[apillar]

And this is the reason companies like Space X can build a better rocket faster and for 1/5 the price. Elon Musk essentially tells his engineers “this is what I want, a rocket with these capabilities, make it happen”. While for the SLS, you have a rocket that is designed by politicians, who want the various components built in their districts (regardless if that makes any sense) not to mention the arcane federal contract rules and the “diversity” push that requires the contractor to hire a certain number of transsexual Eskimos.

[Manuel OKelley]

Bears repeating, i suspect despite his nuttiness Elon Musk will be remembered as one of the fathers of real space travel

[Pecos]

A lot like the Congressional committee that tried to design a horse and came up with a camel.

[Redleg Duke]

Precisely! As Patton once said, “Don’t tell your men how to do it, tell them what to do and they will amaze you with their ingeuity!”

NASA is a creature of the overall bureaucracy, and as such, is no longer a “can-do engineering activity”. The rocket scientists who founded NASA are all gone and mostly buried, and their bureaucratic go-fers are in charge, and doing the politicians’ wishes.

I predict that the SLS will probably never get past preliminary flights. If it flies at all, it will be generations behind SpaceX.