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The Saturn V also took many years to develop and there were several "rehearsal" missions before there was a landing. NASA is not incompetent or corrupt and nei

The Saturn V also took many years to develop and there were several "rehearsal" missions before there was a landing. NASA is not incompetent or corrupt and neither are its contractors. The people who work all their lives at those institutions don't do so because they love the idea of never going to space. You might consider that the process is subject to other pressures than corruption. The reason why things are so expensive and take so long is because of how our society demands that government act. The response to failure of any kind is pull the plug, and skin those responsible alive in the press, and treat it not as a setback or a problem to be solved, but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game. The people saying that they hope it fails so their preferred vision can be implemented do not understand that if this fails, then that's just more years away from the goal. There isn't some tiny group of people you can point to and say "its their fault." The enemy here is actually broader society reads about, talks about, and votes about its government.

panick21_ 4y ago
A number of issues here. > The Saturn V also took many years to develop The Saturn V basically bootstrapped the whole US space industry. The Saturn V had 2 engines, F-1 and J-2 that had to be developed and put into production. It invented technologies and had incredibly complex computer systems for the time. You are comparing a project from a fledgling industry to a highly mature aerospace industry. And Saturn V is significantly larger and more powerful then even the eventually SLS 1c. This SLS is not even close to what Saturn V was able to do. > NASA is not incompetent or corrupt NASA is not some perfect organization on a hill shined on by god. NASA makes mistakes, NASA estimates things badly. NASA has group think and is influenced by its history. I wouldn't say NASA is incompetent, but that doesn't mean they are competent in some aspects either. In addition to that they are hamstrung by the politics of the situation and are not actually free to act on many things. > and neither are its contractors. Here I have to disagree with you. The contractors spend a huge amount of money on influencing NASA choices thew politics, and that is pretty close to what I call corruption. And there is also real corruption, if you have followed NASA then you would know that a director of human space flight was just fired because he shoveled information to Boeing. There is a believe with some in the space industry, that unless you give lots of money to Beoing, NG and LM your project is still born. This is a real issue and its series, both in civilian and military space. The contractors have no intensive to actually finish the rocket on time, despite horrible performances they keep getting bonuses and the and they keep a whole army of engineers employed that gives them political power. And they lose non of their profits. > The reason why things are so expensive and take so long is because of how our society demands that government act. That is quite a nebulus concept. Society doesn't demand anything in itself, society doesn't act or think. > The response to failure of any kind is pull the plug, and skin those responsible alive in the press, and treat it not as a setback or a problem to be solved, Funny COTS and CommercialCrew had plenty of failure but everybody evolved on the government side didn't get put infront of a firing squad and won prices instead. > but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game. That wrongly assumes that these issues are about democrats vs republicans. But this is not the case. Its political football, but not actually partiasan. Its a total misunderstanding of the politics of space and NASA to think this is about party. > The people saying that they hope it fails so their preferred vision can be implemented do not understand that if this fails, then that's just more years away from the goal. I have never said I hope it fails. But this is simply not true depending on what the goal is. If your goal is 'single mission to moon' then maybe it would be more years away. But if your goal is, having a sustainable successful moon program and space program, then it would actually be closer if SLS fails. The reality is that SLS is a hold-over from old NASA. A purely political creation that was never in NASA interest and simply exists for political reasons. SLS/Orion were literally the price the Obama administration had to pay for CommercialCrew to exist. > There isn't some tiny group of people you can point to and say "its their fault." There kind of is, a group of senators from Florida, Alabama, Utah that made sure when they wrote Space law in 2011 that forced NASA into this course of actions. > The enemy here is actually broader society reads about, talks about, and votes about its government. That overestimates the influence of the general public and underestimates the power of large contractors and employers in major stats.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> not as a setback or a problem to be solved, but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game Can we agree to call that external corruption? ...but I think there was a word for reorganizing your entire business model to bend toward the whims of external corruption.
- wallfacer120 4y ago
  That's not corruption in the way that word is commonly used. Equating the deliberate misuse of public funds with non-ideal outcomes because of broader cultural attitudes towards government just destroys the meaning of the word.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    The politicians are deliberately misusing funds. Pork barrel is misuse, generally. And the extremely huge organizations that take the funds are not exactly misusing things themselves but they are facilitating the politicians.
    - wallfacer120 4y ago
      No, that's pork barrel spending, which is a different thing, namely, a policy decision (that you perhaps disagree with) made within the confines of the law. Stop trying to get the word corruption to encompass "all decisions I disagree with." It's what people do when they're trying to make their disagreement into an ideological judgement, because that's what's more satisfying and exciting.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        You're seriously saying it can't be misuse because it's legal? It's been legal for congress members to inside trade, even. That doesn't make it acceptable. It's not just making decisions I "disagree with" that matter here.
- fsloth 4y ago
  I have no idea what "external corruption" is - is there a definition for this term somewhere?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bayesian_horse 4y ago
I'd also state that space flight is damn hard and damn expensive in the first place.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I have over 200 hours on Kerbal and I can vouch for this.
- wallfacer120 4y ago
  Right? The negativity and ideological chin stroking and assuming-the-worst on these threads is so discouraging.
ckastner 4y ago
> NASA is not incompetent or corrupt and neither are its contractors. But there are a damn lot of special interests influencing the process. > The reason why things are so expensive and take so long is because of how our society demands that government act. The response to failure of any kind is pull the plug, and skin those responsible alive in the press, and treat it not as a setback or a problem to be solved, but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game. Can you give an example for this that would explain the immense costs compared to e.g. SpaceX bootstrapping itself for a fraction? They may not be corruption, but there sure as hell are a lot of special interests. NASA's budget is set by Congress, after all.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  SpaceX has a profit motive and backing business. NASA is pure cost, so of course it costs more. And spacex doesn’t have a fully scoped moon base platform. It doesn’t even have a full heavy lift yet. Why? Because the costs are too great. Hence, the public funds the leap frog over business and paves the way for private industry. That’s the benefit of the public funded model. It advances us faster than is natural.
  - mdorazio 4y ago
    I'm confused by your comment for a couple reasons. 1) SpaceX doesn't have a complete super heavy lift rocket because they're still iterating the design, they started later than SLS (roughly 2013 vs. 2011), they have to build their own infrastructure and deal with the FAA (NASA/contractors largely don't), and they're designing from an entirely different and likely much better long-term requirement of reusability. Cost is only a side factor if you've been tracking Starship development. 2) This SLS can't actually land on the moon. It's a to-orbit and orbital transfer platform only. 3) Given 1 and 2, it isn't at all clear that "public funds leap frog over business" or that in this case SLS somehow "paves the way for private industry". SLS is untested, horribly expensive to launch, has basically no new technology, and isn't even "done" (this is just Block 1). While I'm happy to have a second super heavy lift rock available, I and many other people strongly question if this was really the best use of the funds as opposed to using those same funds to incentivize SpaceX and its competitors to build more modern rockets free from special interests. Doing the latter seems like it would be the more efficient way to pave a path for private industry.
Gravityloss 4y ago
This is arguing about the wrong thing. You can have an organization where everybody is very competent and earnest, and still have bad results, because they are trying to do the wrong thing. SLS has some technical design issues. Large segmented solid rockets for the Space Shuttle were originally politically motivated. Ares V and subsequently SLS inherited them. They make operations really hard. They are very heavy and dangerous. Liquid rockets can be moved around empty and fueled on the pad. A lot easier and safer. No matter how great an engineer you are, if you have to use large segmented solid rockets, you're probably not going to have small launch infrastructure, small crew or frequent launches. Another way to move humanity towards spacefaring would be instead to work on a rocket that's fundamentally designed to be more operations friendly.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
adastra22 4y ago
Boeing is absolutely corrupt. They’ve gotten their wrist slapped multiple times for improper behavior around contract bids, and the Boeing representatives in Congress don’t even try to mask their loyalty. That’s not a mark in the nice engineers who work there, but let’s not kid ourselves.
Veedrac 4y ago
Making intentionally and obviously bad plays that directly work against the agency's goals because that way they get more free government money is corruption. The ‘a 50 year old rocket that was the first of its kind was expensive too!’ excuse doesn't make sense when anybody with the most modest bit of understanding about how rockets work can look up the industry and come up with a plan about a factor-10 more cost efficient that's significantly safer both from a human and a technical risk perspective, and could have been done on much shorter timelines.
hahaitsfunny 4y ago
ranman 4y ago
> NASA is not incompetent or corrupt and neither are its contractors. Corruption is one thing I don't feel qualified to comment on but having worked for both NASA and for a few contractors... yes they're absolutely incompetent. They have expertise in small pockets but the overall organization is surrounded by giant cushions of bloat. NASA could drop ~50% of their staff and nothing would materially change. ULA could drop ~20% of their staff and nothing would materially change.
bumblebritches5 4y ago

panick21_ 4y ago

A number of issues here. > The Saturn V also took many years to develop The Saturn V basically bootstrapped the whole US space industry. The Saturn V had 2 engines, F-1 and J-2 that had to be developed and put into production. It invented technologies and had incredibly complex computer systems for the time. You are comparing a project from a fledgling industry to a highly mature aerospace industry. And Saturn V is significantly larger and more powerful then even the eventually SLS 1c. This SLS is not even close to what Saturn V was able to do. > NASA is not incompetent or corrupt NASA is not some perfect organization on a hill shined on by god. NASA makes mistakes, NASA estimates things badly. NASA has group think and is influenced by its history. I wouldn't say NASA is incompetent, but that doesn't mean they are competent in some aspects either. In addition to that they are hamstrung by the politics of the situation and are not actually free to act on many things. > and neither are its contractors. Here I have to disagree with you. The contractors spend a huge amount of money on influencing NASA choices thew politics, and that is pretty close to what I call corruption. And there is also real corruption, if you have followed NASA then you would know that a director of human space flight was just fired because he shoveled information to Boeing. There is a believe with some in the space industry, that unless you give lots of money to Beoing, NG and LM your project is still born. This is a real issue and its series, both in civilian and military space. The contractors have no intensive to actually finish the rocket on time, despite horrible performances they keep getting bonuses and the and they keep a whole army of engineers employed that gives them political power. And they lose non of their profits. > The reason why things are so expensive and take so long is because of how our society demands that government act. That is quite a nebulus concept. Society doesn't demand anything in itself, society doesn't act or think. > The response to failure of any kind is pull the plug, and skin those responsible alive in the press, and treat it not as a setback or a problem to be solved, Funny COTS and CommercialCrew had plenty of failure but everybody evolved on the government side didn't get put infront of a firing squad and won prices instead. > but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game. That wrongly assumes that these issues are about democrats vs republicans. But this is not the case. Its political football, but not actually partiasan. Its a total misunderstanding of the politics of space and NASA to think this is about party. > The people saying that they hope it fails so their preferred vision can be implemented do not understand that if this fails, then that's just more years away from the goal. I have never said I hope it fails. But this is simply not true depending on what the goal is. If your goal is 'single mission to moon' then maybe it would be more years away. But if your goal is, having a sustainable successful moon program and space program, then it would actually be closer if SLS fails. The reality is that SLS is a hold-over from old NASA. A purely political creation that was never in NASA interest and simply exists for political reasons. SLS/Orion were literally the price the Obama administration had to pay for CommercialCrew to exist. > There isn't some tiny group of people you can point to and say "its their fault." There kind of is, a group of senators from Florida, Alabama, Utah that made sure when they wrote Space law in 2011 that forced NASA into this course of actions. > The enemy here is actually broader society reads about, talks about, and votes about its government. That overestimates the influence of the general public and underestimates the power of large contractors and employers in major stats.

Dylan16807 4y ago

> not as a setback or a problem to be solved, but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game Can we agree to call that external corruption? ...but I think there was a word for reorganizing your entire business model to bend toward the whims of external corruption.

wallfacer120 4y ago
That's not corruption in the way that word is commonly used. Equating the deliberate misuse of public funds with non-ideal outcomes because of broader cultural attitudes towards government just destroys the meaning of the word.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  The politicians are deliberately misusing funds. Pork barrel is misuse, generally. And the extremely huge organizations that take the funds are not exactly misusing things themselves but they are facilitating the politicians.
  - wallfacer120 4y ago
    No, that's pork barrel spending, which is a different thing, namely, a policy decision (that you perhaps disagree with) made within the confines of the law. Stop trying to get the word corruption to encompass "all decisions I disagree with." It's what people do when they're trying to make their disagreement into an ideological judgement, because that's what's more satisfying and exciting.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      You're seriously saying it can't be misuse because it's legal? It's been legal for congress members to inside trade, even. That doesn't make it acceptable. It's not just making decisions I "disagree with" that matter here.
fsloth 4y ago
I have no idea what "external corruption" is - is there a definition for this term somewhere?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bayesian_horse 4y ago

I'd also state that space flight is damn hard and damn expensive in the first place.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
I have over 200 hours on Kerbal and I can vouch for this.
wallfacer120 4y ago
Right? The negativity and ideological chin stroking and assuming-the-worst on these threads is so discouraging.

ckastner 4y ago

> NASA is not incompetent or corrupt and neither are its contractors. But there are a damn lot of special interests influencing the process. > The reason why things are so expensive and take so long is because of how our society demands that government act. The response to failure of any kind is pull the plug, and skin those responsible alive in the press, and treat it not as a setback or a problem to be solved, but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game. Can you give an example for this that would explain the immense costs compared to e.g. SpaceX bootstrapping itself for a fraction? They may not be corruption, but there sure as hell are a lot of special interests. NASA's budget is set by Congress, after all.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
SpaceX has a profit motive and backing business. NASA is pure cost, so of course it costs more. And spacex doesn’t have a fully scoped moon base platform. It doesn’t even have a full heavy lift yet. Why? Because the costs are too great. Hence, the public funds the leap frog over business and paves the way for private industry. That’s the benefit of the public funded model. It advances us faster than is natural.
- mdorazio 4y ago
  I'm confused by your comment for a couple reasons. 1) SpaceX doesn't have a complete super heavy lift rocket because they're still iterating the design, they started later than SLS (roughly 2013 vs. 2011), they have to build their own infrastructure and deal with the FAA (NASA/contractors largely don't), and they're designing from an entirely different and likely much better long-term requirement of reusability. Cost is only a side factor if you've been tracking Starship development. 2) This SLS can't actually land on the moon. It's a to-orbit and orbital transfer platform only. 3) Given 1 and 2, it isn't at all clear that "public funds leap frog over business" or that in this case SLS somehow "paves the way for private industry". SLS is untested, horribly expensive to launch, has basically no new technology, and isn't even "done" (this is just Block 1). While I'm happy to have a second super heavy lift rock available, I and many other people strongly question if this was really the best use of the funds as opposed to using those same funds to incentivize SpaceX and its competitors to build more modern rockets free from special interests. Doing the latter seems like it would be the more efficient way to pave a path for private industry.

Gravityloss 4y ago

This is arguing about the wrong thing. You can have an organization where everybody is very competent and earnest, and still have bad results, because they are trying to do the wrong thing. SLS has some technical design issues. Large segmented solid rockets for the Space Shuttle were originally politically motivated. Ares V and subsequently SLS inherited them. They make operations really hard. They are very heavy and dangerous. Liquid rockets can be moved around empty and fueled on the pad. A lot easier and safer. No matter how great an engineer you are, if you have to use large segmented solid rockets, you're probably not going to have small launch infrastructure, small crew or frequent launches. Another way to move humanity towards spacefaring would be instead to work on a rocket that's fundamentally designed to be more operations friendly.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

adastra22 4y ago

Boeing is absolutely corrupt. They’ve gotten their wrist slapped multiple times for improper behavior around contract bids, and the Boeing representatives in Congress don’t even try to mask their loyalty. That’s not a mark in the nice engineers who work there, but let’s not kid ourselves.

Veedrac 4y ago

Making intentionally and obviously bad plays that directly work against the agency's goals because that way they get more free government money is corruption. The ‘a 50 year old rocket that was the first of its kind was expensive too!’ excuse doesn't make sense when anybody with the most modest bit of understanding about how rockets work can look up the industry and come up with a plan about a factor-10 more cost efficient that's significantly safer both from a human and a technical risk perspective, and could have been done on much shorter timelines.

hahaitsfunny 4y ago

ranman 4y ago

> NASA is not incompetent or corrupt and neither are its contractors. Corruption is one thing I don't feel qualified to comment on but having worked for both NASA and for a few contractors... yes they're absolutely incompetent. They have expertise in small pockets but the overall organization is surrounded by giant cushions of bloat. NASA could drop ~50% of their staff and nothing would materially change. ULA could drop ~20% of their staff and nothing would materially change.

bumblebritches5 4y ago