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by Analemma_ 722 days ago
NASA also thought the Space Shuttle was going to get cheaper per-launch after a couple years of service, and they turned out to be completely wrong. Why should we trust that this time will be different?

NASA's own Inspector General says, "... NASA’s aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50 percent is highly unrealistic" and "... a single SLS will cost more than $2 billion through the first 10 SLS rockets ... " [0]

[0]: https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ig-24-001.pd...
1 comments
akira2501 722 days ago
> and they turned out to be completely wrong.

There were a lot of assumptions that turned out to be wrong. The chief among them was launch cadence and satellite capture and return missions. When these assumptions changed the cost values changed significantly as well.

> Why should we trust that this time will be different?

Do you understand the details of this specific contract? It's limited to 10 launches. It's structured quite a bit differently than the shuttle program was.

> NASA's own Inspector General says

Yes and did you read the recommendations and follow up from that same report? Or is this just a "haha NASA is dumb" rant that's become common around here?

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tempnow987 721 days ago
NASA is dumb. They are funding this thing (SLS) at cost+ - and despite paying for it don't own it! That is totally ridiculous. If I hire someone to build a website for me, at the end I own it. NASA has given away the rights to SLS. So they can only do a deal for SLS with current contractors. WHATEVER price those contractors want to charge, they can't let anyone else compete to build it.

I also think there is almost no chance anyone of these folks is going to do fixed price for EUS or whatever. Contractors are getting something like $600 million / year on this thing and have been hoovering the gravy for 7-8 years.

Remember that these types of forever contracts that take 20-30 years are also liked by the NASA centers who work with the contractors - it's very stable career / funding (ignore the waste). So NASA at the centers level is not fighting against this stuff (ie, it's not just congress that pushes this stuff).

All these pork projects got a huge win with Biden picking Bill Nelson as NASA admin. Do wonder if a bit of SpaceX hate played a role there :)

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