NASA has been focused on more important things.
Posted on 11/13/2024 7:56:30 PM PST by BenLurkin
NASA's plagued Space Launch System rocket, which is being developed to deliver the first astronauts to the Moon in over half a century, is on thin ice.
According to Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger's insider sources, there's an "at least 50-50" chance that the rocket "will be canceled."
"Not Block 1B. Not Block 2," he added, referring to the variant that was used during NASA's uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022 and a more powerful design with a much higher translunar injection payload capacity, respectively. "All of it."
To be clear, as Berger himself points out, we're still far "from anything being settled." Nonetheless, the reporter's sources have historically been highly reliable, suggesting the space agency may indeed be getting cold feet about continuing to pour billions of dollars into the non-reusable rocket.
The SLS has already seen its fair share of budget overruns and many years of delays. In a 2022 interview, former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver told Futurism that the project is simply "not sustainable."
The rocket platform has become a political football, going well past $6 billion over budget and over half a decade behind schedule.
"I will be direct," former NASA administrator Michael Griffin told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee during a January hearing on the space agency's Artemis program,"In my judgment, the Artemis Program is excessively complex, unrealistically priced, compromises crew safety, poses very high mission risk of completion, and is highly unlikely to be completed in a timely manner even if successful."
So far, the rocket has been launched only once, as part of NASA's inaugural Artemis mission in 2022, but damage sustained by the agency's Orion spacecraft has given officials pause about its ability to safely send astronauts to the Moon in the coming years.
(Excerpt) Read more at futurism.com ...
Maybe in his copious free time Elon could have a gander at NASA......
Fire the idiot bill nelson first thing. Put EM in charge of NASA. We’ll be on the moon in two years and Mars in four.
Obama absolutely wrecked NASA
NASA will be in better hands now that the adults are back on charge.
musk is going to launch unmanned starship(s) to mars in 26 months and manned starship(s) 26 months after that. Its an orbit thing. its now or 26 months from now and he is not ready now.Orbital mechanics doesnt leave much room for error.
Why not use the same type of rocket used to send men to the men in 1969? It worked.
Hahahaha!
Maybe a video of that project would make a great episode for Red Dwarf...
Someone needs to talk to the crew at CuriousMarc’s channel. They know more about the original moon shot hardware and software than anyone alive.
Imagine if 60 years after Columbus all the European powers had done was send ships to gather plant and soil samples and establish one tiny colony of 6-7 men on a Caribbean island. That's what the current state of space exploration has been under the control of government space programs. It's time to turn the private sector loose.
I remember seeing a brief clip a couple of years ago with some engineer from NASA who said something like we don't know how anymore, and I took it to mean that they must have lost a lot of institutional knowledge at NASA in the years after Apollo 17 when they cancelled the program, and then the Germans engineers, especially Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus, passed away. Those guys were the heart of the program and probably took a lot of that knowledge to their graves.
Today we would basically be starting over. Technology has gotten better, but in many ways we are dumber.
NASA even lost a lot of the old footage of Moon walks that our astronauts did back then. They think that the tapes must have been erased and reused.
Government efficiency at its finest...
Artemis is being built by United Lunch Alliance, which is Boeing and Lockheed. That’s all one needs to know.
NASA has been focused on more important things.
Congress wrecked SLS, by mandating that it be built with 50 year old recycled Shuttle tech and serve as a giant Federal jobs project.
They can’t build the saturn 5 anymore. Dont know how, and no one makes the engines. Plus the current launchpads may not be made to handle their liftoff power either.
Some of the original plans/prints for the saturn 5 don’t exist anymore.
"Math is hard!"
Space is hard.
Even for the Chinese, who likely will get there prior to whatever fallback plan is selected.
Every political system is flawed, and all bureaucracies are corrupt.
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