[starspangled]

If it continued to be built as government projects by the same old military industrial corporation contractors? Yes I sure can imagine the unit cost, but "astronomical" is the word that comes to mind, rather than affordable.

I won't say they weren't capable or reliable, but what made rockets affordable was the privatization effort that happened after the USA, under the careful stewardship of NASA and those MIC corporations, lost the ability to send astronauts to space for the first time in 50 years, and was humiliatingly forced to rely on Russia for its astronaut launch services, even using Russian rocket engines for launching payloads of important national security and economic importance.

[lupusreal]

The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles. What changed is those contractors got fat and lazy off the cost-plus contracts and lost their will to get shit done on time. Fixing those contractors is probably impossible, those companies are addicted to inefficiency as surely as junkies to heroin. Rather they simply need to be replaced by new contractors, ideally under fixed-price contracts, that presently have a demonstrable ability to get shit done. And should they ever lose their edge, they need to be cut loose and replaced again. Ruthlessly excising inefficient contractors despite their heritage and legacy, rather than keeping them around to keep senators happy, is how you keep capabilities.

[starspangled]

> The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles.

Yes, under government run projects.

The change in direction from the administration around the Obama administration is considered privatization / commercialization of space launch services not because private companies are now involved in building rockets, but because the projects are largely private, and the government mainly bids for services not rocket construction.

[lupusreal]

SLS is as much a government run project as the Shuttle and Saturn V. It's the old way of doing things, and that's why it's so wasteful and useless. The commercialization of launch services has given us SpaceX and Rocketlab, which are both lean and efficient by any measure and easily so by the measure of programs NASA is more involved in.

[feoren]

> rather than keeping them around to keep senators happy

To whom are you directing your advice, then? This is like those articles headlined "Donald Trump must resign" -- who is supposed to make that happen? Who with any power over this situation is going to change their mind as a result of that article? Keeping senators and congress happy is literally the point of these programs, no?

[lupusreal]

I'm not giving anybody advice.