The Orion Spacecraft Is Now 15 Years Old and Has Flown Into Space Just Once (arstechnica.com) 185
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Since that time, according to The Planetary Society's Casey Dreier, NASA has spent $23.7 billion developing the Orion spacecraft. This does not include primary costs for the vehicle's Service Module, which provides power and propulsion, as it is being provided by the European Space Agency. For this money, NASA has gotten a bare-bones version of Orion that flew during the Exploration Flight Test-1 mission in 2014. The agency has also gotten the construction of an Orion capsule -- which also does not have a full life support system -- that will be used during the uncrewed Artemis I mission due to be flown in 12 to 24 months. So over its lifetime, and for $23.7 billion, the Orion program has produced:
- Development of Orion spacecraft
- Exploration Flight Test-1 basic vehicle
- The Orion capsule to be used for another test flight
- Work on capsules for subsequent missions
Obviously, that is not nothing. But it is far from a lot, even for a big government program. To see how efficiently this money could theoretically have been spent, let's use an extreme example. SpaceX is generally considered one of the most efficient space companies. Founded in 2002, the company has received funding from NASA, the Department of Defense, and private investors. Over its history, we can reliably estimate that SpaceX has expended a total of $16 billion to $20 billion on all of its spaceflight endeavors. Consider what that money has bought:
- Development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets
- Development of Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon, and Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft
- Development of Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor rocket engines
- Build-out of launch sites at Vandenberg (twice), Kwajalein Atoll, Cape Canaveral, and Kennedy Space Center
- 105 successful launches to orbit
- 20 missions to supply International Space Station, two crewed flights
- Development of vertical take off, vertical landing, rapid reuse for first stages
- Starship and Super Heavy rocket development program
- Starlink Internet program (with 955 satellites on orbit, SpaceX is largest satellite operator in the world)
To sum up, SpaceX delivered all of that for billions of dollars less than what NASA has spent on the Orion program since its inception.
- Development of Orion spacecraft
- Exploration Flight Test-1 basic vehicle
- The Orion capsule to be used for another test flight
- Work on capsules for subsequent missions
Obviously, that is not nothing. But it is far from a lot, even for a big government program. To see how efficiently this money could theoretically have been spent, let's use an extreme example. SpaceX is generally considered one of the most efficient space companies. Founded in 2002, the company has received funding from NASA, the Department of Defense, and private investors. Over its history, we can reliably estimate that SpaceX has expended a total of $16 billion to $20 billion on all of its spaceflight endeavors. Consider what that money has bought:
- Development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets
- Development of Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon, and Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft
- Development of Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor rocket engines
- Build-out of launch sites at Vandenberg (twice), Kwajalein Atoll, Cape Canaveral, and Kennedy Space Center
- 105 successful launches to orbit
- 20 missions to supply International Space Station, two crewed flights
- Development of vertical take off, vertical landing, rapid reuse for first stages
- Starship and Super Heavy rocket development program
- Starlink Internet program (with 955 satellites on orbit, SpaceX is largest satellite operator in the world)
To sum up, SpaceX delivered all of that for billions of dollars less than what NASA has spent on the Orion program since its inception.
State Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
How much of Orion's effort has been wasted trying to spread the contracts around 50 states?
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Re:State Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the problem. NASA is not allowed to be efficient. It cannot shut down facilities or projects it does not need. It cannot make massive staffing cuts. It cannot choose the most efficient way to implement new things. It has to spend vast amounts of money, on specific things it was told to spend it on, in the specific way it was told to spend it.
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And getting Orion to fly -- for the sake of saying you've flown it -- would be even more inefficient.
The original program Orion was designed for -- Constellation -- was cancelled. Orion was designed to carry astronauts to the Moon. The program has been kept alive at great expense to carry astronauts to the Moon in the Artemis program. The vehicle has little practical use except for that. It's larger than needed to ferry astronauts to orbit but it's too small to work in.
NASA spending is like Brexit. A mod
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That's the problem with letting a herd of lawyers become politicians and pack of generals and admirals set priorities and budgets for what should be an engineering project.
Re:State Politics (Score:5, Informative)
no, NASA is stuck with all the pork bullsit required by congresscritters to make whoever gave them campaign money happy...
Re:State Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
no, NASA is stuck with all the pork bullsit required by congresscritters to make whoever gave them campaign money happy...
I agree that is one of the problems. Also that it is a major problem. But we have to dig deeper. One question to ask is why big government programs are subject to such bullshit?
The answer is that just like we have market failures we also have government failures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure). And the pork requirements are caused by a systemic government failure. Politicians are not selfless people who are looking to maximize the overall good of (in this case) the american people. They are complex beings. And part of their motivation is self interests and that is what is at stake here. And forget about fixing it by making government bigger (although that seems to be a preferred solution in many cases). The only way to reduce it is to make government smaller and leave more up to the market in which the failures are in most cases significantly less expensive than the government failures.
In other words: If you want big government you will have to live with a substantial amount of government failures. They wont go away just because people take offense. They are simply part of the parcel.
Not a failure. NK govt is efficient (Score:5, Insightful)
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin didn't create a system that requires the House, Senate, and President to agree before they can do anything because that's *efficient*.
The founders goal was to create for the states federation government that was fair and would preserve freedom, a system that eventually produces a just result, not one that is efficient. If they wanted efficiency they would have set it up where when the leader makes a decision everyone just does what he says promptly, like North Korea.
We have extensive laws about how the government buys things. Those are designed to make the process fair and transparent, to not be efficient.
UPS is designed to be efficient. It's run with the goal of delivering things as cheaply as possible, and fairly quickly. UPS isn't designed for fairness, to make sure everyone gets their package at the same time. A McDonald's kitchen is designed to be efficient. You'll note McDonald's doesn't have public hearings every time they make a make a burger.
Being inefficient would be a failing for UPS or McDonald's,. because they are supposed to be efficient. The federal government has the comments period and the Congressional debate and public hearings and everything else because the goal of the federal government is not efficiency. It's fairness, transparency, justice, but not efficiency.
If we wanted an efficient form of government we'd follow the example of North Korea. We don't WANT our government to be efficient. We want it to be just and fair.
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I don't know where you got the idea that the North Korean government is efficient from. It obviously is not. Removing checks and balances from a government does not make it more efficient but rather less efficient. Efficiency is not just the speed at which you can make a decision.
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"Check and balances" literally means two groups of people stop each other from doing things, from getting things done. Of course that's inefficient. It's not supposed to be efficient.
American federal government, with the built-in checks and balances, is like American football - the R team tries to move the ball one way, the D team tries to stop them and move the ball the other way. NK government is Kim says "take the ball that way" and somebody walks the ball down the field. Nobody in the NK government tri
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Most governments have their "checks and balance" at the next election date.
The french president for example will consul his peers, but what he decides is word, an no one can do anything except trying to get him out of office.
In Germany it is not that strong but still: checks and balances is about new laws and not about decisions that need to be done NOW.
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"Check and balances" literally means two groups of people stop each other from doing things, from getting things done. Of course that's inefficient. It's not supposed to be efficient.
American federal government, with the built-in checks and balances, is like American football - the R team tries to move the ball one way, the D team tries to stop them and move the ball the other way. NK government is Kim says "take the ball that way" and somebody walks the ball down the field. Nobody in the NK government tries to stop it from going that way, because that will cause their head to be removed from their body.
Walking the ball down the field unopposed is FAR more efficient than having the other team trying to stop you.
I think you are conflating efficiency in deciding with efficiency in execution. Yes, the North Korean regime can decide things faster (but in the US you also have executive orders) but they are terrible at execution. And their decision process is also flawed in the sense that they decide a lot of stuff which is inefficient in nature (such as every inhabitant having to collect a certain quota of poo every year for fertilizer). And execution of decisions in North Korea is also terrible. Otherwise they would n
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So the world would be a better place if the government ran McDonalds?
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Well I guess that depends - do you want your burger fast and cheap, or fair and just?
McDonald's will give you a burger for $2 in 2.5 minutes. It'll come switch 2-4 slices of pickle - some people get twice as much pickle as others.
The federal government will give you a burger for $25.00 in 18 weeks. Every burger will have exactly 1.5 slices of pickle. It'll be fair.
Just depends on what your priorities are.
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No.
But NASA also would not be a better place if McDonald's ran it.
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Why? Because it has turned out well in so many other countries. There's a lot of math that says that "single payer" is the only insurance mechanism that ensures universal coverage for minimal cost. Health insurance has secondary factors for which competition is a net detriment, unlike other industries. It isn't a good example to use as a comparison for space fight or other service deliverables.
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Exactly THIS.
This is pretty much the norm on ALL levels of government.
Every time I hear someone wanting to put the government in charge of my health care and health care decisions, I think about the fun, efficient visits to the DMV and think.."Wow..yeah,
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put the government in charge of my health care and health care decisions
I don't want government-run healthcare for all things, because bureaucracies don't do things well in real-time.
But guaranteeing a basic level of health care for all - preventative, much more than curative - saves lives, time, and obscene amounts of money.
Basic universal health care is something the government can do, and do well. And we have no legitimate excuse, in this day and age, for not doing so.
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We already have medicare and medicaid for those too poor to afford insurance, or are retired.
Those already take up a HUGE part of the Federal budget, which is already running deficit (even before pandemic)....
I dun
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The DMV? Is that the official Libertardian talking point?
The DMV would be faster and more efficient **IF** your state legislature allotted them the funding to 1) improve their infrastructure and 2) hire sufficient staff. Unlike whatever your official bible says services need to be paid for, and taxes are the funding method. I can't repeat often enough to you idiots:
If you want services then stop whining about how your taxes are too high.
But no, you want roads and potable water and sewer and clean air and
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They do Social Security right. If a program becomes important enough to the entire voting population that Congress can keep its grubby paws off it then competent people are actually allowed to run a system competently. Just look at NASA during the Apollo program. Once they had managed to get people's attention off of the moon and on the Vietnam War then Congress was able to fuck up the Shuttle unimpeded. Until that point engineers were allowed to run the show.
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how can anyone truly believe government-run healthcare would turn out any better than Orion, SLS, etc?
You are comparing apples and oranges.
The problem with private healthcare delivery in the USA is it doesn't provide universal coverage to all Americans at low/no cost. Were the American governments (via taxpayers) to simply pay the costs of premiums, deductibles, co-pays for excellent healthcare coverage to all Americans directly to private insurers then you would solve this problem - But it would cost
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> Fair and transparent would be having open competitions for each large purchase and then buying the best value for the money
That's what federal law requires. With some practical exceptions. Of course all that fairness, plus the affirmative action part, means each bid is a 100-300 pages of sense paperwork. A few companies specialize in producing such bids.
> Judged by independent experts in the field
I'm not sure what "independent" experts working for the government would even mean.
Cherry Picking on the Backs of Giants (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing 1 NASA project with the 1 successful private space company is the epitome of cherry picking. Not to mention there would not be a SpaceX if there already hadn't been a NASA.
NASA landed multiple people on the Moon. SpaceX launched a Tesla into space. See, cherry picking is easy.
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Comparing 1 NASA project with the 1 successful private space company is the epitome of cherry picking. Not to mention there would not be a SpaceX if there already hadn't been a NASA.
NASA landed multiple people on the Moon. SpaceX launched a Tesla into space. See, cherry picking is easy.
I agree that this is cherrypicking. But you do realize that your cherrypicking lacks a cost comparison as well. And you do realize that the Apollo Project cost 2% of US GDP some of the years. And it happened 50 years ago before NASA got totally tied down by government bureaucracy and special interests.
So at least find a NASA accomplishment which has similar costs to the SpaceX accomplishments;-)
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I don't think I pronounced them financially efficient? But please do take at look at the TCO.
Re: Cherry Picking on the Backs of Giants (Score:2)
NASA helped create SpaceX by awarding them launch contracts.
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NASA landed multiple people on the Moon. SpaceX launched a Tesla into space. See, cherry picking is easy.
The cost of the Apollo program was over $120 billion in today's dollars. So that's over 5x SpaceX's total expenditures to date, using the numbers in TFS. They'll probably have people on Mars by the time they spend that much.
I'm not sure how fair that comparison is, though, since SpaceX is taking advantage of all of the knowledge and new industries (that have now matured) created by the earlier space programs.
Re: State Politics (Score:2)
Let me try to recap, the problem is that people running the government cannot be trusted to be entirely selfless, so get rid of it, something something give the people running the market for ${THING} your money because they can be trusted to be entirely selfish and fail more often?
This is how LHM, Northrop, Boeing, etc., ad nauseam, get NASA contracts in the first place.
Or do you mean don't give them anything (because there is no government funding for space exploration in this model), and let the organic,
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I am not American. So I don't want any say in what level of government spending you want. But in general my position is that government spending should be limited.
But, no I don't think government contracts involving private companies are necessarily more efficient. That depends entirely on the framework in which your government operates. But I do believe that competition between entities (public and private) is beneficial for the end result.
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> The only way to reduce it is to make government smaller and leave more up to the market in which the failures are in most cases significantly less expensive than the government failures.
US government is in a constant state of flux so it's inefficient by design. Why not fix the design instead?
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part of their motivation is self interest
With very few exceptions (all of them powerless) I would change your statement to "All of their motivation is self interest".
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The only way to reduce it is to make government smaller and leave more up to the market in which the failures are in most cases significantly less expensive than the government failures.
Except that small government means corporations will just be even less accountable. Private interests have no interests in policing themselves, if they even believe they did something wrong in the first place. In fact, being willfully ignorant of the problem is an acceptable defense! This is how we get superfund sites and other corporate disasters that the public is still trying to clean up decades after they're discovered.
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No, the congresspeople work for the Capitalists that fund their elections to ensure they don't have to make profitable products or face competition while they sit and collect government money. They know exactly how to run a business and choose to leach off public tax funds instead. Then they convince people like you that Government is the problem.
Re:State Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
No. NASA is run by government idiots. They are too stupid to make it in the private sector so they work for the government. Stupid people like these do not know how to run a business.
I don't want them to run a business, I want them to put craft into space reasonably efficiently. Which NASA generally does for unmanned things.
As soon as you put people on the craft, the political capital from being involved jumps massively and politicians get involved and make a nuisance of themselves.
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I don't know there is a lot of really stupid people in the Private sector. While working as a consultant for government, these guys seem to be more on top of things.
Normally it isn't the professionals in government who are the problem, but the elected politicians, who have to do stuff to support their supporters, and say put the Son of a Wealthy supporter into a nice job, with a fancy title. While the people under him, actually know what to do and how to do it.
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I don't think its that simple. I work at a national lab so I see some of this, though on a different scale.
A good example is that Space X just blew up their rocket. That's fine they got the data that they needed, it was a success.. For a government agency though, it could easily be seen as a "failure" once the papers got it.
Government agencies have to plan a long time in advance, they can't react quickly to new information. There is a strong belief in "Design, Build, Test" which doesn't allow rapid feed
NASA Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Go a step further and ask how much of ALL of NASA's (and I'm going to use this word generously) "efforts" have been wasted? My direct interest with NASA started with the shtutle. Like most everyone else, I had a love affair with them in the 80s over the shuttle and Voyager and all the rest. I resisted disillusionment with the revelations after Challenger. But then came the Mars Climate Orbiter, Hubble, Columbia, Curiosity, SLS. Debacle after debacle. Which makes you realize it's endemic in NASA's trough-eating self-protective pork barrel mentality, and so you go back and revisit the love affair you had with the Shuttle and realize that was all, one hundred percent smoke and mirrors. The shuttle was a terrible program, and the whole infrastructure around it was designed to mask how truly awful it was and to mask the amount of money poured into it. It was not a success - they lost 40% of their fleet and 4% of their crew in preventable circumstances. Both investigations (seventeen years apart) resulted in findings of terrible decision making and both said the problems at NASA were systemic.
So now we are giving them more billions than every private spacecraft builder combined for SLS and Orion, which are years late and triple the cost. SLS at its best case scenario will, by design, provide no new technology because it's actually just reusing the worst parts of the already terrible shuttle program.
And you know what? Boeing's Starliner is just the same. Of the two "selected" return-to-space winners, it is the more expensive by a factor of two, and was NASA's "we don't like SpaceX" pick, because NASA executives despise SpaceX. To justify the cost, NASA called Starliner the contingency - it was the less riskier of the two. Really, Boeing was selected and given twice the cash and and then told get it done before and better than Crew Dragon. Every time there were conflicting NASA resources that both projects needed, Boeing was scheduled first. Any time SpaceX called up needing something, NASA caled Boeing and said hey, SpaceX is asking for this, you need to ask for it too so we can schedule you first. Starliner was the project that NASA had the most hand's on with, and... what a shock... the project they almost lost on their first test flight. In fact, they would have lost it if another, mission-failing bug hadn't shown up first and made them scared enough to look over all the rest of the software with a fine-toothed comb. They failed the mission, almost lost the capsule, and then came really close to STILL sticking people on it in an effort at having them finish before SpaceX. It was only going over NASA's head that pulled the plug on declaring all the test flight's mission goals complete and sticking people on it.
It's not the police that need to be defunded. It's NASA. They are just intrinsically terrible.
You do understand that NASA does basic research (Score:3)
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"received funding from NASA, the Department of Defense, and private investors"
So no jackass he did not do this on his own. Not to mention the market for this work was NASA. There's not free market for Space flight.
Fucking moron.
Re: WRONG (Score:2)
I've always been under the impression that a faction within NASA has been actively supporting commercial partners, including SpaceX. Your statement that SpaceX was forced on NASA is interesting and I'd love too see any references for this that you can share.
SpaceX was certainly forced on the US Air Force GPS launch contract. ULA's incompetent CEO at the time, Michael Gass, helped. I've heard Gass bloviate in person, what an idiot.
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Just because NASA is terrible doesn't mean that the police aren't also terrible. Why'd you go offtopic like that?
It's 100% on topic and here's why. Sure, you may be right about some police being terrible, and the whole idea of enforcement with guns and sticks may be intrinsically flawed, but the actual "defund police" isn't just the "take the money away from the police" part and stop there, because that's just dumb. It is also the idea of "...and then give it to ____", where ____ is a combination of efforts - social and case workers, medical and psychological first responders, and people who can follow up to figure
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Well, until the criminals only resort to using pillows and soft fruit to commit crimes, I think the police need to be as armed as the criminals are.
I believe the common, law abiding citizens should be as well armed too to protect themselves.
Remember, When seconds count...the police are only minutes away.
Sometimes 30 or more minutes away in some cities.
Off topic... (Score:3)
Off topic now, but useful.
Well, until the criminals only resort to using pillows and soft fruit to commit crimes, I think the police need to be as armed as the criminals are.
Sure, I agree with you. The problem is who has the leash.
There will always be a need for armed responders for some situations. Just the current problem is that the first responder to always comes and who is generally in charge of enforcement for the situation is the armed responder and that is a recipe for lethal mistakes. Just like the military is under civilian control, the armed responder should be treated as a blunt instrument and always be under the control of a "civilian"
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Since that is the entire purpose of the manned space program, I assume nearly all of it.
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Government is naturally Risk Adverse, while Successful companies are much more tolerant towards risks.
SpaceX just blew up a prototype of their Starship and they are calling it rather successful test, because many of the key elements passed. If this was don't by the government this would had been considered a full failure. Because the ship exploded. So Government jobs often require more time and money to make sure they are not wasting time and money, then if they just allowed mistakes to happen so they ca
Good comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it's all about the incentive here.
NASA develops the Orion with little to no incentive except "must perform the work". Money keeps coming, there's no specter of profit loss or bankruptcy, etc.
SpaceX is privately owned, the company has strong motivations to be efficient. They are in a competitive environment, they need to make a profit, they need to stand out, etc. Plenty reasons to spend money carefully and efficiently.
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No, the number one advantage SpaceX has over NASA is it is not run by government idiots. I know the word "idiots" is redundant.
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Going back to the Moon should be a pretty big incentive for the engineers and scientists involved.
The problem is the way NASA is funded, never enough, constantly shifting goals, and forced to contract stuff out on political grounds. I'm sure the people working there would love to get on with it if they could.
SpaceX is impressive but remember that when properly funded and with a clear goal NASA went from basically nothing to man on the Moon in a decade. Back then they couldn't just buy in a computer system t
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Interesting that this was modded "troll". Rabid SpaceX fan or NASA hater?
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I'm sure the people working there would love to get on with it if they could.
I'm sure competent people who work for NASA could apply for a position for SpaceX and have their dreams met. But it's not only a competence thing, it's also a mentality thing.
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Normally, I ignore hit-and-run jerks... (Score:5, Informative)
but this time I'm moving past your expletive laden swipe at the earlier poster and going after the hint of information you threw down.
"bilking billions from the government"???
Just WHO "bilked" billions of dollars from the government? I presume you are implying that SpaceX did this (which is false) and not the big three defense contractors (who arguably DID). Lets' examine this:
SpaceX hauls people and cargo to the ISS, and they do it for a price. This is legitimately EARNED money, obtained on competitively bid contracts, except that SpaceX charges LESS per pound to orbit than the big traditional vendors (who the government continues to buy from even at a higher cost). Can we agree that money legitimately earned in contractual service with competition in the bidding process is legitimate and not "bilking"?
Yes, SpaceX has received several NASA grants to support R&D that NASA was also interested in getting the results of... but the big defense contractors have been getting vastly more of that cash for that same purpose for many more decades... is it only "bilking" when SpaceX gets a few million dollars?
Are you saying SpaceX is "bilking" because Solar City or Tesla got government pork? They DID, and Musk owns them too, but they are separate business enitities, and I doubt you are concerned when a non-spaceflight division of a big defense contractor takes government pork. Certainly the employees of SpaceX have nothing to do with what's happening at Tesla or Solar City etc.
Now, I could be wrong about your intended target (your post WAS a little light on actual content, after all), perhaps you are upset with ULA bilking the government...
You should look here [theatlantic.com] for a bit of explanation for why SpaceX had to sue the government just to be able to compete - the big defense contractors were all grandfathered-in on nice fat government contracts and when SpaceX came along the USAF claimed they needed to be "certified". Of course, nobody knew what that meant, since the existing providers were all presumed certified... so tthe USAF had to spend a pile of time and money (advised by the big firms, of course) to write the rules SpaceX would have to live under to get "certified" (Atlas and Delta never went through that, and in fact those entire rocket families were developed at tax payer expense over DECADES - remember: ULA/Boeing/Lockmart always claim Atlas and Delta have the benefits of the legacy of those whole families going all the way back to the 1950s, so they must accept the government subsidies were part of that too, for consistency - and the Pantagon payed for the Atlas and Delta families to be developed in the first place). Then, of course, there was the "assured access to space" boondoggle [politico.com] err "contract" in which ULA was getting about $800,000,000 per year from the taxpayer as a fee just to be able to launch rockets if payed to do so.... which of course there was never any doubt of since they were constantly being paid to launch payloads, given that they were the only companies "certified" to do it, and the US govt was hardly going to go without satellites. Oh, and then there was the side effect of the funny book keeping that caused the GAO to discover it was possible NASA and the Pentagon were double-paying,/a> the established pre-SpaceX vendors for the fixed costs of space launches... [gao.gov]
"Bilking"? Are you sure you know what that word means? are you sure you know who to aim it at? (Are you an angry ULA investor or employee?)
Re:Good comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
Musk is absolutely driven by the idea of human space flight and his work with Space-X is oriented towards making it much more practical and with the ambition of interplanetary colonization.
NASA is at best half-hearted about human space flight. Until Space-X, they were the only game in town and had a legacy of manned space flight, so, let's keep that going and kind of spend money on it without actually moving the needle.
Further, NASA has a loud contingent of people absolutely opposed to human space flight. Some of this is logical argument about the problems/challenges of human space flight, and usually this veers into "we can do 10 robot missions for 1 manned mission". And I'm sure some of this group is making this argument cynically because they want the resources for their own pet science project and don't want to see their mission deprecated because all the money got spent on some subset of the manned space mission technology.
It's like a family argument where half the family wants to spend the entire food budget on ingredients for 7 elaborate home made recipes, the other half of the family wants 4 low-budget home made recipes and 3 nice dinners out. The end result is neither, you get 4-5 middling recipes and 2-3 fast food meals.
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Going back to the moon or going to mars is a waste of money. But hey tell the homeless how that's going to improve their lives.
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Simple fact is the market for this work is who, yes the government. So stop the bullshitting here. Government contracts are fat contracts. Talk to any defense contractor.
This is about financing pure and simple. People dumped money into SpaceX. NASA's budgets were flat.
Pork-barelling at its finest (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad to see companies like SpaceX starting to shake things up, even at the expense of my own job.
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The real purpose of Orion (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost and pace are a feature? Of course they are! Years, indeed decades of money flowing into certain Congressional districts. In return, lots of campaign donations, and well-paid positions for certain key ex-bureaucrats.
The purpose of Orion is not to fly. The purpose of Orion is to funnel money into the right pockets. If Orion were fast and efficient, the opportunities for graft would be drastically reduced.
Re:The real purpose of Orion (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's deeply saddening that NASA's flagship initiatives have deteriorated into annuities for neo-aristocrats.
They didn't deteriorate into that; many of them literally started that way.
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The cost and pace are a feature? Of course they are! Years, indeed decades of money flowing into certain Congressional districts. In return, lots of campaign donations, and well-paid positions for certain key ex-bureaucrats.
One of the largest NASA testing facilities is in... northern Ohio. Spread out between a huge building in a suburb of Cleveland and a sprawling complex in Sandusky, where Cedar Point is. Because that makes sense, right? Northern Ohio is well known for it's hub of high tech aeronautical innovation and all.
To be entirely fair, the home of the US Air Force is the massive Wright-Patterson base in Dayton, and they do quite a bit of research and development there. But, Dayton is not in northern Ohio.
On the shoulders of others... (Score:3)
This reminds me of those "Not tested on animals" statements I see on some products. Chances are high that every ingredient used in that product has been tested on animals at some point -- it's just that this particular company, with this particular recipe of ingredients, didn't test that combination on animals.
Re:On the shoulders of others... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, no, SpaceX has not benefited from the work on Orion in any meaningful way, where did you even get that notion?
Obviously both SpaceX and Orion build on from previous experience in the field in general, that's how progress works, but the comparison is interesting (albeit obviously, we all know the real purpose of the big cost plus congress driven projects). If anything, Lockheed started with an advantage of having developed for NASA previously, and any experience/know how from that would not be in the public domain available for the likes of SpaceX.
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Hasn't SpaceX benefited from NASA's knowledge pool too? Wouldn't the work involved with Orion be part of that?
Yes and no. SpaceX is undoubtedly using NASA's existing knowledge pool to build their rockets. However, so is NASA. In fact, the people who have developed that knowledge pool, mostly, still work for NASA. So why is NASA so far behind SpaceX?
Outsource or not to outsource (Score:2)
But if you can't make clear requirements, don't outsource. It will always come back to you, fighting with your subcontractor wanting more money. I think that is what is going wrong wi
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That's nothing (Score:3)
$20 Billion USD (Score:2)
and counting....
You can buy a whole lot of recycled SpaceX rockets.
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Fifty year old technology (admittedly great) built new as a shittier (not reusable) version.
One HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS per engine.
It is reasonably arguable that Raptor, is broadly comparable in outcome.
Cost is aimed to be around two hundred thousand dollars.
It is overwhelmingly likely that the whole development program and facilities have cost less than a hundred million times the five engines which have flown in starhopper, SN8 and the other one.
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One of the many problems with SLS is the old-space insistence on using LH2/LOX in the first stage. Low thrust, so it needs boosters, and low density so its tanks need to be 3 times any other fuel (more weight), plus insulation between stages so it doesn't freeze the fuel. Isp is not a measure of power, it's a measure of efficiency, like miles per gallon. Using LH2 as a first stage fuel is like trying to tow a semi trailer with a Prius, then towing the Prius with a diesel truck (SRB) so you can get up hills.
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Flown once in 15 years (Score:5, Funny)
That doesn't hinder them to publish 'monthly reports' about their accomplishments.
https://www.nasa.gov/explorati... [nasa.gov]
Comment removed (Score:3)
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They served their purpose, which was getting to the moon before the Russians.
Given the fact that we haven't been back to that Hill for decades, I'm starting to wonder exactly why we even called this a "purpose". Or a "race".
King of the Hill is a game, with worse justification than 21st Century Olympic Games. I agree. Shut it down. The delusions that no one other than NASA can do this, are obviously evaporating before our very eyes.
Work.Life Balance? (Score:2)
Just a curiosity... what's the work/life balance between NASA and SpaceX?
I know some people who work at NASA and JPL and they have good gigs. They'll have an occasional "crunch" but typically they work hard doing stuff they love and have some excitement along the way.
I don't know anyone who works at SpaceX, but as a private company there is some pressure to perform I'm sure... so I imagine it would be more akin to a computer gaming studio where people work super hard on work they love and a dream they want
Re: Work.Life Balance? (Score:2)
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I was asking a question, not making an accusation. I know people at NASA ad JPL, don't know people at SpaceX. The people I know work hard.
Way to jump to a conclusion.
NASA should stop designing their own stuff (Score:2)
It's not perfect, but the Air Force, Navy etc don't design the aircraft. They say here are the requirements .. build something and we will test it. Come to think of it, pretty much exactly what NASA did with SpaceX dragon. Nasa should scrap Artemis and just help pay for Starship R&D. When thats finished in a couple of years buy 4-5 of em. They will be NASA starships ( just like the F-16, F-15. F-22. F-35 etc.... are Airforce planes - air force bought them ) and be done with it. As far as that g
Nothing compared with the JWST (Score:2)
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Many of NASA's probes launch with obsolete technology. Take the Psyche asteroid mission that will launch in 2 years (late 2022). They are using a commercially available webcam from the year 2013. I mean think about that .. they are spending a billion dollars on the mission and could only afford an $80 one megapixel webcam as the sensor? It's not even HD! Meanwhile I bet those same people who made that decision are using 4K webcams for their zoom meetings.
Subject to political winds (Score:2)
This is why science and engineering shouldn't be a government endeavor. The political winds are constantly shifting. One administration likes something but the next kills it because it wasn't their idea. Couple that with the fact that pretty much any failure will translate into supposedly the voters thinking that the whole thing is a waste of money (it's not the voters but the politicians who want to dole it out to whomever gets them reelected). So, by never trying something, they can never be seen to h
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No jackass they don't. Corporations are risk adverse and are fixated on controlling costs in order to return money to investors.
If NASA as a private endeavor we would never have gone to the moon.
bye bye (Score:2)
bye bye Bridenstein. go get a real job for once in your life.
Free Enterprise vs Government Control (Score:2)
You choose.
Orion/SLS is just sweet talk while Musk is (Score:2)
already on his way to Mars way before they manage to lift of Orion for the first time.
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I find it unimpressive that you pretend to not know why and how NASA uses private contractors. If it is an attempt at sarcasm, it fails rather badly.
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It's pretty clearly a rockets and rockets comparison.
Nope, Orion isn't just a rocket.
When did NASA ever land and re-use a booster?
When was NASA ever tasked and allocated a budget to developing one?
They managed to land not the booster, but the whole shebang in 1996, and without a budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Enough?
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They managed to land not the booster, but the whole shebang in 1996, and without a budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Enough?
No it isn't enough. Now as much as I liked the DC/X it doesn't compare to Falcon 9 landings as the DC/X didn't even go high enough to be classed as suborbital and didn't carry cargo. It didn't have to handle the stresses of a suborbital landing let alone one from putting cargo/people in orbit like a Falcon 9 does. I really wish they had continued on with it and made a fully reusable SSTO craft but they didn't. it is a mere footnote in space history as a might have been. Falcon 9 is. Starship is in the
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Precisely.
What private space companies are doing toay is innovation. That is, take someone's working invention, and improve on it.
What NASA and other government space agencies did and are doing is something much harder - invention. That is, create something where there was nothing before you.
When you're going where, to use the cliche, "no man has gone before", when you create something that wasn't there in the first place, when you do something that is so hard that you can't even qualify all your risks, not
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This is pretty rich considering all that original "invention" done by those brave souls at NASA that the entire industry is standing on the shoulders of was literally the work of German defectors, as the original US Army program couldn't reliably get a rocket off the pad. Since moving away from the von Braun era of rockets, NASA has been a shitshow of congressional pork barrel spending.
Re:Just flusin' our money (Score:4, Informative)
AndyKron sneered:
Add that to the James Webb telescope and you're looking at some real money flushing down the toilet
The JWST's schedule slippage and budget overruns are both due pretty much entirely to Congress' dysfunctional funding mechanism, which approved the first, major tranche of funding for the Next Generation Space Telescope in 2002 [wikipedia.org], as part of the FY 2003 consolidated Federal budget. (The NGST orbital observatory was renamed the James Webb Space Telescope later that year.)
The project actually originated in 1996, but it mostly existed in the form of discussions, rather than any kind of approved design. And, to be strictly fair, the design that was funded in 2002 underwent a page 1 rewrite in 2005. But the major driver of the cost overruns and delays was (perhaps counterintuitively) Congress' decision to reduce funding for the program in subsequent years. It forced NASA to spend a lot of money trying to retain employees that were critical to the program's future success, despite progress on building the actual telescope slowing to a crawl, for lack of sufficient funding.
(It's hard to retain smart, motivated people, when you don't have enough meaningful work to offer them. Those folks tend to seek challenges - and conquering boredom is typically not among them. At the same time, if you just let them leave, you will eventually have to get their replacements up to speed on the project that's theoretically no longer on hold - and, since all of the hardware and software designs are unique to the project, little of the new employees' experience will apply to what you've hired them to do. Worse yet, you'll be expecting them to carry forward a project based on designs for which they can be expected to have no pride of ownership, nor to provide other-than-rote advocacy, because, in the end it's not their baby.)
If Congress had had the sagacity to hand NASA a firm budget - for which it had appropriated the entire amount in advance, and placed it in a closed-end trust fund - and tell its management to get it done on time, I think we'd've been enjoying the JWST's images for a couple of years already. And I don't think we'd have seen any significant cost overruns or schedule slippages.
Whenever people start screeching about hugely-expensive NASA projects, what they're really upset about is the consequences of Congress' capricious funding decisions and pork-barrel-based marching orders to the agency, not NASA itself. But the vast majority of American voters would far rather wrangle over wedge issues than pay any kind of attention to how Congress does its job.
Which is to say, "Incompetently and corruptly, in accordance with its campaign donors' wishes ..."
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