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NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Fuck SpaceX propaganda.
Are you familiar with Wernher von Braun? He was a Nazi who ran Germany's V2 rocket program during World War II. He produced thousands of ballistic missiles intended to indiscriminately bombard British cities, they were unable to accurately target specific military sites so they were just aimed at civilian centers and let loose. Slave labor was used in their production, resulting in many thousands of innocent Jews and other concentration camp prisoners dying under hazardous conditions and bombardment of the manufacturing facilities.
After the war he went to work for NASA and was the principle designer behind the Saturn V that took humanity to the Moon. Should NASA have repudiated the Saturn V design and gone with a less capable vehicle? Should people be responding "Fuck Nazi propaganda" whenever the virtues of the Saturn V are mentioned? Or is it possible to separate the evaluation of the merits of a rocket from the evaluation of the rocket's designer?
Elon Musk is a shitty person. The Starship is a fantastic rocket. Both of these things can be simultaneously true.
Interesting tidbit about the V2: as far as I know it's the only weapons system that killed more people during the manufacturing process than it did in actual use. Casualties caused by V2 strikes are estimated to be around 9 000, but around 12 000 slave laborers died making them (see eg the wiki).
In any case, comparing von Braun to Musk is uncharitable towards von Braun: he actually did design rockets and knew what he was doing, where Musk is just a bigoted windbag that emits money. But I do tend to agree with your sentiment though: SpaceX has good designs, but that's completely separate from Musk being a human turd (and his only part in it is the part where he emits money.)
Death of the ~~author~~ ~~engineer~~ venture capitalist?
It's not propaganda when it's true.
And SLS is hideously expensive compared to every other launch vehicle in history.
It looks like there are a few new articles since this one came out:
https://spacenews.com/gao-report-calls-for-more-transparency-on-sls-costs/
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/gao-nasa-not-transparent-about-unaffordable-sls-costs/
Neither of those mention SpaceX at all, and the OP article just mentions them and Blue in the context of engine prices.
There are Republicans in government too. They will always sell out to corporations over public interest.
You can take SpaceX out of the equation and it still is a massive money spend.
Compare the cost of the entire Apollo program (adjusted for inflation) to the SLS program.
You might be surprised.
Be(e) nice from now on at Beehaw and enjoy your three day vacation.
You cannot argue with the numbers
The numbers are bullshit. All money spent on NASA goes back to the economy. And it's all public domain technology. Fascists would love to replace that will privately controlled technology.
How is a fixed price launch contract for SpaceX that different from a cost plus contract for Boeing to build an SLS as far as money going back to the economy? I genuinely don't get how those are meaningfully different.
How does the public domain technology actually matter, other than from an idealistic standpoint? NASA is even spinning off SLS production and management to be more private under EPOC to Deep Space Transport (Boeing+NG). They, along with Aerojet, basically get these sole-sourced, partially because of their non-public IP for making this stuff.