First Scientific American, and now Michael Bloomberg is calling for an end to SLS/Orion.
He doesn’t seem to think that it’s important to send people, but that doesn’t matter, because Starship could do it anyway. Congress wouldn’t be happy to see China beat us back.
Unfortunately this would be one area where a Musk led government efficiency board could not act due to conflict of interest.
I’ve wondered what would happen when DOGE meets NASA.
At less than 1% of the federal budget NASA isn’t worth wasting much of an efficiency board’s time anyway, there are much more productive areas of waste to examine… the entire Welfare State for a start.
That’s true, you pick the low-hanging fruit first. Start with the most regulatory impact and then the departments and agencies with the greatest headcount’s.
From past experience, cuts will be based on whose ox gets gored, rather than whether it’s a large cut or whether it makes sense.
See: Proxmire. Extremely interested in keeping “milk price supports”, i.e. subsidies for Wisconson dairy farmers. Tried to kill lots of pork, but all the pork he went after put together likely would not have paid for those supports.
I tend to say, I don’t trust Bloomberg’s motivations. My Proxmire-sense is tingling.
Somewhere in the bowls of the Internet’s space forums, conversations like this are probably happening.
“But we have to have SLS/Orion because it’s the path to the future, getting us out into the universe, and beyond!”
“Yeah! Starship can barely get to Mars and has no hope of getting us beyond the universe! Support SLS!”
“Elon Musk is a no-talent poopie head!”
“Elon Musk is a no-talent poopie head!”
A quote from Internet forums or federal intra-agency emails?
“Gary…”
“Gary” is over at The Space Review calling Trump/Musk fascists. And for some reason the TSR censors won’t allow my reply as to who the real fascists are.
Has Hitler learned about the Starship catch?
Great question.
If I wasn’t nostrils deep in writing a proposal I am going to have to present at the drop of a hat, I would do something.
Everyone but Boeing, Lockheed and Blue Origin, leave the room…
It will continue as long as congress allows it, so technological progress won’t be what kills it but rather political progress.
Proxmire ate margarine. I don’t know what Bloomberg eats.
Nearly all the mass, crawled to launch tower, is the solid boosters.
SLS is dragging rocket fuel around the country and up to the launch pad, instead of fueling the rocket at the
pad.
All SLS needs is kerosene flyback boosters.
Why waste money on that at this point in time? It’s a battleship in a carrier world now.
The new world is refueling rockets in orbit- if SLS can refuel in orbit, it’s pretty good.
If it had flyback kerosene boosters- I mean.
That would have been a reasonable idea, twenty years ago.
Time to bring back the battleships.
Buzz Aldrin was proposing that 20 years ago.
The public is nowhere near as passionate about this subject as the internet space “fans” (more like haters at this point).
A couple of op-eds full of the same decade old arguments and lies about these programs won’t change that.