to work - ever. If it does actually work, well that may actually endanger the prodect because it means that the members of Congress might have to soon create a different bottomless pit to pour taxpayer money into. See the problem? I don't believe it's fixable. 

[spacenut]

Yes one member of congress thought we have already gone to Mars.  One thought Guam was going to tip over if we put too many service men and women on the island.  These are people making million and billion dollar decisions. 

[Coastal Ron]

...I'd be willing to wager that a significant number of the members of Congress couldn't even tell you what SLS is. Congress is only interested in providing more than enough funding to keep certain voting districts well greased. The product provided for the greasing is irrelevant. It doesn't even have to work - ever. If it does actually work, well that may actually endanger the prodect because it means that the members of Congress might have to soon create a different bottomless pit to pour taxpayer money into. See the problem? I don't believe it's fixable. 

To make a major change you need a major event to happen. Unfortunately it could take more than one, which happened with the Shuttle program, but the Shuttle program is an example where it was finally realized that the lack of investment in making the Shuttle safer and/or better had finally caught up with the program, and so defining an end to the program was accepted.

Of course when Congress agreed to end the Shuttle program there was already the Constellation program ramping up, but the analogy here is that (as you pointed out) Congress doesn't really care about the details, just the flow of money. So if there is an alternative to the SLS at a future "trigger event" (which does not need to be an accident), Congress may not care enough about the SLS per se to keep funding it - assuming enough funding keeps flowing to the right places after it is gone.

[bd1223]

Yes one member of congress thought we have already gone to Mars.

And that congresswoman represents JSC's district.

[Proponent]

And one asked the Department of the Interior whether it could alter the orbit of the earth or the moon to mitigate climate change.

[redneck]

SLS might have been great or cheaper than Saturn in the 1970's, but it is proving to be obsolete today.  There are existing commercial rockets that can do the same thing with distributed launch using all of them, and much cheaper.  Congress has no conception of how to get the most bang for the buck.  Thus, we are 31 trillion in debt as a nation.  With the existing reusable rockets and the onset of new reusable rockets, fuel depots, and much lower launch costs, SLS makes no sense to continue the madness. 

Emphasis Mine.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. Congress has no desire to get the best bang for the buck - on ANY expenditure. SLS is totally irrelevant to Congress. I'd be willing to wager that a significant number of the members of Congress couldn't even tell you what SLS is. Congress is only interested in providing more than enough funding to keep certain voting districts well greased. The product provided for the greasing is irrelevant. It doesn't even have to work - ever. If it does actually work, well that may actually endanger the prodect because it means that the members of Congress might have to soon create a different bottomless pit to pour taxpayer money into. See the problem? I don't believe it's fixable. 

One non answer is that the incentives have to change. Right now, all the incentives for a congressman is to spend in district. Since a congressman's' #1 job is to get elected, or reelected, spending in district buys votes, and favors for contributors buys campaign contributions. Look at the salary of a congressman compared to successful business owners, doctors, lawyers, and pro athletes. Functionally, the salaries are not commensurate with the supposed responsibilities. So that a member of congress is there for power, perks(graft), or an easy career with minimal actual responsibilities. These are not attributes of people you would want to place in power.

One potential solution is to kick back a percentage of the annual reduced expenditures in a district along with bonuses for improved conditions in their district. Electron waiting years on bureaucracy to launch would have the intense attention of a congressman losing bonus. Boca Chica would likely get some fairly rapid resolutions to outstanding regulatory questions. Dinospace might find a bit less advantage to scattering subcontractors across the nation along with a sudden reduction in cost plus gravy. Implementing something like this would be borderline impossible, and is likely to have fatal flaws in that implementation. If workable, I suspect that launch companies would suddenly find the regulatory environment far friendlier.

[cplchanb]

Just Announced! @NASAOIG will examine NASA’s progress toward achieving its Artemis II goals, including the impact of Artemis I’s mission results.

https://twitter.com/NASAOIG/status/1623475495927947264

They make it sound like its some amazing great thing that they are being examined lol

[Robotbeat]

https://twitter.com/nasa_sls/status/1625273660662480896

⚠️ Artemis II update ⚠️

Teams at #NASAMichoud “flipped” the engine section for the first crewed #Artemis mission from a vertical to a horizontal position in preparation for final integration to the SLS core stage.

Check out more @NASAArtemis progress: https://go.nasa.gov/3K5Amb0

Obviously the timeline is gonna be different, but when did this equivalent milestone occur for Artemis I?

[Eric Hedman]

Congress has no desire to get the best bang for the buck - on ANY expenditure. SLS is totally irrelevant to Congress. I'd be willing to wager that a significant number of the members of Congress couldn't even tell you what SLS is.

While most members of Congress couldn't tell you what SLS is.  Some can.  Two members of Congress have told me that they from time to time (I don't know how often that is) read these space websites.  I have no idea if any more do.  But the two who told me that they read these sites do it to better understand what NASA is doing when it comes to voting on NASA's budgets and programs.  Some of them really do want NASA to follow the best plan possible.

[Athelstane]

Jeff Foust has a new article up at SpaceNews reporting on the new EUS production facility at Michoud:

https://spacenews.com/boeing-opens-sls-eus-production-facility/

Within it, he quotes John Shannon making a...remarkable claim:

Shannon, though, said there is interest from others in the heavy-lift rocket. “Since Artemis 1 we’ve gotten a lot of interest from a lot of different places,” he said, such as unnamed “other government agencies” interested its payload performance.

It is...curious to learn that other government agencies have expressed serious, tangible interest in paying to put payloads on SLS. Not least given what former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver related in her new memoir, Escaping Gravity, about what she discovered in talking to the most deep pocketed government users of space launch capabilities a decade ago:

Key NASA and Senate leaders commonly used launching NRO satellites as a justification to build the SLS, so I wanted to run the question to ground. I’d raised the same issue of SLS use in NASA’s quarterly meetings at the Pentagon. The Air Force, Space Command, and Strategic Command had universally and defiantly said “no, thank you”—without the thank you. Charlie, Chris [Scolese], and others conveniently ignored these discussions and continued to include launch of military and intelligence satellites in their talking points to justify SLS.

When I asked NRO if they had any interest in using the vehicle, their response was immediate and unanimous: no. NRO deputy Betty Sapp offered a reason for their quick response—their satellites had precision instruments that could not withstand the dynamic environment of launching on large solid rocket motors. There it was: the very element of the rocket being forced on NASA by congressional leaders, people doing the bidding for self-interested contractors, had limited the types of payloads that could be launched on the vehicle.

Or has something dramatically changed since 2012?

[Jim]

The DOD doesn't want to get into bed with NASA again.

[VSECOTSPE]

Shannon’s own statements are contradictory.  (Or the article misquoted him.)  Specifically:

Shannon, though, said there is interest from others in the heavy-lift rocket. “Since Artemis 1 we’ve gotten a lot of interest from a lot of different places,” he said, such as unnamed “other government agencies” interested its payload performance.

However, he said he expected SLS, regardless of the customer, to be used for missions beyond Earth orbit. “It’s really a deep space vehicle. I would never compete SLS for a low Earth orbit activity.”

There is no “other government agency” besides NASA that is interested in substantive “missions beyond Earth orbit”, certainly not at the scale that would justify an SLS launch.  Together, those two statements make zero sense, and one or the other or both must be false.

Even when they’re not contradictory or unbelievable, I would not grant Shannon’s statements much credibility.  Back during Augustine II, Shannon heavily criticized inline SDLVs, including on the basis of flight safety.  And nowadays he’s defending an in-line SDLV.  He’s long been a flag that changes with the wind (or paycheck source).

[woods170]

Shannon’s own statements are contradictory.  (Or the article misquoted him.)  Specifically:

Shannon, though, said there is interest from others in the heavy-lift rocket. “Since Artemis 1 we’ve gotten a lot of interest from a lot of different places,” he said, such as unnamed “other government agencies” interested its payload performance.

However, he said he expected SLS, regardless of the customer, to be used for missions beyond Earth orbit. “It’s really a deep space vehicle. I would never compete SLS for a low Earth orbit activity.”

There is no “other government agency” besides NASA that is interested in substantive “missions beyond Earth orbit”, certainly not at the scale that would justify an SLS launch.  Together, those two statements make zero sense, and one or the other or both must be false.

Even when they’re not contradictory or unbelievable, I would not grant Shannon’s statements much credibility.  Back during Augustine II, Shannon heavily criticized inline SDLVs, including on the basis of flight safety.  And nowadays he’s defending an in-line SDLV.  He’s long been a flag that changes with the wind (or paycheck source).

Agreed. John Shannon reminds me of another such a "flag-that-changes-with-the-paycheck-source": Mary Lynne Dittmar.

During the years that she was employed by the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration (CDSE) she dunked on "privately owned systems" and was a big proponent of government-owned "national assets". She particularly defended Orion and SLS that way. Not surprising really because the CDSE consists almost entirely of companies involved in the development and construction of SLS and Orion. And those companies were, via CDSE, paying her bills.

But currently Mary Lynne Dittmar is employed by Axiom. A private company that is fast on its way to build the worlds first, entirely privately-owned, space station. Now that a private company pays her bills she no longer has a problem with "privately owned systems" and the fact that this "national asset" (Axiom's station is set to become THE replacement for the ISS, with NASA being the main customer) is not government owned.

Another example: in 2017, while she was still employed by the CDSE, she was critical of SpaceX plans for flying tourists around the Moon (DearMoon mission). In an interview with the New York Times she stated: "I find it extraordinary that these sorts of announcements are being made when SpaceX has yet to get crew from the ground to low-Earth orbit"

Yet here we are in early 2023, with her being employed by Axiom. The very company that became the first fully-private customer for Crew Dragon missions to the ISS (Ax-1 mission in 2022). She went from criticizing SpaceX when her bills were paid by competitors/opponents of SpaceX, to using SpaceX rockets and capsules, when her bills are being paid by SpaceX proponents.

And I'm not the only one who have noticed her hypocrisy. As one Boeing source related it to me in December 2022: "D*mn I wish we'd hired her for Starliner promotion".

[woods170]

The DOD doesn't want to get into bed with NASA again.

The STS experience was bad enough for them.

DoD is perfectly OK with NASA using systems developed primarily for DoD use (EELV/NSSL). But not the other way around (STS).

[Steven Pietrobon]

Not sure where to post this, but as Dan Dumbacher gets mentioned in this thread, I thought I'll post this here. Yesterday evening I got to meet Dan here in Adelaide at an AIAA organised dinner. He is now Executive Director of AIAA. He is more known here at NSF for his work with SLS and Orion at NASA. He started his career at NASA working on the SSME, helping to get it working. Sorry about my hair. I look a bit like Einstein if I don't comb it properly!