Red Dwarf Ping!
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 ...
So let me see if I have this straight, Constellation was cancelled for being over budget, overly complex and late. They then replaced Constellation with Artemis, which is now potentially being cancelled because it’s over budget, overly complex, and late.
So basically a pattern of incompetence and mismanagement. Or perhaps it was always intended to fail and this is just a way to launder money to aerospace companies. Ridiculous and heads should roll!
You're on the right track.
Everything today is a giant money laundering operation. Governments and corporations are allowed to get away with it, but not ordinary individuals.
The Saturn V's biggest drawbacks are that it is not reusable and relies on liquid hydrogen fuel. Both of these would make for extraordinarily expensive launches if we wanted to spend absurd sums to put the Saturn V design back into production and use it today.
You’d be đź’Żđź’Ş correct. I knew Astronaut John Young.
Young. Autocorrect screw up.
What in the world 🌍. Phone is malfunctioning.
But there is so much accomplishment:
- DEI
- meetings
- mingling
- rubbing elbows
- the talk
- the dialogue (dialog?)
- global warming
- movements
- more meetings
- abortions
- insurrections
- “mostly peaceful” VIOLENCE
and, now, what was NASA supposed to be doing, otherwise!?
SpaceX’s biggest booster, the Starship Super Heavy, has over 2 times the thrust of the Saturn V.
Many years ago, my late father was in high school in Orlando with John Young. My sister once asked him what John Young was like. “Just another kid.” Not satisfied, my sister asked if John Young ever talked of going into space. Exasperated, my father said “Not that I ever heard. Do you think he went around wearing a model rocket on his head?”
“I should add that there is a theory that the knowledge to get back to the Moon, and possibly go to Mars was not lost.”
Of course it wasn’t lost. China landed on the moon in 2019 and 2020 and returned lunar samples on the latter mission. India landed successfully in 2023.
John Young was an oil investor with my father. I have to this day my father’s NASA security clearance tag to enter highly secure facilities in New Orleans where portions of the Saturn 5 was built.
Red Dwarf Ping!
New tagline...
the days of the government-only space business have eclipsed, with nary a t a x dollar to prove its worth, except in probes.
Polaris Dawn mission
On September 10, 2024, the Polaris Dawn mission reached an orbit of 870.4 miles, breaking the 1966 record for the farthest Earth-orbiting crewed spacecraft.
Because modern technology is better in almost every way as Musk shows on a daily basis. But technology starts with what works and makes it better. Idiots are the ones who think they can just plan their way to something that works without lots of testing and figuring out what’s wrong and how to fix it. It’s hard work. That’s the part that idiot central planners don’t want to understand. Lik e Einstein said, genius is 99% perspiration. No one is smart enough to figure out everything Mother Nature has planned for you. So you test, and you learn, and you get better.
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