History, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

#SciTech2016

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I’ve been at the SciTech2016 conference in San Diego (drove down from LA this morning ahead of most of the rain). Posting will probably remain light until tomorrow afternoon or Thursday, when I get back to the office.

I should say, though, that Bill Anders was very politically incorrect in the plenary session this morning. He was basically singing from my hymnal, about the obsession with safety, and Apollo not being about space, and he had unkind words to say about Orion, with a poor young woman from the program sitting on the dais with him (it was pretty funny when Ann Sulkosky and another Lockmart guy came up to him afterwards to gently remonstrate with him). It was particularly hilarious, because they’re the primary sponsor of the conference; there was a big Lockmart logo above them.

I introduced myself, and gave him a copy of the book. He said he’d read it (future tense), and I hope he does. It’s nice to run into an Apollo astronaut who’s thinking in 21st-century terms. He said Elon was on his poop list (he used a different word) because he was one of the few Apollo guys who had stood up for him against Cunningham and Cernan, but Elon had stood him up for lunch. I don’t think Apollo astronauts are used to being stood up for lunch.

15 thoughts on “#SciTech2016”

  1. Meanwhile, NASA is paying Aerojet Rocketdyne $1.5 billion to build six (!) new RS-25 engines for SLS.

    1. That blows my mind. That’s likely more than the entire Falcon//FH/Dragon/crewed Dragon programs cost in toto.

      1. What’s even worse is Nasaspaceflight is reporting that it takes FIVE YEARS to hand-build each one of these engine. FIVE YEARS!!!

        They claim construction methods still date back to the 70’s largely unaltered.

        And how long does it take SpaceX to build a Merlin? Five weeks maybe?

        I am sure the RS-25 is a higher performance engine but give me a break!

      2. Makes me think about a funny KSP video I saw on youtube the other day. The challenge was to get a crewed Orion and fully fueled lander to the Moon in one SLS launch. The problem? The solid rocket boosters aren’t powerful enough. The solution? Strap 4 Falcon 9 boosters to the side of it. LoL! https://youtu.be/d2200YGSeKM

    2. That means an RS-25 costs about 250 times a Merlin. Goodness. (Yes I know the price would be lower for a larger order, but still.)

      1. And according to NASA logic these are just way too complex (read expensive) to re-use… What a world…

    3. While still ridiculous, that’s not exactly accurate. The $1.5 billion not only covers the cost of build 6 RS-25s, it covers the R&D to make them a bit cheaper in the long run (assuming the whole project doesn’t get canceled like it should) and to reestablish the supply chain and production capability. So, instead of simply saying that the new engines are going to cost $250 million each, R&D and production restart will likely eat up about half of the $1.5 billion. That would mean the cost of the engines would be “only” $125 million each. Such a deal!! /sarc

      1. True. I think it’s actually explicitly $1.1B for the restart/retool and a few design tweaks, the rest for the next six engines, so more like $70M each for those?

  2. Make sure you watch the video of Monday’s plenary too; Dan Goldin and Jacques Gansler in particular were politically incorrect. I had to leave for the technical sessions before the question and answer period though.

  3. It’s nice to run into an Apollo astronaut who’s thinking in 21st-century terms like I do.

    Avoid self-serving euphemisms.Maybe you’re thinking in 21st century terms; maybe you’re indulging in wild fantasies. Trying to co-opt the language is a practice you’ve condemned in other contexts. Why indulge in it here?

  4. “He said Elon was on his poop list (he used a different word)…”.

    His poop “register”? His poop “directory”? His poop “catalog”? I’m dying to find out what other word he used!

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