[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.