It's not just me. If you want to find out about all of NASA's problems, all the things they just do wrong, there's simply no better place to start looking than the Space Launch System or SLS, the launch vehicle for the Artemis program. When you're looking at SLS, look at Artemis, too. The last time I did a dedicated post on this was about a key addition to SLS, the Exploration Upper Stage and how awful its development has been.
It's not just me harping on SLS. Blogger Casey Handmer is back on more
space-related topics from blogging about the business he started and has done
a post entitled, "SLS is still a national disgrace" and he's back to doing good posts. But this isn't just about SLS; it's
about so much more - virtually every NASA program in the last 20 years.
As usual, some snippets to whet your appetite to go read more.
Four years ago, I wrote that the SLS was a cripplingly embarrassing national failure and a tragedy waiting to happen. That remains true, of course, but now I will go further and underscore that by continuing to humor this monstrosity, NASA has squandered its technical integrity and credibility.
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Four years ago, I wrote that the best time to cancel the SLS was 20 years before, and the second best time was then. Four years on, the program has consumed another $20b with nothing to show for it. $20b, bringing total development cost to over $100b. This program burns $12m per day!
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NASA managers routinely complain of difficulties in hiring and retention – difficulties they never faced 20 years ago, before the SLS and before the private space companies that, unlike NASA, are able to offer some combination of market-rate compensation, a career track that rewards ambition and competence, and a workplace that swiftly departs underperformers.
Just imagine the mental agility required to actually want to work for an agency that continues to insist on technical doctrine no less absurd than “2+2=5” from top to bottom, from onboarding documentation all the way up to press releases, bilateral agreements and policy papers. Everyone at NASA knows the SLS is a looming catastrophe, but no-one can say it. Officially, it’s still the most powerful rocket ever built (except for Starship) and our official vehicle to the Moon and Mars! In reality, it’s insanely expensive, dangerous, and underpowered and can barely lift a reasonable payload to LEO.
Program by program, example by example, from Mars Sample Return to Space Suits
for Artemis, or from the James Webb Space Telescope to the Orion (Artemis
capsule) heat shield, there's a simply amazing compilation of facts.
Liftoff of Artemis I on the SLS in the early morning of November 16, 2022. Image credit: NASA
I think it was at the last Shuttle flight in 2011 that I first came to grips with NASA being as bad as every other agency in the Fed.gov hydra. If the budget problems are ever going to be resolved, the old mindset of "cut everyone's programs - except mine" has to go away. I was ready to see NASA cut to the core back then. This just reinforces that.
Well, since the VP is the head of the federal space program, nominally, hopefully (if Trump wins) the new VP will have the cojones to shutter this particular national and international embarrassment. And we can quip paying ESA for the upper stage of doom since they have such a remarkable track record of making man-rated rockets.
ReplyDeleteNASA and the tax payers would likely be better off if the agency focus was on un-manned probes and other purely science missions, using commercial launch vehicles. Space Force could manage the military programmes again via commercial launch capability. Commercial space can choose to do anything else at their profit centre risk.
ReplyDeleteI have thought that this is the best option: have them work on things like the Voyagers or other deep space, unmanned probes. The problem is even places like the JPL aren't immune to the rot going on in everything else.
DeleteTo shamelessly borrow most of what he said about Europa Clipper:
Europa Clipper. Budget grew from $2b in 2013 to $5.2b. One instrument, the ICEMAG magnetometer, was canceled due to poor progress. This instrument’s technology had been built and flown before but the necessary expertise was lost due to retirements and an achingly low flight rate. During final testing before launch in a few weeks, a known problem with radiation-sensitive MOSFETs was rediscovered. Known, as in this problem was flagged as a blocker at about five different design reviews over the last decade, but for whatever reason (perhaps sunk costs) was ignored and pushed to the next phase.
NASA started the downhill slide after the Space Race, and while they haven't hit bottom (the corpse is still twitching) they are Nearly Dead. It would seem the KISS principle is anathema to them, or perhaps they've never even heard of it.
ReplyDeleteNo accountability like the Private Sector, the Peter Principle in action, and a (relatively) bottomless pit of money flowing in, and what do you get? A technological gee-whiz-bang conglomeration of hardware, run by grifters, who have no plans to Make It Work in spite of glaring shortfalls, Piss Poor Planning, and everybody and his brother trying to loot the corpse while the opportunity presents itself.
"We, the Unwilling, being led by the Unqualified, have done So Much with So Little for So Long that we are now qualified to do absolutely Nothing with absolutely Anything." Pretty much sums it up, eh?
Wasn't the fellow who built the Kill Dozer last name Handmer?
ReplyDeleteNope. A quick search shows it was Heemeyer. Marvin Heemeyer.
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