This was a very interesting read. I have seen many of these arguments posted before, even on HN, but I have never seen so many of them combined into one piece before.<p>I have seen the claims about Boeing upper-level being "taken-over" by Mcdonnell Douglas upper-level many times before in many places, yet I haven't ever actually seen any evidence for it. Even in the linked article, there is none. Is it myth or fact? Genuinely curios. I think that that deserves it's own story to be honest, since it seems to be quite the straight line between grubby MD upper-levels -> Boeing "take-over" -> SLS + other marred projects.<p>Regardless, for me the article instills a strong sense of helplessness by it's account of a virtually invincible cabal of senators and lobbyists. It makes me think "If Jim Bridenstein had to back down from cancelling it, how else are we able to?"<p>As one of the comments say, I <i>really</i> do hope that this gets retweeted by Scott Manley, Tim Dodd, or Elon, in ascending order of preference.
The SLS seems a boondoggle if it's judged as a space exploration program. But the SLS is most likely a weapons production know-how maintenance program. As such, the only objective is to maintain a force of competent rocket engineers at a reasonable price (measured in billions, to be sure). Launching is not an objective, or not an essential one.<p>Consider this: the US military procures between 100 and 200 Tomahawk missiles per year ([1] p 95). In the last 18 years it has fired in anger about 17 per year. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, it fired 800 in a month only. In a confrontation with a near peer it's likely that bigger missiles will be fired, and a production surge capability is needed. The SLS workforce may be called upon just for such an eventuality.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/19pres/WPN_Book.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/19pres/WPN_Boo...</a>
Wow. Amazing. I am impressed. Many have been making some or all of these arguments for many years. A great overall article bring together a lot of issues.<p>And as long and as this great article is, there are so many things that he hasn't talked about. Like the absurd way NASA has already order hardware for flights that are literally 10 years away. So subcontractors are getting money now for these flights that will never happen.<p>The list of absurdities is to long to put in one article.<p>I remember people in space forums actually laughing at me because of my absurd believe the Falcon Heavy would launch before the SLS. That was years ago. I even made the argument in 2017 that Starship would launch before SLS, because SLS was so badly managed.<p>In fact, while that might be close for a first launch, before SLS launches a second time, Starship will have launched 10+ times at least. Before SLS launches a third time, Starship will have launched 50+ times.<p>This is because even if SLS launches at some point in 2022, it would not launch again until 2024 and at the very most once a year after that.<p>An internal way to call Starship at SpaceX, is Starship Launch System. They are either elite at trolling or to busy working to see how much of a burn that is.<p>Most interesting is, that even based on NASA own internal evaluation, SLS is a terrible design. In the end of the Shuttle area 100s of studies were done on launch vehicle, clearly pointing out the issues. Check out this post that gathers the evidence for this here:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/rac_stuff_summary_kinda_idk_anymore/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...</a><p>The most important single thing is this:<p><a href="https://preview.redd.it/gxyh0ri46hc61.png?width=787&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f88513338183d29e605b40059e01144c10cb461" rel="nofollow">https://preview.redd.it/gxyh0ri46hc61.png?width=787&format=p...</a><p>This basically shows that what ended up being SLS (RAC1) was literally the worst possible design.<p>If you want to get an internal perspective for a SLS engineer (who believed in the project) see this talk from 2011:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweLWCBHpUE%3Ft%3D0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweLWCBHpUE%3Ft%3D0</a><p>A moon and mars base are not out of reach even if NASA current budget, if it is well spent.
The project needs to be finished if for no other reason than the US refuses to learn from anything other than spectacular failure. SLS hasn’t even reached F-35 levels of mismanagement and we learned nothing from that.
I have read through it and, while it makes devastating points, I cannot say I love the writing style.<p>The style he uses is effective for mass readership, but gives vested professionals and politicians an easy dismissal of the whole effort: "well, he clearly has an ax to grind, so nothing that follows can be considered objective. The facts of the matter are: <insert blatant lies>".<p>Sometimes, a less emotional and flamboyant delivery is more effective, pure facts with logical conclusions and let the readers internalize the resulting emotions.