Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SLS Is Not “Viable” Or “Sustainable”

12 Comments

Former Shuttle manager Wayne Hale speaks truth to people who don’t want to hear it:

“The current plan is fragile in the political and financial maelstrom that is Washington,” Hale said. “Planning to fly large rockets once every three or four years does not make a viable program. It is not sustainable.

“Continuing to develop programs in the same old ways, from my observations, will certainly lead to cancellation as government budgets are stretched thin. It is time to try new strategies.”

I’m sure a lot of folks in Madison County weren’t happy.

12 thoughts on “SLS Is Not “Viable” Or “Sustainable””

  1. The system locks in the use of those old strategies, it’s down to politicians search for power and political glory.

  2. It’s truly the largest and most expensive cargo-cult item in history. Build it and Apollo-scale (and beyond) demand will emerge. “It doesn’t matter how many decades have passed [and disproven the early ’60’s old-time religion], don’t take it away!”

    And we wonder how the Egyptians could have been sufficiently motivated to build the pyramids. Future historians will be just as baffled by empty gestures like this.

    At least the Egyptians had the excuse of ignorance of the cosmos. We only have the excuse of willful ignorance of human nature..which will likely never die. And, at least the pyramids are still here after nearly 5000 years because they’re made of stone, while SLS will be less than dust within decades.

  3. There’s an interesting piece in AmericaSpace that notes SLS is nearing “Key Decision Point C”, in preparation for which there will have to be prepared a lifecycle cost estimate. According to the article, “The lifecycle cost estimate ‘forms the basis of the Agency’s external commitment to OMB [the White House Office of Management and Budget] and Congress,’ according to NPR 7120.5E. In essence, this estimate defines the budget for the rest of the SLS development.”

    It will be very interesting indeed to see what NASA comes up with.

  4. It’s all about the permanent political deal that Johnson made to get Apollo going. NASA unmanned spaceflight is just a budget, the money gets spent in different places in different years depending on the projects involved. Sometimes the money goes to LockMart, or Boeing, or Ball, or JHU-APL, or JPL, or TRW, etc. The point is it’s a competitive system that is reasonably merit based. With NASA manned spaceflight a huge chunk of the budget has consistently flowed into effectively the same corporate entities in the same congressional districts since the mid-1960s. That’s been the driving force behind SLS. The political forces have merely manipulated congress, NASA, and the more gullible in the executive branch and in the public to come up with an idea, heavy lift launch, that they could hide this ongoing corporate welfare behind.

    What’s worse is that the track record of big budget aerospace programs has not been a good one and yet so many people willfully bought into the bloated promises of the SLS project without much grumbling. Yet even a minor hitch in the schedule or capabilities of the SLS will have an enormous impact on the cost and usefulness of the program in general, to the tune of billions of dollars. It’s shocking that anyone is naive enough to believe in this fantasy. It’s even worse that so many people willingly ignore studies from NASA itself and other well-respected organizations showing that there are better ways to achieve the same capabilities sooner and at much lower cost.

    1. “It’s all about the permanent political deal that Johnson made to get Apollo going.” Precisely. LBJ was nothing if not a master manipulator,

      This question just occurred to me, and I don’t know enough to answer it: Could distributing so much NASA money (and the people that went along with it) in the Southern states have been part of the “deal” by which he was able to get the Civil/Voting rights acts through? After all, NASA was 6% of the national budget in ’64. So the South finally gets to industrialize with Federal dollars that also inject talent from around the country as well as organizing the talent potential that was there already. The centers become the nuclei around which other industries have a chance to organize. Add wide-spread air conditioning and you had what used to be called the “New South.”

      Well, maybe all that’s been recognized and taken for granted long ago and I just don’t remember this at 4am. In any event, the “iron rice bowl” set up by LBJ for Apollo has doomed us to spend billions on useless or insanely low return-on-the-dollar space projects ever since.

      1. Those southern Democrats voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It would not have passed without the support of Republicans in Congress. According to this source, Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough was the only southern senator to vote for the Civil Rights Act.

    2. Obviously I didn’t need to. Hale has already denied, contrary to what has been implied, that he was calling for the cancellation of the SLS. His notions of changing management practices are sensible proposals.

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