The problem with the new US Dietary Guidelines

I've seen quite a few comments in opposition to the new, inverted food pyramid that the USDA released early last month. Most of these comments are from the groups and individuals that wanted the old pyramid the way it was, or who wanted the food pyramid to completely ban not just meat but anything that an animal was involved with in any way. But I've only seen one person who actually mentioned a genuine problem with what the USDA said, and that person is Nina Teicholz who wrote an extremely influential book on diet, called the Big Fat Surprise back in 2014. In this article I'll quote from Nina's substack on the subject; I've been a subscriber to her substack since she started it. When you click on this link, you'll be offered a prompt to read it for free or subscribe. I've never paid a cent.

Getting back to the subject, though, the problem with the guidelines is simple: the math doesn't work. 

See, the food guidelines have always had an absurd emphasis on the reduction of fat in the diet, especially "dat ol' debil" saturated fat, largely due to some studies from the post-WWII days that have been discredited - mainly by not having measurable positive effects - and at least one that reeks of fraud. Both HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary have repeatedly pledged to “end to the war on saturated fat” since they took office. To quote from Nina's article on this:

The cap on saturated fats has been a bedrock piece of advice since the launch of this policy in 1980, and it is why so many Americans avoid red meat, drink skim milk, and opt to cook with seed oils over butter.

Yet I learned from two administration officials that saturated fats will not be liberated after all. The longstanding 10% of calories cap on these fats will remain.

At the same time, the guidelines’ language will encourage cooking with “butter” and “tallow,” both of which are high in saturated fat. It will also introduce a colorful new food pyramid with proteins—including red meat—occupying the largest portion. These are powerful messages, never before conveyed by our national food policy, and are likely to influence consumer behavior. 

Let me put the food pyramid here, from her article again.

Her concern is that it isn't clear from this display that the old low fat diet guideline of 10% calories from fat (CFF) still applies. For individuals on their own, at home or free-living anywhere: Fine. As always, if you ignore it, it can't hurt you. 

But there’s another audience: the roughly 30 million children eating school lunches daily, plus military personnel, and the vulnerable populations—elderly and poor Americans—who receive food through federal programs, roughly 1 in 4 Americans each week. These programs are required by law to follow the Dietary Guidelines. For them, the numerical cap will trump any contrary language about butter and tallow. Cafeteria managers and program administrators will continue to adhere to the 10% limit, because that’s what the law requires.

For these captive populations, seed oils will remain the mandated cooking fat. The encouraging words about butter and tallow will essentially be meaningless.

For someone on a 2000 calorie/day diet, 10% calories from fat means 200 calories in a day; with fat at 9 roughly calories per gram, that's 22 grams/day. Nina goes on to show how little that is in a day. 

• 1 cup whole-fat yogurt for breakfast: ~5 grams

• 1 chicken thigh with skin, cooked in 1 tablespoon butter for dinner: ~12 grams

Total: ~17 grams of saturated fat for two small meals.

or

• 2 eggs cooked in 1 tablespoon of butter: ~13 grams

• 4 oz ribeye steak: ~6 grams

• Broccoli with 1 tablespoon butter: ~7 grams

Total: ~26 grams of saturated fat for two small meals

Her next topic is that the limit on fat impacts another good aspect of the recommendations, to increase protein. 

I’ve also learned that the new guidelines will increase the recommended amount of protein from the current RDA minimum of about 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight to 1.2-1.5 grams. This is genuinely good news. Studies show this higher range is far better for weight loss, muscle maintenance, recovery from serious illness, and overall well-being—especially for school-aged children and older adults, two populations whose protein needs have been chronically underserved by current recommendations.

But here’s the paradox: with the cap on saturated fats still in place, this increased protein cannot realistically come from animal sources. A 4-ounce serving of lean beef provides 24 grams of protein but also delivers about 6 grams of saturated fat. Meeting the higher protein targets through beef, pork, or chicken thighs with skin would blow through the saturated fat limit by lunchtime.

So where will this protein come from? The only options that fit within the 10% saturated fat cap are peas, beans, and lentils—plant proteins that are mostly incomplete (lacking at least one of the nine essential amino acids), harder for the body to absorb, and packed with starch. To match the protein in 4 ounces of beef, you’d need over 6 tablespoons of peanut butter—between 500 and 600 calories, compared to 155 for the beef.

This isn't news to pretty much anybody that takes their fitness and health seriously, whether gym bros, marathon runners, distance cyclists, you name it. Vegetarian sources of protein are generally incomplete and require combing sources that complement each other and turn it into a proper mixture of the nine essential amino acids. Most people just reflexively believe that vegetables are good for you; so much that "fruits and vegetables" turn into one word. "Don't forget your fruitsandvegetables!" 

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Nina devotes a few inches of column space to look at the "why" of the updates, especially with the consideration that much of what secretary Kennedy and others had said they wanted to do in the guidelines either never got added or the addition got deleted along the way. It all comes down to silly political decisions. Things like how repeated reviews by teams of scientists around the world have concluded that things like the 10% calories from fat and limiting saturated fat are contradicted over and over again yet they still didn't want to get rid of those. 

"The large, rigorous clinical trials on saturated fats—on 60,000 to 80,000 people worldwide—could never demonstrate that reducing saturated fat lowered a person’s risk of death from heart disease or any other cause." 

Congress warned Artemis “cannot work”

A really rare thing took place in front of a congressional subcommittee today. An expert witness, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, told them China is going to beat us to the moon and the plans to get there cannot work. More surprising was someone saying out loud that the reason the Artemis program is in such a deep hole is because of the perpetually late and over budget Space Launch System (SLS) and the recognition that the cost plus contracts they've been working under are a big problem. 

Let's back up a minute. 

Remember back in October when acting NASA adminstrator Sean Duffy did a review of the situation, partly to shake up everything? He got some things right but also got others wrong - in particular no focus on the cost plus contracts. But a month or six weeks before that, in the wake of Senator Ted Cruz hosting a "save the SLS" meeting in the Senate, Duffy was arguing we need to make Artemis III's mission the last SLS launch because we simply can't afford to use the SLS. In particular what Duffy said was:

If Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III are all $4 billion a launch, $4 billion a launch. At $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program. It just, I don’t think that exists.

If I may be allowed to pirate that a little, I read that as, "$4 billion here, 4 billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." 

As for what to do about it, Griffin said legislators should end the present plan.

“The Artemis III mission and those beyond should be canceled and we should start over, proceeding with all deliberate speed,” Griffin said. He included a link to his plan, which is not dissimilar from the “Apollo on Steroids” architecture he championed two decades ago, but was later found to be unaffordable within NASA’s existing budget.

That says the Artemis II SLS and Orion Capsule they just stacked for its February 5 mission will be the last SLS ever launched. I don't see how that could be relevant to whatever program replaces this, and if it's not relevant to whatever the program becomes, I say scrap it.

As I'm sure you're all aware, while there has always been a few percent of people who say we've never been to the moon, an argument I've noticed lately that I hadn't heard in the 1990s is along the lines of "things were so primitive in the 1960s, we barely had computers, how did we go then when technology today is so much better?" One of the reasons is people designing the Artemis programs thought it would be a waste to recreate the Apollo missions - send two guys to the moon for a day or two and come right back? That's silly. 

The idea was to build out a way to stay on the moon longer.  So they built the SLS rocket and capsule system (SLS = Shuttles' Leftover Shit) that falls short of the Apollo-Saturn V combination and kept band-aiding things onto that. A Lunar Space Station, um, "Lunar Gateway" that Apollo didn't need because they could get there for a couple of days, for example. Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits and more.

The most stringent criticism of the Artemis Program was offered by former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. He has long been a critic of NASA’s approach toward establishing what the space agency views as a “sustainable” path back to the Moon, which relies on reusable lunar landers that are refueled in space.

Griffin reiterated that criticism on Thursday, without naming SpaceX or Blue Origin, and their Starship and Blue Moon Mk 2 landers.

“The bottom line is that an architecture which requires a high number of refueling flights in low-Earth orbit, no one really knows how many, uses a technology that has not yet ever been demonstrated in space, is very unlikely to work—unlikely to the point where I will say it cannot work,” Griffin said.
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“Sticking to a plan is important when the plan makes sense,” Griffin said. “China is sticking to a plan that makes sense. It looks a lot, in fact, like what the United States did for Apollo. Provably, that worked. Sticking to a plan that will not work for Artemis III and beyond makes no sense.”

Aside from recognition and credit to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services, CLPS, which has been behind many of the small budget missions to the moon over the last several years, the other positive things to come out of the meeting came from Dean Cheng of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, who said NASA and Congress must do a better job of holding itself and its contractors accountable.

Many of NASA’s major exploration programs, including the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System rocket, and their ground systems, have run years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget in the last 15 years. NASA has funded these programs with cost-plus contracts, so it has had limited ability to enforce deadlines with contractors. Moreover, Congress has more or less meekly gone along with the delays and continued funding the programs.

Cheng said that whatever priorities policymakers decide for NASA,  failing to achieve objectives should come with consequences.

“One, it needs to be bipartisan, to make very clear throughout our system that this is something that everyone is pushing for,” Cheng said of establishing priorities for NASA. “And two, that there are consequences, budgetary, legal, and otherwise, to the agency, to supplying companies. If they fail to deliver on time and on budget, that it will not be a ‘Well, okay, let’s try again next year.’ There need to be consequences.”

“There need to be consequences?” This needs to apply to everything DC regulates/rules over and every agency doing it. 

The Artemis II vehicle inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, this November. Image credit: NASA

What's the word for a rerun of a rerun?

Despite the major changes to the Federal Budget that have gone by since President Trump took office, I'm getting the feeling that it's all just "the same old bullshit" we've been going through for decades.  Yes, I'm reading of government shutdowns coming.  As usual, it's going to shutdown "if they can't agree to a budget."  Ars Technica (who are apparently 100% in the crowd that says, "yes cut the budget, but don't you DARE cut what I want!) summarized it this way: "In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms."

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a "continuing resolution" to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely. 

While we haven't had an actual government shutdown in a few years, it's just the same old routine used all the time.  As for passing a budget, one of the actual duties assigned to the legislative branch, it still seems to be that the most recent Federal budget to be passed and signed was in 1997.  That's actually a polite and kind way of summing up the situation.  I say it's kind because it implies that congress has only been so bad in doing their jobs since 1997.  A better picture is conveyed by a quote attributed to South Carolina's Nikki Haley (governor at the time), "in the past 40 years, Congress has passed a pathetic four budgets on time."  

What they do that allows them to keep spending at nearly infinite levels is to pass those "continuing resolutions" mentioned in the first quote to legalize the spending.  

My guess is that if the media wasn't so tied up with the story about Charlie Kirk, they'd be blabbering about a looming government shut down, with the usual Gloom and Doom talk.  

Things like this recurring story are one of the reasons I've drastically cut back on the amount of politics and economics writing I used to do.  I'm so bored with writing about this, I'll just get to the essence of why I'm here.  If you want the long story, go to this 2023 post. 

So why do we go through this crap every time the subject comes up?  Political theater.  Kabuki (overly dramatic) theater.  They drag it out to the last minute so they can look like heroes.  If they shut down the Fed.gov, so what?  Those workers get their time off and their pay, so it's "no harm? no foul."  Feel sorry for them?  I think if one works for fed.gov, one should have a savings buffer of a few weeks to ensure you can buy your groceries in the event of a shutdown.  It's not like nobody knows a shutdown is coming. 

There's a cartoon I've been running for years, almost every reference to the debt ceiling since 2013, that I really think sums up the whole story.  In a way, a Star Wars parody reference.

Yup. They drag it out as long as they want, make it sound as dire as possible, all so that they can look like heroes, as in the last panel.  I went to the website referred to in the lower left of the cartoon and the web site appears to be gone, with a Vietnamese language site there.

A New Meeting in Congress to "Save the SLS"

I feel like I should be doing a disclaimer here: I swear I'm not making this up.  While I've regularly referred to the SLS as an abbreviation for the "Shuttles' Leftover Shit" that's a relatively new version of that acronym.  Before that it was known as the "Senate Launch System" - as in "it only exists because enough Senators were bought."  My proof I'm not making this up is the link to Eric Berger's story at Ars Technica.   

All of the original US senators who created and sustained NASA's Space Launch System rocket over the last 15 years—Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Richard Shelby—have either retired or failed to win reelection. However, a new champion has emerged to continue the fight: Texas Republican Ted Cruz.  

The only surprising aspect of Ted Cruz taking over to fight to keep SLS is that fact that he's considered to be a conservative, but the bitter truth is that SLS is good for the recipients of the billions of dollars spent on an SLS launch and he's simply doing the same things that Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Richard Shelby and hundreds of senators down through time have done: he wants to take taxes from people in all 50 states to pay for government programs that benefit only a small percentage of his constituents.  

Now Cruz is taking a position that makes this seem like a small thing.  He's selling it as the only way we can beat China to the moon.   

Earlier this year, Cruz crafted the NASA provision tacked onto President Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill," which included $10 billion in funding for key space programs, and in two notable areas directly undermined White House space policy goals.

As part of its fiscal year 2026 budget, the White House sought to end funding for the Space Launch System rocket after the Artemis III mission, and also cancel the Lunar Gateway, an orbital space station that provides a destination for the rocket. The Cruz addendum provided $6.7 billion in funding for two additional SLS missions, Artemis IV and Artemis V, and to continue Gateway construction.  

In various addresses and statements this year, Cruz has emphasized that his priorities for NASA are to beat China to the moon and start permanent settlements there.  I think I can agree with the priorities, it's how he plans to do it that give me heartburn.  I consider every penny spent on SLS to be as close to absolute waste as we can get short of melting them down and throwing out the zinc and while we might need to use SLS for the next launch or two, we can't get rid of SLS fast enough for me.  And by the way, that $6.7 billion for two more Artemis launches probably isn't enough, since a number closer to $4.5 billion per launch is regularly thrown around. 

This week, Cruz will hold a hearing titled, "There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race." It is scheduled for 10 am ET on Wednesday.   

If you go to the link in that paragraph, you'll see that while the hearing is scheduled for September 3rd, the rest of the website is dated August 27, the Wednesday before the hearing.  One of the "interesting" developments in who will be attending since that notice is that all attendees who had links to the commercial space world have been dropped or uninvited.  

It's conceivable - though hard to believe - that Ted Cruz thinks NASA is doing this by themselves with the major contractor of SLS, Boeing with no commercial space involvement at all.  He would have to be remarkably uninformed to not realize the both SpaceX with Starship and Blue Origin with their Mark II have been contracted to deliver lunar landers.  Not coincidentally, both Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn are reusable - unlike SLS.  That means both Starship and New Glenn are likely to be able to launch to the moon more often than SLS, which so far hasn't been able to meet a launch date for its first crewed launch, Artemis 2.  As you'll recall Artemis 1 launched in November of '22, so we're coming up on a three year turnaround and the advertised date is next spring, so more like 3-1/2 years between launches.

Another spaceflight advocacy organization, the Space Frontier Foundation, said it is healthy for Congress to have a robust debate about how the country should compete with China on the Moon. However, to do so, there should be a wide variety of viewpoints.

"The topic of our country’s strategy for competing for this new territory on the Moon, not just for the first footprint but the longer-term impact, is extremely important," said Sean Mahoney, executive director of the foundation. "We need better than just window dressing. We need an honest, realistic discussion about the costs, the risks, and the alternatives. It’s too important for this to just be something that gets a little bit of attention and then pushed through." 

I couldn't agree more.

This is the launch vehicle for Artemis II, photo from their factory in New Orleans before it was shipped to Florida.  One of the Shuttles' Leftover engines had to be replaced, bottom right in this picture.  Image credit: NASA

A Couple of Strange News Reports

There have been a couple of stories going around that are on that line between sorta-makes sense and WTF are they talking about?  

The one that sorta makes sense is the story that Thursday (yesterday) Elon Musk said NASA should start working on taking the International Space Station out of service.  It sorta makes sense because NASA is already working on deorbiting the ISS.  After all, they gave SpaceX an $843 million contract to develop the deorbit vehicle last June. Musk's quote seems pretty reasonable; I mean, it might be wrong or it might be right but what he said makes sense.   

“It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station.
It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility.
Let’s go to Mars.”

When pressed for an answer to "when" Musk replied that it's the president's call but he recommends two years, or 2027.  Instead of the five years to 2030?  How much does that save?  Or what does it buy you?

The question of whether it's wrong or right applies to the middle line in that tweet (Xeet? What do we call these things, anyway?)  There are several sides to this: from the purely political; that is, can it be done in congress as it now sits to whether or not there are worthwhile things that need to be done with the ISS.  

In reality, NASA has only been fully utilizing the space station since late 2020, when it began to fly a full complement of astronauts thanks to SpaceX's Crew Dragon coming online. The agency says it has a lot of worthwhile scientific and human performance research to conduct over the next five years.

Don't forget that NASA has had problems with Russian modules on the ISS leaking precious air out of the station. This isn't the first case.  While Boeing has a contract to keep the ISS working through the 2030 deorbit date, structural elements of the station have been in space for more than a quarter of a century and there are valid concerns about parts possibly failing.  Neither of these is a pleasant thought.

NASA has already voiced support for not just one, but a population of privately developed and run space stations.  None of those is in orbit and ready now, so we can't know that one or more private space stations could be working in Musk's "two years."  

The other story is referring to Starliner-then-Crew-9 astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams as being stranded in space.  Stranded might have been an acceptable adjective last summer, before their long term solution to getting back down was arrived at, but now they're just ISS astronauts at the end of their mission; a mission that happened to last longer than originally planned - as they sometimes do.  Maybe it's just my perception, but I think that people in the astronaut corps have the mindset that doing their job might entail serious disruptions to everyday life - and might even end their life.  While I'm sure they miss their families, I'm equally sure they consider being in space for eight or nine months to be a privilege. 

This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Roscosmos

How is NASA Facing the DOGE Days?

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has a headline today that caught my eye: "By the end of today, NASA’s workforce will be about 10 percent smaller" - subtitled "A dark and painful day at a space agency that brings so much light and joy to the world."  As is generally the case, Berger presents the facts in a balanced view of the situation.  

For openers, he quotes a number from NASA itself that between the headquarters its 10 field centers, the agency employs "nearly 18,000 civil servants."  Then he goes on to say:

However, by the end of today, that number will have shrunk by about 10 percent since the beginning of the second Trump administration four weeks ago. And the world's preeminent space agency may still face significant additional cuts.

There's no update to the source article on ARS, which they often do, nor do I see any news about this on a few of the NASA sites I visit regularly or NASASpaceflight dot com, so I assume there were no announcements about a layoff or Reduction In Force today.  Still, all that means is that maybe instead of "by the end of today..." it could have been "by the end of this week."

Berger addresses what seems to be a natural question: how many people leave NASA in a typical year, and says that number is around one thousand.  He says his sources tell him 750 people have taken the eight month severance pay layoff, which is a sizeable chunk of that 1,000.  A 10% RIF of 18,000 people, or 1800, is only slightly bigger than that 750 added to the 1000 per year, but I don't assume those are two different groups and that there might be sizeable overlap between the 750 the typical 1000 resignations per year.  

The culling of "probationary" employees will be more impactful. As it has done at other federal agencies, the Trump administration is generally firing federal employees who are in the "probationary" period of their employment, which includes new hires within the last one or two years or long-time employees who have moved into or been promoted into a new position. About 1,000 or slightly more employees at NASA were impacted by these cuts.
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However, the cuts may not stop there. Two sources told Ars that directors at the agency's field centers have been told to prepare options for a "significant" reduction in force in the coming months. The scope of these cuts has not been defined, and it's possible they may not even happen, given that the White House must negotiate budgets for NASA and other agencies with the US Congress. But this directive for further reductions in force casts more uncertainty on an already demoralized workforce and signals that the Trump administration would like to make further cuts.

I think all of us who have worked in industry have been through layoffs, widespread (like in the 1980s) or just in a company that got into troubles of their own doing.  Layoffs suck.  Are the cuts necessary? 

It is also clear that, as within other federal agencies, there is significant "bloat" in NASA's budget. In some areas, this is plain to see, with the space agency having spent in excess of $3 billion a year over the last decade "developing" a heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which used components from the Space Shuttle and costs an extraordinary amount of money to fly. In the meantime, the private launch industry has been running circles around NASA. Similarly, consider the Orion spacecraft. This program is now two decades old, at a cost of $1 billion a year, and the vehicle has never flown humans into space.

One could go on. Much of the space community has been puzzled as to why NASA has been spending on the order of half a billion dollars to develop a Lunar Gateway in an odd orbit around the Moon. It remains years away from launching, and if it ever does fly, it would increase the energy needed to reach the surface of the Moon. The reason, according to multiple sources at the agency when the Gateway was conceived, is that the lunar space station would offer jobs to the current flight controllers operating the International Space Station, which is due to retire in 2030.

Part of what DOGE has been all about is looking at things that seem to only exist to funnel money between politicians and contractors. "Create jobs" with cost-plus contracts, like the SLS he talks about. An even worse example is the Lunar Gateway Berger mentions.  Created to keep the jobs for the current ISS flight controllers it becomes obsolete the minute Starship's Human Landing System version becomes operational.  It’s not entirely clear, but NASA reportedly wanted to land just 400 lb of cargo, while the crewed Starship is probably capable of landing tons of cargo in addition to several astronauts. Why do they need the Gateway to stage people and cargo if the HLS can carry it all?

In recent years, NASA has been in the midst of a difficult transition. The agency deserves a lot of credit for nurturing a commercial space industry that now is the envy of the world. But as part of this, NASA has been moving away from owning and operating its rockets, spacecraft, and other hardware and buying services from this commercial space industry. This transition from traditional space to commercial space marks an important step for NASA to remain on the cutting edge of exploration and science rather than trying to compete with US industry.

What was a bit shocking to me - although it shouldn't have been - was reading some of the comments.  I didn't read many, maybe only a dozen out of the nearly 400 a little while ago, but the TDS and the Elon Derangement Syndrome were stunning.  The comments were either hatred of those two in particular, hatred of "rich people" in general, pro-union or pro-communist. 

The old saying about every comment taking away an IQ point sure seemed to be applicable there.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collects a sample from the asteroid Bennu. NASA's superpower is its capacity to dazzle us. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

The Side of DEI Nobody Talks About

There are many, many reactions to the DEI issues that we hear every day, but there's one drawback to it that's hardly ever mentioned. 

The basis for all the DEI talk is that hiring based on those aspects compensates for ages of discrimination; it somehow compensates people who weren't hired in the past by hiring someone today who has a superficial resemblance to the original person.  The reality is that hiring based on those superficial resemblances hurts the people who get hired based on them the most.  The victim of the DEI isn't really the one in the past, it's the less qualified person that gets hired today.  That person hired today hurts anyone hired after them. 

I retired just over nine years ago, and DEI was far less prominent in everyday use than it is today, but another term was used that had the same effects.  That was Affirmative Action.  At some point, everyone started to know what it meant to say someone was an affirmative action hire.  Everyone besides that affirmative action hire knew it meant taking extra time and effort to get the job done.  

The problem, of course, was that as it became apparent that all the affirmative action hires were part of the same ethnic or identity group every member of that group was assumed to be an AA hire until they proved otherwise - by being good at their job. 

Being a white dude of obvious European background, I never had to face this.  It was very simple: if you weren't considered the best applicant, you didn't get the job.  Working from the early 1970s through the mid 20-teens, I worked with very competent technicians and engineers of all backgrounds: black, white, men, women, as well as from many nationalities: Americans, various South American nations, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and more. Toward the latter years, a couple of the black engineers I knew would mention how much they hated hiring based on stuff like skin color and ethnic group because of the suspicion they were an AA hire. (One was a digital hardware engineer - designing gate arrays, while the other was a very high level software engineer).  So after climbing the ladder and accomplishment after accomplishment, or degree after degree, they felt they had to prove themselves over and over. 

If hiring were to openly return to being strictly based on merit, how long would it be before the last vestiges of suspicion someone was a DEI or Affirmative Action hire went away?   

While it's marginally related to the topic, it's just here because I find it funny:

I'm Tired... So Tired of it over and over again

Today, it's not just the Flying Fertilizer (a creative way of saying bullshit) as we approach the election. It's also switching the clocks back to standard time, despite the passage of state and national laws to stay on one time all year long. 

Florida's law was passed in 2018 and it's probably not necessary for me to point out: that was six freaking years ago!!! The kicker is that Florida did it wrong (I know: quelle surprise). 

By overwhelming, bipartisan majorities, the normally fractious Senate and House agreed this week to make Florida the first in the nation to adopt year-round daylight saving time statewide. It would mean later sunrises and sunsets from November to March, peak tourist season for many beach cities.

That's right, for some reason, they want us to stay on DST all year long - in essence, putting us in the next time zone east of us. According to Federal law, a state can refuse to go on DST and they're free to do so, but to stay on DST requires congressional approval. That's even illogical for something coming out of Washington. 

As I've said before, if I wrote such ninny legislation, I would have made Standard Time the standard time.  Solar noon is when the sun is on the meridian, that line that goes from north to south passing directly overhead.  With DST, solar noon occurs closer to 1PM, not 12 noon.  Maybe I'm anal-retentive, but having solar noon at 1PM forever is just wrong. 

It's not just Florida, though, three of the New England states, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, want to stay on DST all year, too (or move one time zone east, however you like to think of it). I don't see where the authority to regulate clocks comes out of the constitution, but to mimic Dr. McCoy from the original Star Trek series, "dammit Jim, I'm radio designer not a lawyer." 

Which makes me ask why doesn't congress scrap their legal control over staying on DST making staying on DST like a state deciding to never go on DST?  Cancel all those laws. Instead, the Senate passed a bill in March of 2022 to end DST. I assume the bill must have been killed in the house when it had to go there for approval. 

Since 2015, 30 states have introduced legislation to end the twice-yearly changing of clocks, with some states proposing to do it only if neighboring states do the same. A 2019 poll found 71% of Americans prefer to no longer switch their clocks twice a year. The only controversy seems to be if states prefer to stay on standard time year round or stay on DST all year.

Yeah, you'll have groups in each state that want the opposite times.  That's inevitable.  In Florida it appears the main tourist industry reps wanted to stay on DST. The tourist industry backing is how they got the law passed while some other groups wanted to stay on standard time.  The inevitable physics of the situation is that states get different variations of their amount of sunlight because that varies with latitude and it changes far more the farther north you get. That change in sunlight hours with the seasons is caused by the 23.5 degree inclination of Earth's axis.  

Here in the southernmost reaches of the US, (I'm not in the tropics - none of Florida is) we have less variation.  On the summer solstice, our day is just short of 14 hours long - 13:55.  On the winter solstice it's 3 hours 34 minutes shorter, 10:21. (source)  In Minneapolis, MN, their longest day is 15:37 - just over an hour and half longer than ours - and the shortest day shortens down to 8:46, virtually seven hours shorter than their longest day.  Compare that to our 3-1/2 hour difference between the longest and shortest days.  Nothing can be done to change those times.  All DST does is change what we call them. 

It may be a bit melodramatic to say the clocks are killing people, but there are some well-documented side effects of the "jet lag" people get from the time changes: more car accidents, more accidents at work, higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, and more. This image is from entrepreneur Scott Yates, who runs a website called #LockTheClock, dedicated to keeping pushing on this issue. That website is quite different from 2020 when I first used the image.  He's trying to push that boulder uphill and it's tough. 

About Those FAA Fines on SpaceX

There have been headlines in the news aggregators for the last couple of days that FAA has announced big fines against SpaceX for alleged safety violations. The number being quoted is $633,000. Today, the story was changed to SpaceX saying they'll sue the FAA for regulatory overreach. 

A bit of research reveals the stories behind the fines and I can't help but see this as increasing the lawfare against SpaceX. SpaceNews sums up the situation well. These fines are related to two launches in 2023.

The FAA announced Sept. 17 that it notified SpaceX of $633,009 in proposed fines for violating terms of its launch licenses during the June 2023 Falcon 9 launch of the Satria-1, or PSN Satria, broadband satellite and the July 2023 Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, or EchoStar-24, broadband satellite. Both launches were successful. 

The exact details of both incidents are rather different. What they share in common is that SpaceX wanted to make a change to maintain or improve their operations and the FAA couldn't keep up with SpaceX.

In the Satria-1 case, SpaceX had requested changes to the FAA in May of 2023 to (1) allow the use of a new launch control center in the company’s “Hangar X” facility at the Kennedy Space Center and (2) they wanted to skip a poll of launch controllers at two hours before liftoff, apparently believing it wasn't really adding any value to their operations. 

The FAA notified SpaceX "shortly before the scheduled launch" that it would not be able to approve those changes and modify the license in time, although the notice didn't state why. The article from SpaceNews never says exactly how close to the launch SpaceX was notified that the FAA would not modify their launch license to allow these two things.  With no approval, someone decided to just go ahead and do what they needed to do. The FAA is fining them $350,000 for that launch. 

The July Falcon Heavy launch isn't exactly the same, but "it rhymes."  Nine days before the launch, SpaceX asked the FAA for a modification to its launch license to allow it to use a new tank farm for RP-1 fuel at KSC’s Launch Complex 39A. The FAA notified SpaceX two days before the scheduled launch that they would not be able to modify the license in time, but SpaceX went ahead and used the new tank farm for the launch.  The FAA is fining them $283,009 for that launch violation.

The FAA insists that their actions are always motivated by safety but it's hard for me to see any safety connection. 

In the first case, nobody in their right mind would put a new launch control center in operation without testing it through every imaginable situation, nor would taking a poll of controllers at T-2 hours when there's a completely redundant such poll later in the countdown add anything. These polls are summaries of real time checks and tests, they really aren't what determines Go or No Go. Problems are found throughout the countdown. 

In the second case, they used a new fuel tank. So what?  Again, nobody that's going to work around one of those tanks, or depend on them for mission success, would put a tank in operation without testing it every way imaginable. 

For both incidents, SpaceX has 30 days to respond, with the option of participating in an “informal conference” with agency attorneys and submitting information to explain what happened.

Musk, though, suggested SpaceX would take the FAA to court rather than use those administrative procedures. “SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach,” he posted on X, the social media platform he also owns.

Musk claimed in other posts the fines were “lawfare” by the FAA against SpaceX. “I am highly confident that discovery will show improper, politically-motivated behavior by the FAA,” he argued, but provided no evidence to support his claim.

The Falcon Heavy launch of the Jupiter-3 Satellite, July 28, 2023. Image credit: SpaceX

It may be lawfare or it may simply be the exceptional egotism all federal regulators seem to have. They're not good enough to grade SpaceX, they're not good enough to understand what a leading edge company like SpaceX is doing, but their egos say they are.

FAA Says No Starship Test Flight 5 until After Election

It's hard to say it's just a coincidence that the FAA has said no launch approval will be granted until the end of November.  They didn't say, "we're going to allow the flight after you submit answers to our concerns, A-Z" (or our concerns, #1 to #400).  They simply said, no launch approval until then. On top of that, it's not like they haven't messed with SpaceX and Elon Musk before (just one example). 

Over the course of the last few weeks, I'd seen rumors of something like this many times. The problem was that it seemed that within the next few seconds, I'd see a reference to Integrated Flight Test 5 (IFT-5) launching before the end of the month. None of the news sources I regularly use had touched the story so I didn't know what to make of it. This afternoon, thanks to a tip from reader Chip, I went to ZeroHedge and found their coverage of it, referencing a post from SpaceX I hadn't seen: 

According to a new SpaceX update: 

We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis. The four open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing.

That was time-tagged 2:20 PM and contained this tweet from Elon Musk time-tagged an hour earlier:

The document quoted by Peter Hague (white text on a black background) is the SpaceX Updates website.

My next stop was Ars Technica and they had posted the story at 7:18PM. The Ars article is longer than Zero Hedge's post, but it's a well done summary and very readable.  Since everyone references it, that SpaceX Updates post is probably the best thing to read. ZeroHedge has a good collection of response tweets that Ars doesn't. SpaceX addresses the environmentalist attacks and dismantles each of them. Any one of them has more to say than I could quote here.

Small Space News Story Roundup 39

Just because:

Poland Launches First Rocket to Reach Space

According to European Spaceflight (.com!) the Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has made history with the launch of its ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket from the Andøya Space Centre in Norway. It's the first time a rocket designed and built in Poland has made it to space, but it's still a work in progress. Perhaps that's better said as "technically made it to space."

The ILR-33 Amber 2k rocket was launched on its first space shot on 3 July from the Norwegian launch facility. Powered by a hybrid core stage and two solid-fuel boosters, the rocket reached an altitude of 101 kilometers, which is above the generally accepted boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere from outer space, known as the Kármán Line.

“The crossing of the space barrier by the ILR-33 AMBER 2K rocket developed at the Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation is a historic moment,” said Dr. Michał Wierciński, Vice President of the Polish Space Agency. “Never in our history has a Polish rocket reached such a level. This is a historic day for the Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation, but also a historic moment for the entire Polish rocket community.”

The development of the ILR-33 rocket has been going on for a decade - since 2014 - and they've launched three times so far. The last flight in 2019 made it to 23 km, and they developed an upgraded variant with larger, more powerful strap-on boosters. 

To this observer, they still have a long way to go, but I'm glad to see it. They didn't claim to have made orbit, just that they made it to the generally accepted definition of space at 100 km. They can enjoy the accomplishment and begin work on a version that can put small payloads in orbit, like under a metric ton. Sort of a Polish version of the Rocket Lab Electron.

The ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket. Image credit: Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation 

Congress to NASA: find more customers for SLS

And I can't resist the subtitle to the source article: “Because I'm tall enough, I'm orange enough, and doggone it, Senators like me.”  Shades of Stuart Smalley from back when Saturday Day Night Live was funny more often.

There's a strange little section stuck into NASA's new reauthorization bill making its way out of the committees and into the budget - should they actually pass one. 

The section is titled "Reaffirmation of the Space Launch System," and in it Congress asserts its commitment to a flight rate of twice per year for the rocket. The reauthorization legislation, which cleared a House committee on Wednesday, also said NASA should identify other customers for the rocket.

"The Administrator shall assess the demand for the Space Launch System by entities other than NASA and shall break out such demand according to the relevant Federal agency or nongovernment sector," the legislation states.

Twice a year is about 4x the actual SLS launch rate of once every two years - and that's being generous. Congress further requires NASA respond within 180 days, explaining how they can achieve the twice a year rate for SLS and Artemis. 

Additionally, Congress is asking for NASA to study demand for the SLS rocket and estimate "cost and schedule savings for reduced transit times" for deep space missions due to the "unique capabilities" of the rocket. The space agency also must identify any "barriers or challenges" that could impede use of the rocket by other entities other than NASA, and estimate the cost of overcoming those barriers.

How do they achieve that? Let me 'splain it to you. NFW. No way. 

For newbies who don't know the back story, the SLS program was created at the end of the Space Shuttle program to keep the gravy train flowing to the contractors - so they could keep skimming the congress critters' share of that gravy back to them. There might be something new about the details of the SLS, but it's virtually entirely recycled hardware from the Shuttle era. It reuses engines that actually flew on Shuttles over 15 years ago, for God's sake.

Congress created the SLS rocket 14 years ago with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. The large rocket kept a river of contracts flowing to large aerospace companies, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman, who had been operating the Space Shuttle. Congress then lavished tens of billions of dollars on the contractors over the years for development, often authorizing more money than NASA said it needed. Congressional support was unwavering, at least in part because the SLS program boasts that it has jobs in every state.

Under the original law, the SLS rocket was supposed to achieve "full operational capability" by the end of 2016. The first launch of the SLS vehicle did not take place until late 2022, six years later. It was entirely successful. However, due to various reasons, the rocket will not fly again until September 2025 at the earliest.

As for the "unique capabilities" of the SLS, more bullcrap. It costs over $2.5 billion to launch an SLS. When the Europa Clipper program was told to use the SLS, they (somehow) got their mission moved to a Falcon Heavy. A single recycled Space Shuttle Main Engine on the SLS costs $146 million. That's per engine and there are four of them on the SLS core stage. Compare that to NASA's entire cost for the Falcon Heavy: the total for the Falcon Heavy launch services is approximately $178 million.

If you think NASA is nothing but government waste, you're not exactly right. It's not 100% waste but think of the old Ivory soap commercials: it's 99 and 44/100% waste.

It's Official. Thursday Morning is Show Time!

This afternoon, SpaceX was granted their launch license by the FAA.  The 110-minute test window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT, 8:00 AM ET, 5:00 AM Pacific.  The only questionable aspect as of about 5PM EDT is weather.  The Weather Underground forecast is calling for high amounts of cloud cover, in the 70 to 90% range, but more problematic is potential for wind shear.  Unlike launches from the Cape, we apparently don't have a site that tells us the chances of acceptable weather.

SpaceX says:

A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates.

You have your choice of lots of ways to watch it.

• NASA Spaceflight is starting their coverage at 11PM Central time. I find it hard to imagine what they have to say about the mission in that much time. I suppose the other way of thinking about that is they could talk about pretty much everything in the world in eight hours. 
  
• Lab Padre is starting their coverage at 6:30 AM Eastern 
• Space.com - or Video from Space - starts at 7:30AM Eastern
• The Launch Pad is live now and apparently will stay that way.

When I went to the FAA site, I saw something interesting about the notice the license had been issued.  Take a look at this, especially the expiration date on the right. 

Today's launch license expires in 2028?  Does that mean SpaceX can launch more than once on this license, like the hoped for nine launches this year? 

Over on the left hand edge, right of the big buttons, note the text that says, "VOL 23-129 (Rev 1)." When you hover your mouse over it, you'll see it's a download, so I downloaded that to read it.  Short answer: no, not yet.  Longer answer, at the bottom of page 3, top of page 4, there are some "Authorizations" listed.  I'll just quote them:

4. Authorization: In accordance with the representations in the Space Exploration Technologies, Corp. application as of the date of this license, and any amendments to the license application or waivers  approved by the FAA, in writing, Space Exploration Technologies, Corp. is authorized to conduct:
     a. Pre flight ground operations
        i. Using the Starship Super Heavy vehicle.
        ii. At SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Complex, Boca Chica, Texas.
    b. Flights:
        i. Using the Starship Super Heavy vehicle.
        ii. From SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Complex, Boca Chica, Texas.
        iii. To Gulf of Mexico and Indian Ocean locations specified in its application,                          excluding Starship entry contingency landing locations .
        iv. For the Flight 3 mission only, unless this license is modified to remove this term.

Note the line in blue.  That says that only one mission is covered, unless they remove that line.  

A 110 minute launch window is 10 minutes short of two hours.  With the projected launch time of 8:00 AM ET, that stretches to almost 10:00 AM.  I'll be glued to this computer. 

The Department of Redundancy Department

Stop me if you've heard all this before - and you have.  It's Redundancy Weekend - two old stories.  

Only one is remotely like news.  At the last minute, the congress approved some spending bills to avoid a government shutdown. Coverage by Reuters.  

By a bipartisan vote of 75-22, the Senate approved a $467.5 billion spending package that will fund agriculture, transportation, housing, energy, veterans and other programs through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Let me use a cartoon I've been using since the blog was old enough to walk.  First use I can find easily was 2015 although the cartoon itself is dated 2011.  The website in the bottom left corner is long gone.  (Tonight something tried to load but it was acting strange and I didn't have the nerve to let it continue. It didn't say www.virtual...  it said w01.virtual...)

The key is the last line in the bottom right.  "Yes yes R2.  We'll raise it. Just leave him helpless a little longer and then raise it at the last second so we look like heroes." Paraphrasing to fit the situation  "Just sit on the spending bill a bit longer so we look like heroes."  

Let's be honest about this.  The other way of saying "government shutdown" is "paid vacation" for the lucky Fed.gov 's nonessential workers.  The longest government shutdown ever was 35 days between December of '18 and January of '19, under President Trump.  True, the essential workers had to work without pay until the deal was made before their pay could be issued and that could have been tough.  The nonessential workers were free to get a replacement job to get some additional income but had to wait for the shutdown to be over to get their back pay, too.  

There's no such thing as a debt ceiling because the ceiling has been raised Every Time It Was Ever Hit.  That's not a ceiling.  It's as much a publicity stunt as "sit on the spending bill a bit longer so we look like heroes."  

The story has been going around that the national debt is going up another $1 Trillion every 100 days.  Play with that on your calculator.  That's $416.67 Million per hour, or $115,741 per second.  That's not government spending that's just the deficit.

That which can't go on forever won't.

The other great redundancy story is that it's the weekend when the collective decides everybody gets up an hour earlier and goes to bed an hour earlier until the first Sunday in November.  So that we can go to work an hour earlier, and come home an hour earlier, so that we have more sunlight after work even though we still go to bed earlier.  They call it Daylight Saving Time, but that's an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.  We can't affect the length of the day any more than we can affect how long the tides run.  All we can do is change what we call the hours.  

The thing is, we're supposed to be done with this in Florida.  In March of 2018, the Florida legislature passed a law halting the twice-yearly shifting of the clocks.  Unlike some other states that have plotted an exit strategy from Daylight Saving Time, Florida was going to stay on DST all year round.  Why not stay on standard time?  Apparently the tourist industry thought that shifting the time to put sunrises and sunsets later on the clocks would sell better to people coming down here in mid-Winter.  Staying on DST was opposed by PTA groups who are concerned about it putting kids en route to school during dark winter mornings.  Still, the law was passed and signed by governor Rick Scott (at the time, now one of our Senators).  

I've read stories that say around the country some states want to stay on DST all year long, and some want to stay on Standard time all year long.  The Fed.gov will only allow states to stay on Standard time.  Which implies staying on DST is somehow wrong. 

It seems a bit melodramatic to say the clocks are killing people, but there are some well-documented side effects of the time shift and the kind of "jet lag" some people get: more car accidents, more accidents at work, higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, and other stuff. 

The Best Story I've Heard About January 6

Today, I saw the best thing I've read about January 6th, the dawning day of American political prisoners and the operation that created them, thanks to Mike Myles at 90 Miles From Tyranny.  

Ashli Babbit wasn't the only woman who was killed that day, but Ashli's killing was so obviously a horrible overreaction by Lt. Byrd who shot her, that her military service and life story have made her the one everyone thinks of first.  She was not a life-threatening risk to Lt. Byrd.  There was also a woman named Roseanne Boyland who died in the capital.  As it is, you'd be hard pressed to find the truth about anything done, anybody killed, and the thousands of years of prison time given to protestors.  I've tried to look up details on these cases but the media saturation with stories made to tell the official party line is making getting details practically impossible. 

From X (Twitter) account InvestigateJ6.

I saw a video of this some months ago, and it looked like that description, that the police beat her to death.  I saw the other people trying to resuscitate her.  The official cause of death was "accidental overdose of amphetamines," but she was known to have come off a drug habit and was trying to help others overcome their addictions.  

Of course, there were also men who died on January 6th; I've seen the names Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips, but the official narrative is that they died of heart failure - cardiovascular disease.  As a general rule, nobody cares about white men dying other than their families, so since they weren't wearing fur and horns or caught stealing Nancy Pelosi's desk, it'll be hard to find anything else about them. 

A big thanks to Tom Fitton and Judicial watch for starting the suit on Ashli Babbit's family's behalf.

EDIT Jan. 7 at 1340 EST to add:  Vivek Ramaswamy might have won the war of words on Jan.6, tweeting on the 6th about Ray Epps and adding the hashtag, #EntrapmentDay.  Note that on the 6th, DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves made it clear that the DOJ is now going to target Americans who were around the Capitol on J6 but did not enter the building.  Anyone who happened to be "around" the Capitol?  Would you define "around" Mr. U.S. Attorney?  A hundred yards?  A hundred miles? 

FAA: You Want Launch Licenses Faster? Pay Our Expenses

In mid-October, starting on the 18th, a series of meetings began between the FAA and the space launch industry because the launch industry maintains that the FAA isn't getting their job done.  This week, one of the top officials at the Department of Transportation suggested that the space industry should help pay for the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office.

Speaking at a virtual meeting of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) Nov. 8, Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary of transportation, all but rejected calls from industry to sharply increase the budget of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, to deal with growing levels of launch activity. 

At the October 18th hearing, the industry experts testifying in the Senate Commerce Committee's meeting recommended a significant budget increase for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST,  Bill Gerstenmaier of SpaceX, specifically recommended doubling the office’s budget to hire more people to handle launch and reentry licensing.  In FY '23, the AST office received nearly $37.6 million in funding.  

Deputy Secretary Trottenberg, when asked about increasing AST's budget said the agency has "competing priorities" and noted aviation did not receive as much support in last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as other modes of transportation.  

She proposed that it may be time for industry to contribute some portion of additional revenues needed for enhancing AST. “We’re an agency that has the ability to generate revenue and I think that’s going to be a question for this industry,” she said, adding that she was offering her own opinion and not that of the department itself.

While the FAA does generate revenue from user fees for aviation, it has not generally collected any such fees for launch licensing. She returned to it later in the meeting when another COMSTAC member noted the relatively small size of the AST budget relative to the overall FAA budget. The FAA requested $19.8 billion for fiscal year 2024, of which $42 million would go to AST.

Say what?  $42 million out of $19.8 Billion? That's 0.2%  Isn't that a rounding error?  A mistake in estimating costs?  I know that the various offices, like AST, in the FAA will be fighting over their pennies, but it just seems that if the AST is 0.2% of the budget of the FAA, doubling the AST to 0.4% of the $19.8 billion isn't going to take too much from any one other office or department or whatever they're called.  

To be blunt, in my experience in industry if expenses on a job came out to be off by 0.2% over a year, the manager would be legendary and talked about for years.

I don't believe that any part of the Fed.gov is so tightly managed that they'd even know a 0.2% change was going on.  The FAA sees a way to milk the industry for money.  That's all.  It's no different than that guy from ESA referring to "Rocket-by-billionaire."  In the FAA's case it's "if they want us to be responsive, they can grease our palms."  Do your best Goodfellas mafia-guy voice, "what's it worth to you?"

Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral SFS the night of October 17, 2023, the night before the meeting addressing launch licensing.  SpaceX photo.

Shocking News: The FAA Isn't Getting All Their Work Done

Who would have thought the FAA wouldn't be able to work on everything they need to get done?  I mean, besides everyone?

That's the message behind a story that SpaceX is urging FAA to double their licensing staff, citing a constant need to adjust priorities between projects, like Falcon 9 launches interfering with Starship licensing, or Starship affecting Dragon launches.  

In a remarkably frank discussion this week, several senior SpaceX officials spoke with Ars Technica on background about how working with the Federal Aviation Administration has slowed down the company's progress not just on development of the Starship program, but on innovations with the Falcon 9 and Dragon programs as well.

The SpaceX officials said they want to be clear that the FAA is doing a reasonably good job with the resources it has, and that everyone supports the mission of safe spaceflight. However, they said, the FAA needs significantly more people working in its licensing department and should be encouraged to prioritize missions of national importance.

The SpaceX officials went on to describe how their different programs have to compete with each other for the FAA's attention.  This has significantly slowed down the Starship program and put development of a Human Landing System for NASA's Artemis program at risk.  

The discussion with Ars was convened by SpaceX in advance of a hearing on Wednesday before the US Subcommittee on Space and Science, at which William Gerstenmaier, vice president of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX, will be one of the people testifying. SpaceX hopes that Congress will provide guidance to the FAA on how to operate more efficiently.

An unnamed SpaceX official put their goal for attending like this. “Maybe the committee can give them the big picture goals of what they want to accomplish for the US, and then maybe the FAA can be a little more innovative in how they interpret some of the rules and regulations. Their mission is to enable safe spaceflight. We cannot give up on the safety side, but could there be a little bit more emphasis on the enable side?”

SpaceX put more payloads in space than any other launch provider in the world last year and it was 62 launches.  This year, they're on track to increase that by 50%, up to around 90 launches, and they've stated a goal of increasing by 50% again next year, up to around 135 launches.  Their motivation for increasing the FAA's throughput is obvious, but they're not the only launch provider and we keep hearing that the US launch infrastructure is proving inadequate.  

Don't forget there are United Launch Alliance's Atlas Vs still flying, and their new Vulcan rockets set for next year. There's Blue Origin's New Glenn that may make it next year, and lots of other, smaller rockets flying with new ones coming online. Then there's the increased flight rate by Virgin Galactic, the return to flight by Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital tourism rocket, and the potential for high-altitude balloon flights. 

“Next year could be a pretty dynamic time with lots of providers in spaceflight," another SpaceX official said. "Our concern is even today Falcon and Dragon are sometimes competing for FAA resources with Starship, and the FAA can’t handle those three activities together. So let alone what's coming next year, or maybe even later this year, we just don't think the FAA is staffed ready to support that.”

At the meeting Gerstenmaier will recommend that the FAA double the staff in the licensing division of its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which is known as AST. In addition, the FAA should be given "accelerated hiring authority" to draw from the best pool of candidates.

The SpaceX officials said they are losing time due to the review processes for Starship. The rocket for the vehicle's second flight has been ready to go for a little while now, and it likely will be waiting for two more weeks at least to complete regulatory review. The company is concerned that similarly lengthy reviews will delay the myriad future test flights needed to demonstrate Starship's viability, refueling capability, and ability to safely land on the Moon. While the Artemis III mission to land on the Moon is not being delayed day-for-day as a result, the regulatory issues are having an impact.

“Licensing at this point for Starship is a critical path item for the Artemis program, and for our execution," one of the SpaceX officials said. "Certainly looking forward into next year, we really need to operate that program at a higher cadence of flights. Six to eight month turns, that's not great for the program.”

SpaceX said this week that Starship is stacked and ready to fly its second test flight. Image credit: SpaceX

For what it's worth, while I like SpaceX's approach and what they're trying to do, I think that trying to reinvent a bureaucracy is unlikely to work.  As I've rambled about before, the easiest word for a bureaucrat to say is “no” because there's rarely any drawback to saying it.  A bureaucrat knows that if they approve something and a Bad Result happens, they stand a very good chance of being in a chair in front of an investigation and going through an entirely unpleasant day.  If they say no, the lack of something good happening rarely carries the same consequences.

NASA's IG Trying to Get Them Focused on Reality

Focused on the Reality of the costs of SLS, that is.  Back in June we talked about a report from NASA's Inspector General Paul Martin saying that the Space Launch System or SLS was too expensive. The thing is, NASA knows this.  Back in '19 NASA put up a Request For Information (RFI) to the industry essentially saying "propose a way to cut the costs of SLS by 50% and we'll use it until 2050."  Judging by never seeing another word about this, one would conclude the response was underwhelming.  Or worse.

As I often point out, it's not that bad, it's worse.  In a new story on Ars Technica about an October 12th report from IG Martin, we learn:

Broadly speaking, NASA's cost-reduction plan is to transfer responsibility for production of the rocket to a new company co-owned by Boeing and Northrop Grumman, which are key contractors for the rocket. This company, "Deep Space Transport," would then build the rockets and sell them to NASA. The space agency has said that this services-based model could reduce the cost of the rocket by as much as 50 percent.

However, in a damning new report, NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, says that is not going to happen. Rather, Martin writes, the cost of building the rocket is actually likely to increase.

Martin continues, "Our analysis shows a single SLS Block 1B will cost at least $2.5 billion to produce—not including Systems Engineering and Integration costs—and NASA’s aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50 percent is highly unrealistic." 

Author Eric Berger goes on to report the $146 million per engine cost for one of the RS-25 engines on the SLS core vehicle isn't much less than what NASA is paying for an entire mission on the Falcon Heavy rocket—$178 million for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.  There are four of those engines on an SLS core, $584 million per launch, so the cost of two engines, half of an SLS, is dramatically more than the Falcon Heavy mission. 

That's not an SLS mission, that's not even a fully built SLS.  That's two engines versus an entire heavy lift mission. 

That's our tax money, of course, what should we do with it?  

The IG report isn't optimistic that NASA's attempts to will save money.  To begin with, 

"Given the enormous costs of the Artemis campaign, it is crucial that NASA achieve some significant measure of its affordability goals," Martin wrote in the new report. "Failure to do so will significantly hinder the sustainability of NASA’s deep space human exploration efforts."

He goes item by item and concludes that costs going down is wishful thinking.  I'll go ahead and say it's delusional; that's my word not IG Martin's word.

The agency has not committed to move to fixed-price contracting and has allowed Boeing to incorporate limited rights data into the design of the core stage. In other words, no one else can build the SLS rocket, so if the space agency wants to continue to buy them, it must do so from Boeing and Northrop.

Historically, NASA faced a similar problem with Space Shuttles.  

In the mid-1990s NASA transferred the Space Shuttle production from agency management to a commercial services contract, citing the goal of saving money. Boeing and Lockheed Martin created a new company, United Space Alliance, to provide Shuttle services on a sole-source basis to NASA, like what will be done with the SLS rocket.

Did costs go down?  Nope.  In review, IG Martin says Space Shuttle operations costs increased approximately 38%  

The only possibility on the horizon that might result in lowering prices is shifting to private vehicles.  

"The Agency may soon have more affordable commercial options to carry humans to the Moon and beyond," the report states. "In our judgment, the Agency should continue to monitor the commercial development of heavy-lift space flight systems and begin discussions of whether it makes financial and strategic sense to consider these options as part of the Agency’s longer-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals."

The problem there is political, and all government agencies like NASA are political bodies, above all else.  SLS was entirely political, a Congressionally-mandated way to ensure jobs continued after the shuttle program was shuttered.  Not to mention that current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was one of the senators who pushed the program through in 2010.  Despite the hard numbers showing NASA's move toward commercial space and fixed price contracts saved money, there are those in NASA and congress that argue for the cost-plus contracts of SLS and most other big programs. 

It just seems to me that cost-plus contracts should be used for things that have never been done before, and a "new" rocket like SLS doesn't fit that.  Especially since something like the $146 million RS-25, the Space Shuttle Main Engines, is as close to total reuse as one can get.  Those should be firm, fixed-price contracts at a price commensurate with their cost to the shuttle program the last time they were bought, with some adjustment for inflation, obsolete parts and other necessities.  Otherwise, cost-plus contracts seem to simply be a way to grease the skids for money flowing around and ending up in politicians' pockets.