17 thoughts on “A Rewriting Of Space-Policy History”

1. Re. Item #1: Evidently Big Brother is alive and well and living in Houston.

   Just for one, how can CRS money be nearly gone when it’s not paid unless the milestone is met?

   Maybe this item is a case of “projection” – or more simply, the Ministry of Lies.

2. In all fairness, there are other questions SLS could help us answer. I’ll list a few;

   #1, what does a trillion-dollar RUD look like?
   #2, what’s the best space launch architecture, from a perspective of keeping us ground-bound?
   #3, how many orders of magnitude are NASA’s safety estimates off this time? And how much of it is due to launching at such a slow rate?

   And a serious aside; there is nothing currently planned that actually needs SLS’s postulated lift capacity. Even the Europa probe would be fine on FH if it had a departure stage with high ISP. Or, Atlas or F9 if the departure stage launched separately. It’s also a fact that even SLS won’t have SLS’s postulated lift capacity for at least decades.

3. OK, I’ll bite: If there’s one area where SLS might be useful, it would seem to be in launching really, really big instruments. There are limits on how finely you can segment a mirror, and even more limits on how accurately you can do on-orbit assembly. Heavy lift and wide fairings make a lot of sense for telescopes.

   What am I missing?

   1. What you’re missing is the funding for that very large payload, which will never materialize if all the money is spent on SLS. Or even plans for a very large payload. Or any mission which might require such a payload.

   2. There aren’t any practical limits on how much you can microadjust mirror segments, and you don’t have to subject a single giant telescope to launch loads.

      1. I wonder if the Radical Moderate knows about the really large telescopes now under construction on Earth — all of which are multi-mirror designs.

   3. There are limits on how finely you can segment a mirror, and even more limits on how accurately you can do on-orbit assembly.

      So, what are those limits? Without giving actual numbers, your statement is meaningless.

      Heavy lift and wide fairings make a lot of sense for telescopes.

      With optical interferometry, we could synthesize apertures that are kilometers in diameter. Can you tell us the approximate cost and schedule for a rocket with 1km-wide faring?

   4. “What am I missing?”

      I am not a rocket surgeon and I don’t know the finer details of space based telescopes but to me it looks like there are any number of things SLS could do. I am confident that NASA can build a functioning launcher and functioning payloads, given enough time and money. I might have missed something in the debate, people aren’t saying that SLS has technological issues that make it an impossibility right?

      What it comes down to is whether or not SLS is the best way to achieve NASA’s goals and Rand’s kickstarter project should shed some light on the opportunity costs.

      1. Sorry, but SLS is the best way to achieve NASA’s goal — a steady stream of Congressional funding.

         Rand’s goals are not NASA’s, and it is unlikely that they ever will be. Rand is following in the footsteps of a hundred other space activists who have written books on the same theme: “All of NASA’s problems would be solved, if they just listened to me.”

         “Fixing NASA” is like Charlie Brown with the football or Bullwinkle trying to pull a rabbit out of his hat. Activists can’t bring themselves to understand that trick never works.

         Have you considered the opportunity costs of all the time and effort spent on “fixing NASA” (40 years and counting) instead of doing something constructive?

         1. I am not trying to “fix NASA.”

            1. I, for one, would like to see NASA bypassed by a successful private sector making a profit doing stuff out there.

            2. So would I, and I expect that to happen. My war on SLS is more of one waged as a taxpayer than as a space enthusiast.

            3. As a taxpayer, why do you care whether NASA wastes $20B on SLS or on whatever boondoggle replaces it? Which, if history is any indication, will be even more expensive and cost-ineffective than the program it replaces?

               For someone who says he’s not trying to fix NASA, you devote an awful lot of time to trying to fix NASA.

            4. It’s because it’s the part of bloated government that I understand best and can explain best, and few can do it better.

               I know this will make no sense to you, because most things make no sense to you.

4. It (Astronomy Mission) could be a job for SLS if it ever flies. This is probably not a surprising opinion coming from a Huntsville native. Just keep buttering the bread NASA.

   1. Huntsville native here (who works for a company that does some SLS work): SLS and Orion are the Good Ship Moneysuckers. They’re so prohibitively expensive that – barring a substantial and unlikely boost in NASA funding – preclude the development of needed payloads. To an even greater extent than the Shuttle, SLS/Orion are vehicles in search of a mission. Instead of building a honking big rocket and massively overpriced capsule, NASA should contract for services. Of course, NASA and the politicians have different metrics for success. Money spent is more important than results achieved.

5. Back in 2008 the National Research Council, at NASA’s request, evaluated science missions that might be enabled by Constellation, including by the Ares V SLS-ish monster rocket. The payloads were, unsurprisingly, quite expensive — in the multigigabuck range, often >$5G. Then there would be the cost of the rocket and other expenses.

   http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12201/science-opportunities-enabled-by-nasas-constellation-system-interim-report

   http://www.nap.edu/read/12201/chapter/2#2

Comments are closed.