[techdragon]

Important context…

SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for in order to achieve its mission goals… it’s the rocket they were forced into using due to lobbying and senate shenanigans, there’s a reason it has the nickname “senate launch system”.

The fact the pork barrel project is so bloated it’s “unaffordable” is irrelevant as far as the senators who are voting for it are concerned.

My bet is that the senate will just raise the budget because and continue to make SLS happen as they have always done since the SLS program began.

[roody15]

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole.

The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results. So yes we may have the best tech/gear in the world but may be spending way too much to only get a slight edge and find this edge is not even sustainable.

[lmm]

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

I've heard just the opposite about the similar SDI/"Star Wars" - that the US pouring billions into this blatantly impossible and pointless programme, and suffering no real consequences for doing so, was what finally convinced the USSR they couldn't win.

[mnky9800n]

I think this is very naive to the history of the soviet union at that time period, how gorbachev's new policies failed, how chernobyl effected everything, and how much of an internal failure this was. the usa likes to claim they ended the cold war and reagan did so by blah blah blah, however, the soviet union would have collapsed given gorbachev's policies failing no matter what the usa did.

[lmm]

> I think this is very naive to the history of the soviet union at that time period, how gorbachev's new policies failed, how chernobyl effected everything, and how much of an internal failure this was. the usa likes to claim they ended the cold war and reagan did so by blah blah blah, however, the soviet union would have collapsed given gorbachev's policies failing no matter what the usa did.

There's no contradiction. The argument is that Gorbachev felt the need to set those policies because he saw how much more successful the US was being economically.

[jacobwilliamroy]

God I wish we could go back and do 1991 again. Unfortunately time travel is impossible so I need to stop ruminating on it.

[mnky9800n]

1999 my friend. That's when Boris Yeltsin gave up democracy to Putin. Think of the Russia that could have come from before that decision.

[fractallyte]

That was the Russia that invaded Chechnya and committed horrific atrocities, bordering on genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War

[chii]

> convinced the USSR they couldn't win

i dont think they were convinced they couldn't win - they just realized their economic laggardness.

The remnants of the USSR is still trying to win!

For a real example of "they couldn't win", you'd have to look towards Japan. And is it such a bad thing to "not win"?

[jakobson14]

I don't think the chinese are going to look at this and give up.

They're going to say "we can build our outpost on the moon for way less" and then they'll do it.

[3pac]

SDI is not really comparable. The numbers for the orbital parameters did not add up at the time, but they had Edward Teller behind them.

[nebula8804]

We suffer real consequences in the form of inflation.

[malfist]

Inflation is not tied to military or NASA spending

[philwelch]

It is indirectly when there’s a federal deficit.

[smfugit]

> weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole

That already happened with 2008 GFC. Whats happening with NASA is a small rounding error compared to the amount of pure junk that has accumulated on the FED balance sheet since then, to keep delusions afloat. So the stock market/health care/edu/real estate/iphone/sls prices keep rising. Even though its all pure junk.

[Angostura]

'weakened' is not a binary. Every small step to correct issues is important

[adolph]

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

I donno about this. Adversaries might just as well conclude the opposite, that the US can blow that kind of cash on SLS and other dumb stuff all over the world without major problems. IIRC, UBL's thesis was A-stan is/was the graveyard of empires and would also be the US', but it turned out to be an otherwise forgotten Pentagon rounding error.

[elcritch]

I generally agree, but I don't think Afghanistan and Iraq were rounding errors by any factor. It's a major percentage of the US'es debt, as in trillions of dollars.

Perhaps the US economy (and politics) is resilient enough to handle it and not crash outright, but poorer folks in the US feel the squeeze of inflation and lowered wages due to cantillion effects.

[WeylandYutani]

America is in the enviable position that the entire world is obligated to keep giving them money. Too big to fail.

[nebula8804]

Thats just because others need to step up their game.

[adolph]

A truer measure of the [Astan & Iraq] wars’ total costs pegs them at between $4 trillion and $6 trillion.[0] (2015 article)

US debt in 2000: $5.6T, in 2022: $30.9T [1]

The larger wars of this century drove about a quarter of debt growth. Major but not the majority. That more people will risk life and limb to immigrate than emigrate indicates to me that as bad as inflation is, living elsewhere is still worse.

0. https://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187867/public-debt-of-th...

[elcritch]

A quarter sounds about right, and that's a quarter of our debt that could've been used to rebuild decaying infrastructure, increase medical care, housing, etc. Aside from the monetary cost the country will loose out on the dividends those sort of investments would've yielded long term.

Sure the US may still have a higher quality of life than many others, it doesn't mean that Americans lives couldn't have been better. Also I believe the US recently actually had decreases in both life expectancy and younger generations prospering fincially. So we didn't collapse, but we're not healthy either.

[adolph]

The initial conjecture is that the US' "Adversaries see [wasteful profligacy] as weakness." We have established that the US seems to spend wildly with muted negative outcomes. To an adversary, should that be seen as a weakness or a strength?

Could things be better in the US if it did not spend the way it does? That is a difficult counterfactual. The well adapted US political system never voluntarily decreases taxes, so a safe assumption is that spending/deficit/debt would be the same.

A significant amount of war funding was spent on the MIC, which employs upper middle income US persons in engineering, logistics, HR. The rest is spent on consumables (also from the US) and bribery, which eventually finds safe harbor by holding large bricks of US $100 bills on the low end or US luxury dwellings on the high end.

In the counterfactual, what would have happened to all those white collar suburbs and Miami penthouses?

[asadotzler]

The pentagon's budget is pretty consistent regardless.

We'll give them three quarters of a trillion dollars every year no matter what they spend it on so in reality it doesn't matter if they're war fighting or not, they own us, well 50% of our discretionary tax dollars anyway.

[nebula8804]

It was a catastrophic failure in terms of money spent, lives lost and enduring repetitional damage on the US that continues to this day. Vietnam was a harbinger of this but Afghanistan/Iraq cemented the notion that if you operate on long term timescales you can beat the US.

UBL may not have achieved his primary goal but he got many concessions: Americans lost many freedoms, trust in government is significantly lower compared to pre 9/11 and given what happened on Jan 6 and everything that led up to it, we may look back at 9/11 as the point which set the stage for the eventual breakup of the union.

[JeremyNT]

> This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results.

Isn't this already known though?

The US has such vast resources it can afford to squander them freely due to corruption and incompetence without the people involved ever really being held accountable. This is true of civilian infrastructure projects as well. Yet at the end of the day the country is still so massively wealthy, it makes no practical difference.

[rgbrenner]

Which adversary are you thinking of that has less corruption and less waste than the US? And then has the economy to take advantage of this?

[WitCanStain]

I guess China is the obvious candidate due to reduced costs in pretty much everything but they still have immense corruption.

[simonh]

There’s no real way to evaluate the effectiveness of the Chinese military because they’ve not seen significant action in several generations. However that itself is not a good sign.

As for their kit, Myanmar bought some of their planes but none of them are operational. The planes were a joint project by China and Pakistan, but 8 years after the deal was signed apparently have persistent unsolved technical and structural issues.

Meanwhile Thailand bought three of the new Yuan class subs from China, but they aren’t operational either. Problems with the engines so bad that they need replacing.

Meanwhile China now has two aircraft carriers, but still hasn’t committed either of them to long range operations. They have only conducted experimental night takeoffs and landings, their carrier assigned planes are still largely land based, and they have yet to operate the boats beyond range of land based airstrips. Modern carrier operations are as complex as it gets, and they seem to be struggling with it.

[klooney]

I'm not sure it makes much sense to worry about carriers for the war in Taiwan that everyone expects- their aircraft can use their airfields.

Peacetime armies are generally bad, but turnover tends to be high when the fighting starts, and the second or third set of generals is often much better.

The most important advantages China has are pretty overwhelming- a giant population, and they own the global supply chain for microchips and batteries, meaning they can replace smart munitions and systems while their opponents can't.

They also have the best setup for doing go it alone, vertical industrial production, much better than the US or Russia. They're fine in any scenario where they don't get totally blitzed in a week.

[simonh]

A few issues there.

For an invasion of Taiwan numbers are important, sure, but it's a wide channel and amphibious assaults are absolutely the hardest kind of operation an army can attempt. Technical competence, and I would also argue operational flexibility at every level, are absolutely crucial.

In terms of supply chains, that matters for an extended conflict, as we can see in Ukraine. However an invasion of Taiwan would either work in the first week or so, or it's over. I suppose they could try a long terms blockade, but that doesn't seem to be their strategy.

China is extremely vulnerable to a blockade themselves though. They have no control of their essential seaborn supply routes, and are highly dependent on external sources for energy, raw materials, high tech parts, and maybe most importantly food and fertilisers. The US can turn all of that off like a tap at a moment's notice.

The sorts of sanctions levelled at Russia since last year would have China on it's knees in months. The only way to mitigate that would be for the PLAN to go toe to toe gobally with the US, UK, French and Australian and Japanese Navys all at the same time. Also maybe India. The Indian Navy is small but it's no joke, and they have two fully operational carriers.

[kjkjadksj]

The state of the peacetime supply chain hardly matters. In a major conflict it should be expected that western democracies revert to the centrally planned economic system they used to win the second world war.

[nradov]

The first few Chinese aircraft carriers were probably never intended to be fully combat effective and are mainly intended to develop an experienced cadre of naval aviators. The carriers lack catapults, which means they can't really launch tankers (or any heavy aircraft at all). US Navy carriers almost always have at least one tanker up while conducting flight operations. This makes a huge difference in safety because an aircraft that gets into any trouble has an option to conduct aerial refueling instead of having to rush a carrier landing, or divert to a distant land base. The next generation of Chinese carriers are expected to have catapults but those are technically challenging. I'm sure that this is a priority area for their spies.

[simonh]

I'm surprised they don't have them working yet. An Australian carrier was decommed a few decades ago and went to China for scrap. The Australians stripped most of it but left the steam catapults intact, and I know the Chinese were using them for land based experiments.

[_lvbh]

> Chinese military because they’ve not seen significant action in several generations. However that itself is not a good sign.

I see that as a good sign. Why fight wars if there is no need to. I hope they stay that way and don’t get themselves involved in Taiwan

[WeylandYutani]

The US hasn't seen action against a peer since 1945. Ofcourse there's a reason for that: nuclear weapons.

[simonh]

I think what matters is generational experience, so there are always officers on duty that have combat experience. Since WW2 they've had the Korean and Vietnam wars, both Gulf wars and Afghanistan, plus numerous smaller operations. All of those except Afghanistan involved significant naval support. That's kept the ball moving forward in terms of real world experience.

I am a bit worried about naval officer training though, there have been damaging cutbacks and compromises made on that front. Nothing that's likely to have long term consequences yet, but they need to fix that before it gets worse.

[kjkjadksj]

Just look at the evolution of the standard issue kit over the vietnam or the iraq wars to see how the US has been able to use first hand combat experience to rapidly iterate on new paradigms.

[dirtyid]

>Myanmar

Pretty much all negative coverage of JF17 (joint PRC+PK manufacturing but so far SOLD by PK) are sourced from Indian tabloid rags with no credibility. Myanmar airforce has 100+ PRC airframes, variety of models in the last 30 years with little issue. Pretty much the only useful piece of info so far is Myanmar doesn't have adequate experience operating tech in 4th gen fighters, most of their fleet is 3rd gen. IIRC Myanmar got the jets before they even got simluators, and then bought 4th gen trainers (JL9) from PRC.

>Thailand

Yuan subs aren't operational because PRC couldn't acquire original specified German engines after EU sanctions. There's a period where Thai Navy was deciding whether to accept PRC engines, which they did. Some analysts implied if Thai did not accept PRC engines it would imply they were unsuitable, even more retarded media then spung that as technical issues with PRC engines. Both complete misinformation narratives since there's no basis for evaluating those unintegrated PRC engines at all.

>aircraft carriers

Training carriers based off RU design that analysis suggest PLAN has more or less maximized sortie potential vs when USSR was running carrier ops on similar flight deck. Late 2022 USNI analysis on PLAN carrier ops is they're basically reached "true" blue water deployment, i.e. a few hundred nms near Guam, 1000nm+ from mainland, with no divert airfrields or aerial refueling as backup. Which is about as far as PRC none nuke carriers need to deploy given strategic considerations. Caveate being conservative sorties and pretty clean (light) load outs to compensate for lack of divertion and ski jump. The struggle with PLAN carriers is they won't have catapults and capabilites that brings until 003 and training was hectic because they only had 1-2 carriers training 3-4 crew rotations, somewhat alleviated by converted cruise/barrack ships. TLDR is I would not characterize as overall carrier ops capabilities as struggling as limited by hardware, which TBH is expected since carriers does not seem particularly high priority outside of prestige - given PRC ship building capacity, they could have rushed 10 carriers like US did Forrestal class. Basically most US analysis of various PRC military modernization is they're lacking and focusing on XYZ, but should get there in a few years. Occasionally throw in the word struggle because they watch CCTV7 where miltiary propaganda talks about how hard they work. A few years later, new analysis that they got there (i.e. asw, jointness), something something evolving, modernizing at astonishing rate, but here's the new struggle. Rinse and repeat. Combined with customary but no real combat experience (which no one has in modern peer warfare). But the underlying pattern if you look at meat of improvements year by year is PLA modernizing fast.

[themadturk]

I wonder if PRC really sees using a navy as a means of force projection as important. They could have a world-spanning navy like the U.S. has, but haven't made it a priority. No one has done it as well for as long as the U.S., but it's also something that could be erased in a few minutes by some well-placed Long Swords.

[gustavus]

> I guess China is the obvious candidate due to reduced costs in pretty much everything

Achievement: You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor.

Get the poster at https://despair.com/products/achievement?variant=2457295683

[troyvit]

The Taliban is a good example. IMO they're evil, but not as corrupt as the US. They did a pretty good job running us out of Afghanistan.

[plandis]

> but not as corrupt as the US

I’m wondering how you determined this?

[riffic]

Lawrence Lessig has extensively talked about the concept of ‘institutional corruption’ in American politics, where the political system is not necessarily corrupt in an explicit, quid-pro-quo sense, but rather is compromised by the influence of money, lobbying, and other factors that misalign the interests of politicians with those of the public. First thing to pop in my mind with your question.

[AnimalMuppet]

OK, but I'm not sure you can argue that the Taliban is more aligned with the interests of the population.

[troyvit]

Honestly I just felt like they got more done with fewer people and less money, which is a good indicator of a level of focus that can you can only accomplish if you don't have to worry about the friction of dealing with corrupt layers of an organization or a crapload of waste.

I'd read a long time ago about how the Taliban basically formed a shadow government in parts of Afghanistan that provided justice, schools, roads, and other services because the current government couldn't do it. Just found a good article about it:

https://odi.org/en/publications/life-under-the-taliban-shado...

Here's the PDF it references:

https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/12269.pdf

People flocked to the Taliban's shadow government precisely because it was (at least seen as) less corrupt and more efficient than the services propped up by U.S. and its allies. In the PDF above if you search for corrupt you find the word 7 times in the body of the article, and 6 of those are in regards to how the Taliban fought it.

The article is old (2018) but I think that's the point. They were very organized in how they built their network and we saw the results of it as they ran circles around the U.S. in negotiations both with Trump and Biden administrations.[1]

To me it's a crystal clear example of a less corrupt, less wasteful force completely schooling one with exponentially more resources.

[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal...

[lukas099]

Honestly I would love the US to stop being the biggest spender in so many categories, I just don't think anyone else is really poised to take that spot other than China, which I find even more troubling.

[paulddraper]

> It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole.

Accurately

[kristofferR]

It's not like the money spent just disappears, though, someone gets it. The SLS is a huge jobs program.

Me and GPT had a good discussion about it: https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972...

[wkat4242]

But how much of that ends up in the hands of shareholders and execs? If you want to provide jobs it's better to provide them directly. The shareholders have enough money as it is.

[kristofferR]

True in the logical sense, but not in the practical sense. Just giving regular people good jobs isn't popular in the US, because why would the megadonors sponsor Senator campaigns if they can't profit from it?

In the US system (oligarchic democracy) the wealthy needs to earn their hefty share, otherwise the thing in question likely won't happen at all.

[themadturk]

So what would it take to give NASA the manufacturing infrastructure and expertise to start building its own rockets? Such programs have always been done by contractors, non-government industrial partners. That's part of working in a capitalist economy.

[gumby]

> My bet is that the senate will just raise the budget because and continue to make SLS happen as they have always done since the SLS program began.

A phrase I learned at NASA: "With enough thrust anything can fly".

[mannerheim]

If/when Starship flies (which, if it doesn't, raises other questions as to the future of Artemis), one has to wonder what the point of SLS will be.

[marcusverus]

Do we have to wait? Falcon Heavy already has ~75% of SLS Block 1's payload capacity (to LEO). For the $11.2 Billion that's earmarked for the next 4 years of SLS, you could buy 112 Falcon Heavy launces--one every ~17 days for four years. In contrast, the wiki lists a single planned flight for SLS during that period.

[peoplearepeople]

Mass to LEO isn't the name of the game for SLS though, it's mass to LLO.

(though yes you could fix that with a small kick stage)

[itsoktocry]

It's cheaper to buy, for sure. But we don't know the costs. It's possible that these launches are far less expensive than SLS, but equally unsustainable.

[avhon1]

How might that be? SpaceX doesn't have to manufacture whole new rockets for every Falcon Heavy launch, but even if they did, as far back as 2016 they could build 16 new cores (5 Falcon Heavy's worth) per year.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-seeks-to-accelerate-falcon-9-pr...

[SkyMarshal]

Based on Starship’s partial-success in its very first test flight, as well as how routine rocket landing and recovery is becoming for SpaceX, I think Starship will fly, it’s only a matter of when not if.

The fact that SLS isn’t designed for reusability, making its per-launch cost something like $4billion, means it’s effectively already outclassed, outcompeted, and obsolete.

[mannerheim]

SLS was already made redundant when the Falcon Heavy flew.

'Let’s be very honest, We don’t have a commercially available heavy-lift vehicle. The Falcon 9 Heavy may some day come about. It’s on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.' - Charles Bolden

Note the reason given here isn't that the Falcon Heavy didn't have as large a payload capacity - that excuse came after it started flying years before SLS, because apparently we're supposed to pretend things can't be assembled in space over multiple trips rather than sending up a multi-billion-dollar rocket.

I'm just wondering what the excuse for keeping SLS around will be after a cheaper vehicle that can beat its payload is here. Jobs, for sure. What else?

[throwawaymaths]

Isn't it the case that f9h's lift capacity has increased over the years due to engine improvements and stage lengthening..? Iirc fairing size is still a major limiting factor.

[peoplearepeople]

They have a bigger fairing in dev for the military, and the gateway launch

[throwawaymaths]

Exactly. But not at the time of the "f9h is not heavy lift" quote

[SkyMarshal]

I concur not much excuse remains. I suppose FH needs to be human-rated, but Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon module recently achieved that rating so FH could probably get it too without undue difficulty.

[9dev]

Funnelling tax money to the military industrial complex :)

[wmf]

Jobs.

[rdtsc]

That's the answer. It's keeping the jobs (i.e. voters) in orbit around the senators. They could care less about space, as long as they can say they brought "jobs" to their state. If it does that, it works as designed.

[Stranger43]

It's probably not that simple as they could do what the EU does and create those jobs in purely civilian industries.

It's more about the political economy where funneling through certain well connected companies generate a lot of goodwill among the middlemen who then funds pac's and pay for advertisements then it's about a direct relationship between the senate and the employment status of their workers.

[mannerheim]

It is exactly that simple. Closing down a tank factory to build something in another state isn't going to help the representative in that district get elected.

[Stranger43]

But running that tank factory is probably the least effective way of converting tax dollars into employment.

And thats one senator in one district it takes 50% of both senate and congress to pass a bill and not everytone gets contracts that big assigned to their district so the system is not individual senators all trying to secure the biggest employment gain for their district, it's much less rational.

[woooooo]

I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever.

Is it a senate cultural thing that they all tell themselves despite tenuous links to reality?

Is it kickbacks?

Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable?

[justin66]

I can assure you that the people who live in Lima are aware of the politics surrounding the tank plant. If you don't live in Lima, I wonder why you believe you would have heard "anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing."

The way it works is, the politicians who got the plant created out there earned some cachet with voters, and politicians today would get crucified by voters and the unions if they tried to move the plant. It's important enough that presidents give speeches there. (to put that fully into context: there is absolutely no other reason for politicians to give speeches there or even to be there, except perhaps some obscure form of self-flagellation) And of course voters in the entire surrounding state are pretty sensitive to the notion of losing industrial jobs, which earns the plant some protection from the state's US senators as well. People on the other side of the state might not be talking about it today, but they'd be talking about the plant if it got closed. Politicians understand this.

[vkou]

> I always hear this and I never hear anyone say they voted for senate based on Abrams tank manufacturing or whatever.

You never see a senator take credit for a plant opening/expanding on their re-election blurb/townhall? You must be in an incredibly safe state.

> Why doesn't the logic apply to infrastructure projects which seem more marketable?

It applies to them, too. Again, if you're not seeing this, either your senator isn't doing much of it, you're not paying much attention to their campaign, or they are in such an incredibly safe district that their only challenger is Bozo the Clown.

[woooooo]

I didn't say that, I said I've never seen it swing a vote. I'm sure people working at the missile factory vote but it's a relatively small number.

Re: infra, you're right, I guess I'm just letting my personal bias in when wondering why they don't do more of that compared to the weapons. It seems like such an easier sell to voters, but the emphasis seems to go the other way.

(Also, in my limited sample size, all of this has taken a smaller and smaller back seat to culture war stuff in modern day campaigning)

[jessriedel]

At some level of insanity it seems like NASA administrators have a duty to decline the funding and/or resign. "Our bosses [congress] made us do it" cannot be a carte blanche excuse to waste arbitrary amounts of public money without blame.

[YetAnotherNick]

> SLS isn’t the rocket NASA designed or asked for

Any source?

[Sharlin]

Honestly, that's like asking for a source for the fact that people need oxygen to live. Fuck, they weren't even allowed to finally correct the design flaw in the solid rocket boosters that was the direct cause of the Challenger disaster – namely the fact that they were made of several segments not for any engineering reason but simply because they were manufactured in Utah (due to pork barrel) and could not be transported to Florida in one piece.

For twenty years now they have tried to build a launcher based on recycling as many ~parts~jobs from the Shuttle program as possible and thus far have flown exactly zero people and exactly zero kilograms of cargo. The Senate doesn't mind, because the STS is a jobs program, not a spaceflight program. (Although it's not like the market for SRBs in particular has been very hot lately given how few of them have been in fact launched, so I dunno. Probably the govt is paying ATK just to keep the plant running so they'll be able to build/refurbish a pair of boosters every two or three years which is the expected STS launch rate.)

[labster]

Water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, the SLS is a boondoggle.

Imagine being told to design Google in 2000, but in order to save money you have to reuse old software: database from Oracle, OS from IBM, and design around the code from AltaVista. That should only take a few hundred man-months, right?

[archgoon]

> Honestly, that's like asking for a source for the fact that people need oxygen to live.

I find this attitude "It's just obvious" to be generally unhelpful. Your sibling comments do a much better job at helping the grandparent get up to speed with context about the SLS program, and associated Senate Legislation.

Being able to cite documents in support of your position is a valuable skill and both helps your own understanding, by clarifying what your understanding is based on, and that of the questioner.

-- From the shadows

[hinkley]

The attitude of "I've never heard of this before" has been a common internet troll for at least 25 years. At some point it's not on me to educate you about things that are widely common knowledge, and there's an art to asking for citations without sounding like you're being dismissive, or shifting all of the effort onto the other person.

The top level comment did not achieve this art, but I've seen worse.

[Sharlin]

Yeah, something like "Where could I read more about this?" or "Could you point me to some discussion on this?" would have been a much more polite way to ask.

[SkyMarshal]

You can just google “Senate Launch System” and find numerous references. Here are a few, including Wikipedia’s chronicle of its funding cycles:

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/08/24/...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-artemis-del...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Developmen...

[acegopher]

https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls

[archgoon]

Note, NASA has a copy of the original 2010 funding legislation here:

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf

Which can also be found here:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/372...

The key part is:

> (2) MODIFICATION OF CURRENT CONTRACTS.—In order to limit NASA’s termination liability costs and support critical capabilities, the Administrator shall, to the extent practicable, extend or modify existing vehicle development and associated contracts necessary to meet the requirements in paragraph (1), including contracts for ground testing of solid rocket motors, if necessary, to ensure their availability for development of the Space Launch System.

Which explains why NASA isn't necessarily getting engines from Blue Origin or other cheaper new comers for example. The senate law dictates that they should continue using existing contracts. Now, could a NASA administrator argue that they should drop Aerojet (as cited in the ars technica article)? Potentially, but Aerojet could possibly sue, claiming that NASA is in violation of the law.

-- From the Shadows

[avhon1]

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directed NASA to develop a new rocket called the Space Launch System. It set performance requirements for the rocket (use just two stages to lift 70 tons into low-Earth orbit, use a third stage to lift 130 tons to LEO, carry cargo and astronauts to ISS, carry deep-space crew capsule, support gradual increase in performance by "evolutionary growth" with new stages), and required that, "where practicable", NASA should maintain existing Space-Shuttle and Ares contracts, workforces, infrastructure, and technologies, and that the rocket be scheduled to launch no later than the end of 2016.

The precise requirements were written to force NASA to design a rocket that maintained lucrative Space Shuttle-era contracts.

https://spaceref.com/press-release/hatch-passage-of-nasa-rea...

Also, the requirement to upgrade existing infrastructure ensured that billions of dollars went into Bill Nelson's district in Florida. (He is now the highest-ranking official at NASA.)

The law did not establish long-term funding for the development of the rocket. As with all NASA projects, money is granted one year at a time in Congress's annual budget. In 2011, NASA announced the plan to build this rocket. In accordance with the law's requirements and intention, it re-used almost all core technologies, infrastructure, and major subcontractors of the Space Shuttle. There was actually some fuss about this at the time:

https://spacenews.com/shelby-nasa-hold-competition-sls-boost...

but the strategy of "give Congress what they want" has worked: the Planetary Society shows that Congress has consistently granted NASA more money than asked for to fund SLS.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-we-have-the-sls

In particular, Richard Shelby (senator from Alabama, which is home to many NASA facilities, and Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2018–2021) was a powerful political supporter of the SLS, ensuring its continued funding, and attacking anybody who even suggested it might not be necessary.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/so-long-senator-shel...

[Stranger43]

Isnt it also true of every big success NASA have had, that it only existed because of lobbying and political pressure.

We like to pretend that political influence on government institutions is a new "bug" and not something build into the system from day one.

[cyanydeez]

SLS works because the pork is evenly distributed around the country.