NASA trying to rein in next-generation super-heavy lifter costs

Re: James Hansen will be furious

Gavin Schmidt is NASA's climate alarmist now. Close them down. They are an embarrassment, using ground temperatures, instead of data from the RSS and UAH satellites!

Re: James Hansen will be furious

Yes, how dare an advanced scientific organisation, whose role includes gathering data on the atmosphere, and thus climate, have a science-based opinion on what is happening to the atmosphere,and climate.

Let's leave it to the "enlightened" supporters of stone-age superstitions to tell us once again that every natural, and unnatural disaster was caused by sinners, gays, and children who don't go to bed when their parents tell them to.

Just out of curiosity

Big John, the undisputed expert on all things Trump related. Which option would Donald pick?

(A) Continue federal funding for the development SLS at enormous expense and preserving jobs in the Republican states where (Space shuttle derived) SLS components are built.

(B) Propose a budget that would allow NASA to buy heavy launches from the lowest bidders. SpaceX, Blue Origin, China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology and RSC Energia are all working on rockets that could compete with SLS. This budget would effectively cancel SLS, but could be blocked by Republican politicians.

Re: James Hansen will be furious

I am a bit confused by this. The insulating properties of methane and CO2 is a matter of OPINION now? I love this post-truth reality we live in. We can just wish away our problems. Yay, go us!

Re: James Hansen will be furious

But Big John you do realise that Trump will be increasing NASAs funding - if he's going to create jobs for Americans then the best way of doing it is to fund NASA - every dollar spent on NASA generates 18 elsewhere in the economy. The best way for Trump to make america grate again is to use socialism.

Re: James Hansen will be furious

As for NASA somehow managing to be efficient at it, good luck. No govt. entity has ever been able to compete with private enterprise for long. They don't seem to feel the need to do so, for some reason.

Government entities are not supposed to make a profit. They provide services that are crowdfunded by the taxpayers *because* they are fundamentally unprofitable.

But I suppose somewhere it makes sense to have a private industry using taxpayer-funded facilities to deliver taxpayer-funded projects into orbit at private industry rates.

That is, after all, how most government overspending happens: private contractor gouging and working behind the scenes to ensure minimum oversight as they gouge. Really Large Projects have other factors at work, and should be banned outright because of that. (NHS? Anything with "cross agency" in the title or document of scope.)

I work in the public sector, and am often called to task by people who find out what I do for a living (I'm in a quite visible bit that gets bad press more than is strictly called for by the facts). They get quite an eye-opener (and an earful) when I "reluctantly" explain where the money goes, and why. The best part is when I tell 'em that they made the rules limiting who the government is allowed to ask to provide services from a list of The Usual Suspects.

"What do you mean, I voted for it?"

Re:extend our reach into space.

Yes. Then we can go and ask the aliens living under The Cydonia Face where they stashed the Ark.

Re: James Hansen will be furious

"No govt. entity has ever been able to compete with private enterprise for long."

Unless you count utilities, military forces, health services, and transport organisations the world over.

Re: LETTER TO TRUMP

Dude, did you miss your morning coffee or something?

Lets go through your points one by one.

1. Dismantle NATO. Not a bad idea at present because the world has gone nuts. You have people like Erdogan and the Polish vindictive little idiot as a part of it. They are trigger happy enough to provoke WW3. I do not see why we should support that in that endeavor. This, however, is the only reason. Got nothing to do with cost savings.

2. What boot-licking. The "friendly" Europeans which have Bear Baiting as a favorite sport need no boot to be offered to them to "confront Russia". Now, why are they doing it is a different story. You have the full spectrum of causes - nationalists who need "an enemy" as a part of the essential nationalistic "rule through fear" set, people who are on the payroll of oligarchs which did not get along with Putin and moved to Londongrad, people whose fav national past-time for the past 900 years has been "hunt the Slavic neighbor as we no longer have wolves and bears for a noble hunt" (ever since the Pope granted them a divine right to exterminate any unbeliever vermin while forgetting that the unbelievers in question happen to be Christian too). So frankly, from the perspective of ensuring that we do not go into WW3, withdrawing the NATO umbrella from them is not such a bad idea either. If you like Bear Baiting, do it on your own bill. I see no reason why we should be footing it.

3. Money is never reallocated to productive uses. It will be reallocated to F35 and more Star Wars with the official explanation now being Iran and North Korea ICBMs.

4. Oh, it will not. The moment Trump will diverge too far from the predicated path ordained by those who pay the bills, he will be impeached on technicality.

Re: Haven't we been here before?

As I have said in another thread, NASA's pitch must be that Trump will need the SLS to build hotels in LEO when he's back in the hotel business after his second term*.

Putting members of the house or the senate on flights is a good idea - you should combine that with electing astronauts. Didn't work too bad the last time.

“I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.” ― John Glenn

^{* It's a sales pitch. This would work way better than "Quick, do it before your impeachment".}

"The budget for the Space Shuttle was cut by Congress forcing them to use the SRBs "

A charming story, except it's not true.

Step forward Caspar "cap" Weinberger, Head of President Richard Millhouse Nixons Office of Management & Budget.

He set the fixed (or should I say "capped" : ) ) $1Bn a year budget, with no inflation adjustment (at a time of high US inflation), no contingency and no rollover of funds to a later year.

This funding profile bears no relation to the pattern of large development projects (low early on, big hump when the long lead time stuff is being ordered, gradual decline as stuff gets made).

That flushed any plans for a fully reusable 2 stage vehicle down the toilet of history. Only the orbiter + Mother of all RATO packs + Mother of all drop tanks architecture (dreamt up by an expat Brit IIRC) could make the project work at the budget they were given (a triamese might have worked but that was an even bigger gamble, and would have needed Von Braun grade management to make it work).

Do you get the feeling Tricky Dicky didn't much like the space programme and would have been happy for it to fail?

Re: Letter to NASA

I read somewhere that skylon would not be able to compete with a reused falcon9. Probably because the payload on a single stage to orbit will be very small.

A two stage version seams more feasible and is indeed investigated:

http://www.space.com/32115-skylon-space-plane-engines-air-force-vehicle.html

Personally I would like to see something like bristol spaceplanes hope to make:

Http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com