[0x000000E2]

NASA nah, they transitioned to third party launch providers many years ago. They like making space vehicles more than rockets. The SLS, yes, that's a classic pork project.

ULA is the real problem. The government allowed all the launch providers to merge into one with no domestic competition. Think space Comcast. Other countries allowed the same. Nobody innovated for decades. Russia and US ULA are flying rockets from 50 years ago with minimal updates.

[tehbeard]

> Russia and US ULA are flying rockets from 50 years ago with minimal updates.

Old Babushka proverb, if complicated explosion related plumbing is working as intended, best not to completely rework it for sake of changelog.

Minimal updates to the shape, maybe?

But I bet the electronics and manufacturing have seen steady improvements over that time.

SLS does feel quite like a pork barrel, but I understand the funding of it along with the other commercial companies as "more options, less risk", if something grounds the Dragon capsules, having a "home" alternative instead of buying seats on a foreign rocket makes sense.

[0x000000E2]

> Old Babushka proverb, if complicated explosion related plumbing is working as intended, best not to completely rework it for sake of changelog.

Aye, but everyone stuck with that proverb for too long. Then Musk appeared and he doesn't seem to care that his test rockets explode. He revels in it.

To me it's the classic startup vs giant corporation. The bigger you are, the harder it is to change course. And exploding rockets look bad to management. The same reason so many companies are still on IBM mainframes running FORTRAN.

SLS is an insurance policy against SpaceX. But it's being managed by the same old wasteful monopolies as always, plus plenty of government mandated pork.

[imglorp]

Pork not just from SLS, but also Boeing Commercial Crew which was supposed to be certified in 2017 and it's looking like next summer at the earliest.

Yes we need a second, competing system but Boeing may have lost the last of its engineering expertise.

[vardump]

Your nickname, 0x000000E2... ERROR_VIRUS_DELETED?

[0x000000E2]

My favorite Windows error :)

I wanted [object Object] but it was taken haha

[vardump]

Have you ever actually seen that error? :)

I'd guess it's pretty unlikely to occur, even when the virus detection actually deletes infected files.

Then again, I guess a filesystem filter driver can return whatever it pleases. Not sure if Windows anti-virus support works through filter drivers anymore, though.

[0x000000E2]

I've seen this terrible error when system has bad RAM. It's not supposed to happen, but it does when crappy drivers die