[protastus]

Does NASA and their contractors have any true believers in leadership positions?

The complexity and safety concerns have been pointed out multiple times. I stopped paying attention because this program appears to be on bureaucratic autopilot. Government contractors deliver parts, without control or accountability about the performance of the entire system. The complexity indicates that Artemis will get cancelled once it fails to achieve goals. I hope nobody dies.

The top engineering talent of the U.S. is not in this program. Poor engineering leadership is inevitable. Artemis looks like a jobs program.

[panick21_]

There are some misunderstanding here. Artemis isn't really a program. SLS, Orion, HLS (Starship) and a few other things are all their own program. Each has their own political logic and its cancellation depends on many things. Cancling all isn't really possible, no matter what the marketing term 'Artemis' means. Artemis is literally just a marking term a clever NASA Administrator made up in order to get money for a lander.

SLS and Orion have survived many changes in program, their survival is independent.

The HLS program is fixed-price, and once award can't really be changed canceled. They can only not renew the contract for more missions.

If NASA engineering talent is so shit, why has Commercial Crew and Cargo program been some of the most successful NASA programs since Apollo? The same people selected the HLS program.

HLS (Starship) is anything but a Jobs program for NASA or SpaceX. Its literally the future SpaceX (pretty good engineering company) is banking on.

Artemis is a complex program with a complex history of sub-parts and lots of political constraints. The programs most like it have been successful. This is a larger version of those ideas, but those ideas were clearly more successful then what NASA has been doing for the last 40 years.

(Look at the countless failed projects)

> Government contractors deliver parts, without control or accountability about the performance of the entire system.

Contractors didn't have this during Apollo.