After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/nasas-space-launch-system-rocket-shuts-down-after-just-67-seconds/

by Liron • 6 years ago

116 151 6 years ago

JackFr• 6 years ago

I’m not a rocket scientist and I also don’t want to bash NASA, but the size of the budget here coupled with the lack of transparency about the failure is in stark contrast with what we’ve seen out of both SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Maybe what NASA is trying to do here from an engineering perspective is much, much harder. I also feel there may be unjustified spin in this article. But to an untrained eye this article sure makes it look like an expensive jobs program for Alabama,Texas and Florida.

fastball• 6 years ago

It's not an expensive jobs program for AL, TX, and FL... it's an expensive jobs program for the entire country.

NASA prides itself on sourcing components from / having a presence in each of the 50 states.

readams• 6 years ago

Blue Origin hasn't actually delivered anything.

sandworm1016• 6 years ago

Transparency with the public can only happen after transparency exists within the organization. They probably don't yet know what happened. They might have ideas, some people might be confident, but at this point the organization as a whole doesn't know much. There is no point in them communicating theories or ad hoc explanations. We will all have to wait for the internal review of the data.

bob1029• 6 years ago

Nothing about SLS makes sense to me economically.

  F9 Launch Cost (without reuse): $65mm
  FH Launch Cost (without reuse): $150mm
  SLS Launch Cost: >$2,000mm

How does anyone square this arrangement? What saving graces does SLS have (from an engineering perspective) compared to the SpaceX programs? There are certainly a lot of downsides and I would be really disappointed to learn that there are no upsides.

markus_zhang• 6 years ago

You gotta take care of your brothers and sisters, and you ex-colleuages too, and that's a lot of money bro. The real upside I think is that people finally figured out there are more economical choices other than the big boys alliance.

imglorp• 6 years ago

It's all about Congress, the native American criminal class. They're already $14 billion in.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/10/nasa-buying-ten-sls-ro...

I'd like to point out the development process appears to be waterfall. Instead of many cheap iterations, blowing stuff up and continually improving, they want few, complete, expensive articles: that means many tests like OP article is going to need spin as a "failure" and not a learning cycle.

BurningFrog3• 6 years ago

It fits with the OP theory of "an expensive jobs program for Alabama, Texas and Florida."

If you think of that as the actual purpose, this is a successful project.

izend• 6 years ago

Notice the use solid rocket fuel in the SLS and the mandate from Congress to retain the skills and experience. What else uses solid fuel? The US ICBM arsenal.

blackrock2• 6 years ago

Can Falcon Heavy launch payloads with a wider diameter?

I assume they’d have to build an additional adapter to handler wider payloads.

jariel3• 6 years ago

Well could it be the F9 etc. are targeted at a very well established commercial class with tons of buyers, economic outputs, stable market, opportunity for re-use.

Whereas SLS is more like big fantasy science missions, much less frequent and nobody willing to really pay for it but government?

As a very, very crude way of looking at it?

nickik7• 6 years ago

Its actually much worse then that. These are not the 'cost' for F9/FH, that is the price. The cost of these launch is like 1/2 to 1/3. Part of the price is also amortizing past development cost.

In the SLS launch non of that is included. If you take into account the full development cost and amortize them over all the launches (and calculate the interest on government debt) the price is actually way higher then what you have listed.

- SLS is more powerful then FH but not by as much as people think.

- SLS is human-rated and FH is not, but that is mostly because there is no reason to human-rate the FH.

- SLS has the potential to be extend significantly to outperform FH by a much larger margin but that will cost another X billion and another Y years.

- SLS was supposed to be cheap by using lots of legacy technology. So in reality Falcon series are actually pretty much newer and more modern in pretty much every design aspect. Of course when SLS was designed Falcon was 'unproven' and the parts of the SLS were 'proven'. However of course this has totally reversed by now.

SLS rocket is simply a bad design. It was the outcome of a bad process partly pushed by congress on NASA and partly by NASA engineers own failure to analyse the situation properly. A large part of this is the believe to reuse 'proven' technologies and more importantly to reuse that same workforce.

Because it used Cost+ contracting the contractors have no intensive what so ever to perform well. The keep getting their bonus payments for good performance even, something that independent government reviews has pointed out multiple times.

So to sum up, there is very little to almost nothing that is gained by SLS. Its a huge part of the NASA budget every year that could be invested in amazing developments. You could fully fund the lunar lander program AND do other preparation for moon bases for example.

Edit: This talk form 2011 is quite interesting. I often call it the SpaceX antithesis talk. He even mentions SpaceX a couple of times and references them without naming them.

He quite literally says 'if we can't make this affordable they will from in future just let SpaceX do it' and he made it clear their main design goal is affordability and having a program that could meet milestones. Well, that didn't work out so much. See:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweLWCBHpUE?t=0

Isinlor2• 6 years ago

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY

Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2...

Mass to the Moon:

- Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes

- SLS: 43 metric tonnes

- Starship: 156 metric tonnes

Price per launch:

- Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars

- SLS: 0.875B dollars

- Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$)

Price per kg:

- Satrun 5: 25 600 $

- SLS: 20 000 $

- Starhip: 2 000 $ worse case scenario (Elon aims at 40$)

sandworm1016• 6 years ago

> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$)

Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for free. Unless SpaceX is given its own range, its own giant chunk of the atlantic ocean closed to everything but spaceX, massive launches are still going to cost well over 0.1B, 100 million.

And... insurance.

blackrock2• 6 years ago

This also makes the big assumption that Starship is successful. And that Starship’s cost estimates are even realistic.

mumblemumble4• 6 years ago

I'm guessing it has more to do with culture.

A lot of big long-standing organizations develop an internal culture of being more focused on not fucking up than on achieving success. Paradoxically, this leads to more problems, and more of the costs associated with them. People stay in their swim lanes, and nobody has each other's backs. The more you keep your head down and try not to get involved, the less you can be blamed for.

L. David Marquet digs pretty deep into this phenomenon in his book Turn the Ship Around! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16158601-turn-the-ship-a...

mhh__2• 6 years ago

It is a jobs program. It's not nicknamed the senate launch system for nothing.

If they were doing it now I'm sure they'd be tempted in just contracting out and just building the payloads, but when it was being laid out they didn't exist.

pfdietz19• 6 years ago

Now that Shelby is in the minority party in the Senate I think we may see this thing killed.

frakkingcylons2• 6 years ago

As jobs programs go in the U.S., I’d rather they waste money on an obsolete launch system for space exploration rather than weapons. Unfortunately the bar is pretty low in the U.S..

sidlls3• 6 years ago

As if SpaceX has delivered anything that isn’t: a) (effectively) government funded and b) built on the back of decades of NASA engineering effort. Blue Origin hasn’t actually done anything.

Beached4• 6 years ago

falcon? to my knowledge nasa has only partially funded cargo and crewed dragon, falcon 1 and 9 were developed through private funding and became profitable and stable before nasa even got their hands in the pot.

mdorazio• 6 years ago

I'm really tired of seeing this stupid argument that SpaceX is government funded. The entire aerospace industry is government funded because the government has huge amounts of money and offers large contracts to many companies. By this measure, Palantir and many younger startups are also government funded. It's a meaningless statement. Bash SpaceX for their work culture and other issues all you want, but their business model is just fine.

__panick212• 6 years ago

You are very wrong about this actually.

SpaceX funded most of the Falcon 1 program themselves. The DoD was one early costumer.

SpaceX got some funding for Commercial Cargo program but that was mostly for the capsule, it didn't fully fund the Falcon 9.

The whole Falcon 9 improvement, such as Merlin 1D engines and all the other improvements were funded from SpaceX themselves.

The same goes for the complete SpaceX re-usabilitly program.

Under the Commercial Cargo contract part of that money was for human rating the Falcon 9 but is mostly about paper work and certification. A few issues were addressed that were financed with this contract. That money was for the capsule.

The Raptor program was a SpaceX own development. They got a small grant from the air force for a small Raptor version but that is a tiny part of the program and the current Raptor is very different. All of that was done without any funding from government.

The complete Starship program was funded by SpaceX themselves until last year when they got comparatively small amount for the Starship as a Moon lander study, but not nearly enough to fund the program.

The complete Starlink program was funded and developed by SpaceX without any government contracts.

Its flat out false to say that everything SpaceX has done was government funded. SpaceX has and had many commercial flights and has multiple rounds of investment of private money raised.

In reality SpaceX very likely bit to low for both CRS and for CommercialCrew. SpaceX had to invest private funds to get these programs operational. Boeing considered SpaceX bid so low that it would be impossible for SpaceX to finish the capsule and reasoned that when that happened they could also ask for more money, but SpaceX didn't ask for more money and finished the project.

And the argument that it all builds on decades of NASA engineering effort, well that is partly true. But you could just as well argue that Space build on all engineering effort of humanity.

NASA or its contractors have never even come close to making an engine so operationally cheap as the Merlin, or an engine that was as reusable as Merlin. Nothing NASA has ever done is close to as impressive as Raptor (RS-25 is neat design but production and cost nightmare). NASA has not build a cargo or crew capsule in 50 years. NASA has not managed to design a new rocket in 50+ years. NASA own attempts at rocket development have universally failed.

NASA never managed anything close to capturing a reusable orbital booster. Programs like DC-X are not in the same league.

People need to stop claiming that SpaceX is simply a couple guys who found some drawings at NASA and said, he we can copy that. SpaceX has done things NASA was not able to even with budgets 10-50 times higher. Most of the things SpaceX profited from were done decades ago.

And in the opposite direction it is actually the case that NASA learned a huge amount from SpaceX as well. NASA got full access into Space re-usability program like the engines, super-sonic retro-propulsion. SpaceX has the first data on pusher escape systems. Full-Flow Stage Combustion engine are now something NASA can study because of the Moon Lander program. SpaceX way of doing software development have very much changed NASA approchs as well.

And all of that is before we consider the organizational changes at NASA that happened directly because of SpaceX. Many NASA engineers have talked about how contact with SpaceX directly changed their perspective and how they tried to bring this culture into NASA. Dan Rasky is one good example of this, his talks on the subject are informative.

What makes SpaceX (and in a different way BlueOrigin) different is exactly that they go and get their own funding for when they want to work on a project. If government has some contracts open that they can use their technology for they are happy to do it. Eventually government will fly regularly with Starship, but that is different from SpaceX Starship program being funded by government.

messe• 6 years ago

SLS is often jokingly referred to as the Senate Launch System for good reason. Its bloated budget and insistence on reusing space shuttle components means that it’s more a jobs program, than a serious attempt at building a launch vehicle.

interestica• 6 years ago

It's not like they actually sent a member of Congress into space in 1985....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-D

rm445• 6 years ago

Never heard of that, thanks. Jake Garn is a pretty interesting character. City mayor, Senator, navy pilot with thousands of flying hours. Headed the Senate appropriations committee for NASA and wrangled himself a place on a Shuttle mission. Born in 1932 and still alive despite donating a kidney to his daughter in the 80s. Quite a life.

ArtWomb• 6 years ago

Great, in-depth reporting. My initial understanding was that delays were COVID-related.

Feb at least will be a busy month for robotic exploration of Mars, with probes from US, UAE and China!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/science/space-astronomy-l...

michaericalribo3• 6 years ago

Bummer! Especially this line:

All of this casts very serious doubt on NASA's plans to launch its Artemis I mission—an uncrewed precursor mission to sending humans to the Moon—before the end of this year.

This outcome seems like good safety engineering: prioritize safety and control over speed.

Still, it’s a disappointing setback. I want to go to space now! And this moves the eventual realization of space tourism back incrementally further into the future... so much for my kids being Belters

rblatz• 6 years ago

I don’t think the SLS has been on anyone’s realistic roadmap to space tourism for over half a decade. Private companies like SpaceX and to a lessor extent Blue Origin have blown past NASA in that department.

This shows nothing besides how broken the politics around NASA are, and how Congress is optimizing for a totally different thing than getting people into space cheaply and safely.

michaericalribo3• 6 years ago

That makes sense. I do think there are network effects...NASA’s success has some influence on private companies’ success. But you’re right, too, that the public sector bureaucracy seems to hobble the possibility of steady and sustained progress.

Beached4• 6 years ago

SLS never was going to enable space tourism. You have private companies doing that, and doing it better than Boeing.

SLS is worse than existing rockets in every way but one. Lift Capacity. Near term expected Space tourism doesnt need super heavy lift capacity. cheaper, faster, more reliable rockets already exist to get humans into LEO

While Falcon Heavy or Delta may be able to do some of the artemis missions, they currently cannot do all of them planned. Simply because of lift capacity or payload volume. However it will be interesting to see what happens to SLS if SpaceX gets starship going before SLS. Since SLS has already been in development for almost 10 years, and Boeing is in charge, many people think we will see an orbital Starship come to market before SLS hits orbit, and essentially rendering the entire SLS program a complete waste of time and money.

But dont worry, SLS will in no way slow down you getting to go to space, or your kids becoming belters. That timeline is independent of SLS, and may even be accelerated because of SLS failures.

michaericalribo3• 6 years ago

I’m intrigued at the idea that this failure “puts the squeeze” on private companies to get their projects in order faster and more efficiently. Then again I’d rather see Elon or Jeff make the trip ahead of me, as a vote of confidence. I don’t want to get spaced bc of an asshole PM at deep blue! :D

hwc• 6 years ago

An "orbital Starship" plus a successful orbital refueling is the real game changer. Goes from 150T to LEO TO 150T anywhere in the solar system. SLS block 2, which is another decade (?) away, can only send 45T to Earth escape velocity.

And orbital refueling only costs six (?) times as much as a LEO flight.

fasteddie31003• 6 years ago

Add SLS to the list of embarrassing aerospace projects from America F-35, 737 Max, and Starliner.

mhh__2• 6 years ago

F-35 is doing just fine at the moment.

It looked bad because it was the first modern aircraft to be developed under the watchful gaze of the internet, now it's doing much better in simulated combat as it's aged. It's not even that expensive anymore - it's not cheap by any means - but the new F-16 is basically the same price.

superkuh• 6 years ago

the new F-16 is basically the same price.

Wow. I didn't believe you at first but wikipedia says the price of a F-16V is $120 million in 2020 while the latest F-35A buy in 2019 had them at ~$80 million a piece.

yamoriyamori• 6 years ago

This article published the day before the SLS test, but I think it's important context (engineering vs. financial corporate culture) for Boeing's involvement, and just how dang difficult it is to get systems integrated (software, hardware, and um giant rockets). The article notes just how well Spacex has been doing even under greater scrutiny by NASA, while Boeing might have been implicitly trusted as a name/brand with a legacy, but had delivery/design/testing stumbles anyways.

(WSJ, paywall etc.)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeings-other-big-problem-fixin...

pfdietz19• 6 years ago

No pay wall:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/boeings-other-big-proble...

numpad0• 6 years ago

Why bother with RS-25 if they don’t even know what they don’t know in a failure?

tailspin20198• 6 years ago

You have to fail to move forwards. A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new.

Hasn’t SpaceX proved that?

The negative commentary around this seems a little in contrast to how we’d talk about a SpaceX “failure” on HN.

I know NASA and SpaceX are very different, but Elon is the king of drifting deadlines too. And SpaceX do fail, but they do a good job of “owning their failures” and they keep moving forwards.

Should we cut the NASA team a bit of slack?

Let’s not forget also that it’s NASA who have also drastically changed their strategy and have enabled private companies like SpaceX to shine through their partnerships.

NASA is big, wasteful, bureaucratic yes, but they are changing, slowly... and this “failure” is not the stick I’d choose to beat them with.

mcbutterbunz• 6 years ago

I don’t mind failure and I understand there are going to be setbacks. I just wish they would fail faster. I love NASA and all they’ve done but 10 years of SLS without a launch makes me doubt this thing will ever get off the ground. With a new administration, I feel like we’re one setback away from the whole thing being cancelled.

tailspin20198• 6 years ago

I don’t mind failure and I understand there are going to be setbacks. I just wish they would fail faster.

I do agree with this. I just took issue with the lede being “rocket test fails” as if that’s a bad thing.

The underlying points are all valid, speed, cost etc but a failed test is not the thing to be focussing the argument on in my view.

ElFitz• 6 years ago

True, but they are failing very, very, slowly.

The big difference between NASA and SpaceX lies in how fast they each move, and what they are failing at.

Failing at launching the first private rocket on a tight budget, at landing a rocket for the first time, or at iterating on rocket designs at pace rarely, if ever, seen before is expected. As a matter of fact, it’s success that isn’t expected.

Failing at making yet another (very expensive) rocket built by supposedly experienced manufacturers overseen by a huge public organisation over more than a decade with huge funding? Well, it’s a bit disturbing to say the least.

pfdietz19• 6 years ago

SpaceX learns by doing, not by years of expensive analysis that ends up not preventing failure anyway.

SpaceX's approach also deals with the real problem, which is a program having the wrong goals, rather than making mistakes in working toward a given goal. How many of you have built a product that ended up working great, but was a failure because it was the wrong product?

tailspin20198• 6 years ago

True, but they are failing very, very, slowly.

I can’t argue with that!

kaba0• 6 years ago

SpaceX gets tons of government funding, while NASA’s was greatly cut over the years..

tw04• 6 years ago

I don't think the negativity is directed at NASA so much as Boeing. They've made a business out of grifting, and this is just another example of it.

Shelby is more concerned with staying in office than making advances in space, and it shows. That's not NASA's fault, they're trying to do the right thing IN SPITE of the political pressure to waste money in order for a politician to be able to claim he's "creating jobs" in his state.

http://innerspace.net/congress-2/richard-shelbys-war-against...

ryandrake• 6 years ago

NASA probably could be as nimble as SpaceX if they didn’t have to rely on Congress, whose goal is not to build a successful rocket, but to spread the money funnel across the States. Imagine if SpaceX’s board suddenly said “the company’s goal is now not to get to Mars, but to employ as many people and contractors as possible in all 50 states!” You’d basically get NASA.

mumblemumble4• 6 years ago

My impression is that the big difference between NASA's human spaceflight program and SpaceX is that, where NASA has failures, SpaceX has stretch goals that weren't met.

This is an unfortunate consequence of any insufficiently iterative development process.

akira2501• 6 years ago

Let’s not forget also that it’s NASA who have also drastically changed their strategy and have enabled private companies like SpaceX to shine through their partnerships.

That's because they're required to by law. There's an entire section of the United States Code that's dedicated to this.

GuB-42• 6 years ago

SpaceX made failure part of its strategy. Rocket explodes, no big deal, we expected that, the next one is ready.

NASA is not like that, they are more conservative, spend a lot of time and money making sure things work the first time, so when they don't, then it is a problem.

This, BTW, is one thing that killed Armadillo Aerospace.

Carmack said another mistake the company made was not to go into series production, making several versions of the STIG rockets simultaneously so that the loss of a single vehicle would not be as traumatic. “That was our critical mistake in the last few years, because we should have been able to put more of these together,” he said.

It is not that NASA doesn't have the right to fail, but in their case, it is a major setback, and it is a bit disappointing considering how much SLS went overboard.

dmix2• 6 years ago

Wasn’t this simply a byproduct of Congress trying to control the process? The idea of hard deadlines and low risk.

Apparently they only have until Feb to try to test it again to make sure they can launch this year. That sounds like pure political pressure instead of organizational culture.

Congress tried to cancel this whole test to speed things up so they were apparently fortunate to have done this test at all.

JshWright3• 6 years ago

They are very different kinds of failure though... This was not an exploratory "try something new" test. This was an integration test to verify that all the "on paper" work was correct. The whole point of SLS is that its use of technology with extensive "flight heritage" is supposed to avoid having to break new ground.

This is like discovering a major issue during the shakedown cruise of a new ship. It's better to find the issue now, and that's why they test, but the point of this test wasn't to learn anything new, it was supposed to just prove that it works as expected.

SpaceX is generally very up front about tests that they think have a high likelihood of failure, and the tests that do fail tend to be doing genuinely "new things" (like belly-flopping a booster).

I'm not a SpaceX fanboy here (I think Elon in particular is pretty insufferable), but it's not really to fair to compare SpaceX's development testing failures with this integration test failure.

TaylorAlexander2• 6 years ago

So I listened to a podcast about this... but SpaceX and Boeing/NASA are explicitly taking two different approaches to proving their rocket will work. Obviously we know SpaceX is proving their rocket through system level tests. But for SLS the plan has been to use a long accepted NASA approved method of proving their design where individual parts are so thoroughly tested and proven to work that they don’t need many flight tests of the full system. In fact I believe the original plan was one flight test without humans and then have the second flight be a manned mission! So they really aren’t supposed to fail like this.

So at the core are two different approaches to proving their system, where SpaceX totally expects some failures and SLS is supposed to be proven before it even flies. Personally I’m a fan of the SpaceX method but I can understand why the old guard space developers would choose this slower more cautious method.

tailspin20198• 6 years ago

Would you mind sharing a link to the podcast? It sounds interesting!

foobarian• 6 years ago

Adding to your comment, this closing made me sad: "So what had been viewed as a strength of the program, using heritage hardware, instead became a liability. Saturday was only the first real hardware test for the rocket. It cannot afford too many more liabilities like those on display."

If anything they cannot afford _not_ to have more failures like that. In fact on the spectrum of failures this one was near the best possible outcome since something was learned without destroying the entire assembly. But with this kind of reactive thinking they may turtle up and slow down progress until the program gets canceled.

MaxBarraclough• 6 years ago

A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new.

I may just have blindspots in my history knowledge here, but the moon landing was pretty much an unqualified success, no?

tailspin20198• 6 years ago

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

My comment (in support of NASA) was that an isolated test failure shouldn't be looked upon as a failure of their entire programme. Instead it's actually a signal of progress being made (however slow that progress may be).

There were plenty of isolated testing failures like this (some much worse) leading up to the moon landing.

detaro• 6 years ago

It did go very well overall, but 3 astronauts died in testing (totally avoidable), several of the test-launches of the rockets didn't go to plan, and later Apollo missions had various incidents.

pfdietz19• 6 years ago

It was a pyrrhic success. It was so expensive it was a dead end.

HeadsUpHigh• 6 years ago

Failure at NASA isn't like failure at SpaceX. This was the culmination of 10 years of simulations and pork jobs. For SpaceX its the culmination of a couple weeks of wielding on a tent using private money instead of direct public funds.

nickik7• 6 years ago

Difference is SpaceX welded some tanks on a field. This program spend 20 billion over 10 years designing the whole system on paper with very little iterative testing.

This not a prototype, this is the actual rocket that should fly. It has already spent over 1 year on the test stand to do 1 static fire. SpaceX did 3 static fire in ONE DAY last week.

Consider this, when SLS started development SpaceX Starship literally didn't exist on paper, the engines didn't exist, the facilities they were built in didn't exist, they didn't even have approval to build facilities.

So SpaceX designed a totally new engine, a engine mass manufacturing line, multiple new test stands, designed threw many iteration on the Starship design, build a totally new private space port with a huge manufacturing facility. All of this was done for a budget that is less then what SLS gets PER YEAR and not just a little less.

One year of SLS development could have likely funded all of SpaceX research and development over the last 10 years.

NASA simply should not build its own rocket. And even worse they should not blow unlimited amounts of money into these contracts while they are showing absurdly bad performance. In fact, I think the government should systematically be compensated with stocks of these companies when they go over budget and over time by this amount.

The whole program is political, it serves no function. Payloads like Europa Clippers are fighting politically for the right NOT to launch on SLS. Having SLS around forces NASA into suboptimal moon architectures. SLS is a political straight-jacked for NASA. With the SLS budget alone so many amazing project could be funded, it is hard to even comprehend.

We can 'cut the slack' on this issue, but the issues keep coming and the rate of delay is pretty crazy and the cost are even crazier.

Let’s not forget also that it’s NASA who have also drastically changed their strategy and have enabled private companies like SpaceX to shine through their partnerships.

Fantastic, totally agree. Lets do more of that, and less giving Boeing and LM money for not performing well.

pfdietz19• 6 years ago

While I understand the value of technological boondoggle -- sometimes there IS a pony in there somewhere -- SLS is just way too far over the line. Knife this baby and destroy the tooling that made it possible, so it never rises from its grave.

Animats3• 6 years ago

NASA forgot how to make rockets:

“Both NASA and contractor officials explained that nearly 50 years have passed since development of the last major space flight program—the Space Shuttle—and the learning curve for new development has been steep as many experienced engineers have retired or moved to other industries.”

stretchcat2• 6 years ago

It seems like a textbook case of 'use it or lose it.'

Animats3• 6 years ago

The Department of Energy maintains a large nuclear weapons establishment for "stockpile stewardship", so the US doesn't forget how to make nuclear weapons.[1] That already happened once with a material for fusion bombs called FOGBANK. The original manufacturing plant was shut down in 1989. In 2000, there was a demand for more FOGBANK, to refurbish old nuclear weapons. But attempts to make more of it failed. Attempts to make an alternative material failed. It took until 2008 to get production working again.

"The new production scientists noticed that certain problems in production resembled those noted by the original team. These problems were traced to a particular impurity in the final product that was required to meet quality standards. A root cause investigation showed that input materials were subject to cleaning processes that had not existed during the original production run. This cleaning removed a substance that generated the required impurity. With the implicit role of this substance finally understood, the production scientists can control output quality better than during the original run."

That's one way an institution forgets how to make something. There are other ways.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK

Balgair• 6 years ago

From Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design:

39. (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule:

       1)  No new launch vehicles.

       2)  No new launch vehicles.

       3)  Whatever you do, don't develop any new launch vehicles.

https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html

mbrodersen2• 6 years ago

Apparently that wasn’t a problem for SpaceX. The problem with NASA is its corporate culture and political micro-management not lack of engineering skills.

Animats3• 5 years ago

Space-X had to start over from the beginning. They built a small booster, and then a bigger booster, and then a better version of the bigger booster, then an even bigger booster and a spacecraft. Took 18 years. That's longer than it took NASA in the 1950s and 1960s.

NASA is trying to do a giant booster without anybody who built a booster recently.

dblohm7• 6 years ago

The thesis of this article is pure hyperbole. “Oh noes, one of the RS-25s failed, the whole program is a failure!”

Beached4• 6 years ago

It is widely agreed that the whole program is a failure. Almost 3 years past due date, and most people believe it will still need more than another year. More than double the estimated cost Is providing very little benefit over existing rockets, and providing no benefits over planned rockets in development by others. It is adding no new capabilities, or technologies, and is in fact a step backwards in rocket design, not forward or to the side. Its sole purpose is to employ people, not push the space industry forward of get NASA somewhere. For all those reasons, people think SLS is a huge failure of a program, except at giving Boeing money, which is does great at.

pfdietz19• 6 years ago

Even if SLS delivered the working design instantly at zero cost it would be a failure. The rockets themselves will be too expensive to make and use.

mchusma• 6 years ago

I think the SLS program at this point adds negative value to getting to space. I wouldn't normally wish for failure, but I think even if development were free I would vote to axe it.

The distraction of this program is immense, and when it's done you have a non reusable rocket in a reusable age.

kilroy123• 6 years ago

I agree with you and I suspect many at NASA feel the same way. Sadly, it's not up to them.

jariel3• 6 years ago

Failure in and of itself is not so bad, it's really how it's operationalized. How quickly can they identify, correct and move on to the next test? That's the question.

After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

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