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NASA Government Space The Almighty Buck

Congress Prepares To Continue Throwing Money At NASA's Space Launch System (techcrunch.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the Congress-is-not-backing-down dept.
Congress will pour billions more dollars into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its associated architecture, even as NASA science missions remain vulnerable to cuts. TechCrunch reports: Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees recommend earmarking around $25 billion for NASA for the next fiscal year (FY 24), which is in line with the amount of funding the agency received this year (FY 23). However, both branches of Congress recommend increasing the portion of that funding that would go toward the Artemis program and its transportation cornerstones, SLS and the Orion crew capsule. Those programs would receive $7.9 billion per the House bill or $7.74 billion per the Senate bill, an increase of about $440 million from FY 2023 levels. Meanwhile, science missions are looking at cuts of around that same amount, with the House recommending a budget of $7.38 billion versus $7.79 billion in FY 2023.

Overall, NASA received $25.4 billion in funding for FY '23, with $2.6 billion earmarked toward SLS, $1.34 billion to Orion, and $1.48 to the Human Landing System contract programs. Science programs -- which include the Mars Sample Return mission and Earth science missions -- received $7.8 billion overall.
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Congress Prepares To Continue Throwing Money At NASA's Space Launch System More

Congress Prepares To Continue Throwing Money At NASA's Space Launch System

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  • linguistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pitch2cv ( 1473939 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @06:09AM (#63687805)

    Here, "throwing money," a couple submissions ago was "senate launches tactical nuke" at NASA Mars sample recovery mission.

    What's with all the nasty bias, in these cases, towards NASA?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )

      Whahh. Whahh. They're not funding what I want them to fund! Whahhhhhhhhh.

      That might be a good interpretation of the article. They could also be Elon Musk fanbois and want NASA to only use his rockets.

      • Or they want the the money to be spent effectively.

        • Indeed. SpaceX can launch cargo to orbit for 1% of the cost of SLS. StarShip will push the costs even lower.

          SLS is proof that even the stupidest government program is almost impossible to kill. The Sunk Cost Fallacy will never die.

          • No, SLS is proof that it's almost impossible to kill a program that was *intentionally designed* to be impossible to kill - because the previous one had recently been killed when the administration changed.

            The program spreads enough pork around to keep a lot of powerful congressweasels firmly in its corner, even now that nobody really wants it.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

            SpaceX can launch cargo to orbit for 1% of the cost of SLS. StarShip will push the costs even lower.

            Sure, but the intended use for the SLS is NOT putting cargo into orbit, but sending things farther. According to Space Launch System [nasa.gov]:

            NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) is a super heavy-lift rocket that provides the foundation for human exploration beyond Earth orbit. With its unprecedented capabilities, SLS is the only rocket that can send the Orion spacecraft, four astronauts, and large cargo directly to the Moon on a single mission.

            Offering more payload mass, volume, and departure energy than any other single rocket, SLS can support a range of mission objectives, while reducing mission complexity. The SLS rocket is designed to be evolvable, which makes it possible to increase its capability to fly more types of missions, including human missions to the Moon and Mars and robotic scientific missions to other deep space destinations like the Moon, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.

      • They could also be Elon Musk fanbois and want NASA to only use his rockets.

        Methinks you don't talk to many people at NASA. They all want to use SpaceX rockets. Nobody not working on SLS wants SLS, and many who are, don't.

      • They want NASA to stop planning to launch on throwaway SLS ( $4 billion ) and instead plan to launch on Elon Musk's Starship ( $100 million ).

        Because SLS is a DISGUSTING WASTE OF MONEY.

    • Here, "throwing money," a couple submissions ago was "senate launches tactical nuke" at NASA Mars sample recovery mission.

      What's with all the nasty bias, in these cases, towards NASA?

      The bias isn't towards NASA. It's towards decisions made by the Senate/Congress*.

      In this story, money is being increasingly allocated to a program which is massively wasteful and could relatively easily be replaced by a much, much cheaper one. Easy money, bad, easly-replaced program.
      In the "tactical nuke" story, budget is being massively reduced to a program which is unique, irreplaceable, and already experiencing funding woes. Basically, the Mars-return project is in serious danger of being impossibl

    • Re:linguistics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kurkosdr ( 2378710 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:51AM (#63687975)
      Because spending money to develop an obsolete and wasteful system that nobody wants is the definition of "throwing money". Nobody wants a fully-expendable launch system like the SLS when the private industry has already commercialized fully-reusable launch systems.

      Meanwhile, as others in this thread have said, the Mars-return project is something that's unique and irreplaceable and not about to be done by the private industry in the near future.

      • Re:linguistics (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @09:31AM (#63688015)

        Nobody wants a fully-expendable launch system like the SLS when the private industry has already commercialized fully-reusable launch systems.

        What do you mean by "already commercialized fully-reusable launch systems?" (especially plural). Starship has not demonstrated orbit, much less reuse, so far. Falcon 9 is partially reusable. Electron has been recovered but not re-flown. There is one operational vehicle that has demonstrated reuse (F9) and it is not capable enough for Artemis.

        When (I'd say "if" but there are no guarantees in life) Starship achieves orbit and recovery, I think SLS will be cut. Even then, the Starship stack requires on-orbit refueling to achieve it goals, including delivering Lunar Starship to the moon.

        • I meant I'd say "if" but even though there are no guarantees in life I think SpaceX has the momentum to overcome the challenges they face with Starship.

          • I meant I'd say "if" but even though there are no guarantees in life I think SpaceX has the momentum to overcome the challenges they face with Starship.

            Can momentum trump physics? The concept of resurrecting the N1Rocket (and that is what Starship is) is seriously daunting.

            What is more, that first launch showed ignoring the first principles of launching rockets. Did no one even do a calculation of just how inferior that launch pad was? I know it's fashionable to declare that Spacex has the inside scoop on how to do this rocketry thing, and NASA is a doddering bunch of senile incompetents in all matters, but all those engines blasting away at a Mercury l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          ULA has worked on man-rated heavy launch vehicles too.

          The reason I'm angry about SLS, it had every advantage in the entire legacy of the Space Shuttle program including all of the documentation, all of the vendors, and an existing parts-bin, and spent more money and development time to not fly than the Shuttle took to fly.

          And yes, I am including Constellation in the SLS calculation, as the same vendors were involved and it served the same purpose.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by brunes69 ( 86786 )

          Let me ask you this

          Lets say you gave 5 billion dollars per year (not even the current 7) to SpaceX (instead of ULA and Nasa) and directed 100% of it toward Starship. And you said, "if you can do it cheaper, fine, you keep the difference".

          Which do you think would result in a faster, better overall
            outcome?

          • Let me ask you this

            Lets say you gave 5 billion dollars per year (not even the current 7) to SpaceX (instead of ULA and Nasa) and directed 100% of it toward Starship. And you said, "if you can do it cheaper, fine, you keep the difference".

            Which do you think would result in a faster, better overall outcome?

            That's a Brooks' Law scenario. Starship is not resource constrained.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by brunes69 ( 86786 )

              It's a notional example. SpaceX does not actually need it.

              The point I am making is that ULA is a giant pile of pork.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        While SLS is less than ideal, generally speaking I think NASA's participation, and the ESA's for that matter, is really important.

        The last thing we want is people like Musk being the only option, or worse still being the overlord of the only colony on Mars.

      • Not nobody wants. Only wanted by some of the old school space companies which will benefit from this cost plus contract.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Because SLS is a boondoggle and the Mars Sample Return mission would be actual science?

    • What's with all the nasty bias, in these cases, towards NASA?

      Because NASA has a proven track record of being able to be trusted with nothing and should be disbanded???

      This is about SLS so let's start there. SLS... is a money pit and nothing more. They took the old shuttle, bolted its main engines onto the bottom of the external tank instead of having the weight of the orbiter, and then strapped on the same SRBs. That's it. That's all. That's the SLS. So, by design, it introduces no new technology. No innovation. And all that money is being burned up in order to resurrect the infrastructure for that old 1970s technology [nsaneforums.com]. The waste of bringing it back is astounding. To date:
      - $50 billion in development costs [planetary.org] ($62.1 billion inflation adjusted [calculator.net])
      - $4.1 billion per launch for at least the first four launches [arstechnica.com]

      And SLS is just the latest reason why I now believe that NASA can be trusted with exactly nothing. My personal direct interest with NASA started with the shuttle. Like most everyone else at the time, I had a complete love affair with NASA 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 Crater.
      -The Hubble mirror scandal
      -Columbia.
      -Curiosity
      -SLS
      -The Boeing StarLiner contract/development fiasco

      Every one of those a complete debacle. The closer you look, the more it makes you realize the problems are 100% endemic in NASA's trough-eating self-protective pork barrel mentality. And once your bubble bursts, you then go back and revisit the love affair you had originally had with the Shuttle, and you realize that program was all, one hundred percent smoke and mirrors. The shuttle was a terrible program from beginning to end. And the whole infrastructure around it was intentionally designed to mask how truly awful it was and to mask the amount of money poured into it. The whole "reusable" thing was a ruse - the entire orbiter was basically rebuilt after each launch, and the accounting jimmied and white washed in order to hide those expenses. It was not a success - they lost 40% of their fleet and 4% of their crew in preventable circumstances. And both investigations (seventeen years apart) resulted in identical findings findings of terrible decision making and both said the problems at NASA were systemic.

      And so we are giving them more billions than every private spacecraft builder combined for SLS and Orion, which are years late and triple the cost and, surprise surprise, the way funding has been orchestrated has designed to mask both of those facts. And the SLS will, at its best case scenario, by fucking design, provide no new technology because it's just reusing the worst parts of the already terrible shuttle program.

      Boeing's Starliner was just the same, too. Of the two "selected" return-to-space winners, it was the more expensive by a factor of two. Really it was NASA's "we just don't like SpaceX" pick, because NASA executives have openly despised SpaceX from the beginning. To justify the extra cost, NASA called Starliner the "contingency" - it was more expensive because it was the less riskier of the two options. Really what happened is that Boeing was selected and told "get it done before and better than Crew Dragon whatever the cost" because NASA wanted to show up SpaceX and Boeing said, ok, here's what that will cost you. To which Nasa just said yup. Boeing's job was to justify NASA in sidelining SpaceX. Every time there were conflicting NASA resources that both projects needed, Boeing was scheduled first. Even if it

      • Good stuff.
        I also loved the Shuttle until I realized what a horrible dead end it became.

      • Because NASA has a proven track record of being able to be trusted with nothing and should be disbanded???

        This is about SLS so let's start there. SLS... is a money pit and nothing more. They took the old shuttle, bolted its main engines onto the bottom of the external tank instead of having the weight of the orbiter, and then strapped on the same SRBs. That's it. That's all. That's the SLS. So, by design, it introduces no new technology. No innovation. And all that money is being burned up in order to resurrect the infrastructure for that old 1970s technology [nsaneforums.com]. The waste of bringing it back is astounding. To date:
        - $50 billion in development costs [planetary.org] ($62.1 billion inflation adjusted [calculator.net])
        - $4.1 billion per launch for at least the first four launches [arstechnica.com]

        And SLS is just the latest reason why I now believe that NASA can be trusted with exactly nothing. My personal direct interest with NASA started with the shuttle. Like most everyone else at the time, I had a complete love affair with NASA 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 Crater.
        -The Hubble mirror scandal
        -Columbia.
        -Curiosity
        -SLS
        -The Boeing StarLiner contract/development fiasco

        Every one of those a complete debacle. The closer you look, the more it makes you realize the problems are 100% endemic in NASA's trough-eating self-protective pork barrel mentality. And once your bubble bursts, you then go back and revisit the love affair you had originally had with the Shuttle, and you realize that program was all, one hundred percent smoke and mirrors. The shuttle was a terrible program from beginning to end. And the whole infrastructure around it was intentionally designed to mask how truly awful it was and to mask the amount of money poured into it. The whole "reusable" thing was a ruse - the entire orbiter was basically rebuilt after each launch, and the accounting jimmied and white washed in order to hide those expenses. It was not a success - they lost 40% of their fleet and 4% of their crew in preventable circumstances. And both investigations (seventeen years apart) resulted in identical findings findings of terrible decision making and both said the problems at NASA were systemic.

        And so we are giving them more billions than every private spacecraft builder combined for SLS and Orion, which are years late and triple the cost and, surprise surprise, the way funding has been orchestrated has designed to mask both of those facts. And the SLS will, at its best case scenario, by fucking design, provide no new technology because it's just reusing the worst parts of the already terrible shuttle program.

        Boeing's Starliner was just the same, too. Of the two "selected" return-to-space winners, it was the more expensive by a factor of two. Really it was NASA's "we just don't like SpaceX" pick, because NASA executives have openly despised SpaceX from the beginning. To justify the extra cost, NASA called Starliner the "contingency" - it was more expensive because it was the less riskier of the two options. Really what happened is that Boeing was selected and told "get it done before and better than Crew Dragon whatever the cost" because NASA wanted to show up SpaceX and Boeing said, ok, here's what that will cost you. To which Nasa just said yup. Boeing's job was to justify NASA in sidelining SpaceX. Every time there were conflicting NASA resources that both projects needed, Boeing was scheduled first. Even if it was a resource Boeing didn't need, any time SpaceX called up asking for some test facility, NASA would put them on hold and called Boeing on the other line and say "hey, SpaceX is asking for this, we need you to ask for it too so we can justify delaying them because you're 'already' scheduled it first". Of the two projects, Starliner was the project that NASA had the most hand's on with, and... what a shock... it was the project they almost lost on their first test flight. In fact, they [b]would[/b] have lost the vehicle if another, unrelated (but also 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 NASA came really close to STILL calling it mission success and sticking people on it just so that Boeing could finish and have people in space before SpaceX. It was only yet another whistleblower going over NASA's head that pulled the plug on declaring all the test flight's mission goals complete and sticking people on it.

        NASA and SLS need to be put out of our misery.

        I don't think NASA wants SLS. There is a reason it's called Senate Launch System - it's the senate which is forcing NASA to use the SLS.

    • This is a Congressionally mandated jobs industry support program, and if you think NASA had any choice here you are mistaken. Many years back it was made clear that NASA would build a BFR. Of course, there were and are people at NASA who want to do it, but there was also opposition at NASA. Congress pretty much made NASA the offer it could not refuse back in the Obama administration (which tried to kill the BFR).

  • Why does Congress need Science (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gtall ( 79522 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @06:27AM (#63687815)

    Science does not buy votes. Now, launch vehicles, those require large amounts of local funding that can be trumpeted to the voters. So apparently, the hand wringing over the national debt is just virtue signalling.

    • Science does not buy votes. Now, launch vehicles, those require large amounts of local funding that can be trumpeted to the voters. So apparently, the hand wringing over the national debt is just virtue signalling.

      SLS is a huge project that creates jobs in many States; it keeps people employed. And keeping people employed can earn votes for a politician.

      https://www.naco.org/sites/def... [naco.org]

      • You know what would create even more jobs and keep even more people employed? Putting the same money spent on SLS into essential services such as health and education. Or even half the money spent on SLS.

        SLS has been demonstrated to not be anywhere close to being able to keep to budget (time or money). Given that do you really think they will use even more money in a cost-effective manner?

      • Why not pour money into reusable launch system(s) though? That would be a win-win for everyone. Rapidly reusable (ie, not space shuttle style complete disassembly and inspection before each launch) rockets means more space access which means more demand for space products and launch systems and handling. If a Boeing 747 airplane cost $10 billion and you could fly it only once, it wouldn't create many jobs. If launch systems were reusable, more rockets would get built because it will bring in more investment

        • Why not pour money into reusable launch system(s) though? That would be a win-win for everyone.

          You are assuming a few things...

          ...like the US Congress acting in a rational and intelligent manner. HINT: They are none of that since they are politicians.

          ...like legacy space launching companies willing to think outside the box. HINT: Too confined to their old ways.

          ...like NASA willing to try anything that has more than 0.000001 percent of risk associated with it. HINT: NASA is too afraid to FAIL.

          .

          We might all take swipes at Leon Musk (yeah I know it's Elon) for his behavior and politics, but his SpaceX o

  • Such a friggin' throwback system. 4 billion per launch?? Here is an article on how wasteful it is: https://medium.com/@cliffberg/... [medium.com]
  • It's a "Pork to my district" system.

  • Senate Launch System (Score:3)

    by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @07:35AM (#63687893)
    The only system with redesigned, reusable parts that get discarded after use.

    • as opposed to the kiddie-working-in-vacuum designed reusable system that destroys half of itself because said kids were too stupid to use proper fire trench tech from more than half a century ago, and after doing a loop the loop destroys the rest of itself at less than 25 miles high.

      SpaceX, X is for explosions

  • I hope Congress continues to fund NASA projects for decades. It keeps me employed.

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