NASA’s newest rocket is a colossal waste of money

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/08/28/nasas-newest-rocket-is-a-colossal-waste-of-money

by acqbu • 4 years ago

38 67 4 years ago

acqbu• 4 years ago

seydor4• 4 years ago

Launching people into space should not be a priority at all. Most of the western world is dangerously aging, but there arent any (large scale) anti-aging projects.

gravelc• 4 years ago

Everyone who has ever been born is dangerously aging as far as I can make out. Doesn’t seem unique to one hemisphere.

melling2• 4 years ago

The associated cost with aging is the real problem. Alzheimer’s, for example, is about $300 billion a year, on the way to $1 trillion.

https://www.ajmc.com/view/economic-burden-of-alzheimer-disea...

garyrob• 4 years ago

"Everyone who has ever been born is dangerously aging as far as I can make out." Except for those who have already dangerously aged a bit too far.

Keyframe3• 4 years ago

Getting off the planet is a priority, among many others.

seydor4• 4 years ago

with the genetic makeup developed entirely by and for planet earth? How is that a reasonable position

jbverschoor• 4 years ago

So we can have wars and destroy that one too?

Maybe first try to fix the problems here

zeryx• 4 years ago

Making it easier to have kids is the solution here, age related death is the natural equalizer

bryanlarsen5• 4 years ago

https://www.startus-insights.com/innovators-guide/4-top-anti... lists 204 startups, more than the number of rocket startups. Calico alone has received $2.5B in funding, which is more than SpaceX has received in any one of its rounds.

mhaberl• 4 years ago

I completely disagree.

Western world is aging, bu we don't have a global issue of aging (e.g. population of Africa is growing) - as a species humans will survive this issue.

However - when (not if) an asteroid hits, we are all gone. We mostly can't anticipate a hit, and even if we could, we could just watch it destroy us.

We must become multiplanetary species to survive.

seydor4• 4 years ago

Africa is not funding research though. And the hypothetical asteroid is much less likely than a truly deadly pandemic or nuclear or biological war. Humans will never become multiplanetary. Another, engineered species will

fastball• 4 years ago

there arent any anti-aging projects

Yeahhh, so this isn't true. Just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist.

hrnnnnnn• 4 years ago

There are though. One such is Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SENS_Research_Foundation

bergie• 4 years ago

Just like everything else in the globalised economy, young people are being manufactured at scale in places where the manufacturing costs are lower (for instance, Africa). So “aging western society” is mostly a question of logistics.

kurupt2132• 4 years ago

Young Africans aren’t a replacement for westerners. They are culturally too dissimilar.

krapp• 4 years ago

but there arent any anti-aging projects

Sure there are. The coming environmental collapse, the collapse of technological civilization soon to follow, increasingly virulent pandemics, violence, poverty, hunger, the rise of global fascism and war, self-driving cars plowing into pedestrians.

The future presents a bountiful cornucopia of options for never reaching adulthood.

kurupt2132• 4 years ago

Old age gets us all. Deal with it.

djmips2• 4 years ago

Comparing the price of a craft that can go to the moon with an orbital launcher is pretty unfair don't you think?

thematrixturtle2• 4 years ago

Huh? SpaceX's Starship is designed to go to Mars.

croes• 4 years ago

And Teslas are designed to drive autonomous

p_l5• 4 years ago

It's... not? There are no allowances in Starship design for long range trip. It could be used to kickstart building a vessel that could do it, by being useful launch vehicle to ship materials, but that's it.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

Anybody can design anything to go anywhere.

Starship doesn't exist.

djmips2• 4 years ago

"Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for instance, has shown it is possible to build reusable rockets that can send astronauts and cargo into space for around $50m per launch, far less than the projected $2bn (or more) for each ride aboard the sls" - that $50m is not Starship pricing that's the more run-of-the-mill Falcon 9.

melling2• 4 years ago

We went to the moon 50 years ago, made a half a dozen trips then got bored.

Now we will soon be able to do it again.

hwc• 4 years ago

The Orion spacecraft can't even make it to low Lunar orbit.

The SLS block 1 can put 95 tons into low Earth orbit. Compare to the Falcon Heavy, which can put 63.8 tons into LEO. Is it worth paying over ten times as much for only 1.4 times as much cargo?

p_l5• 4 years ago

Things don't scale linearly with space cargo, nor can you easily work around it by multiple launches.

That said, majority of the price tag is probably congressional impact rather than anything else...

akvadrako• 4 years ago

It looks bad when compared to the Saturn V.

mempko• 4 years ago

What kind of market is it called when there is only one buyer for a product? What's so stupid about this article is that Starship too is part of Artemis program.

dannyfraser• 4 years ago

It's called a monopsony.

tech2• 4 years ago

That would be a monopsony, making NASA a monopsonist.

CaptArmchair3• 4 years ago

This is the extreme take that's echoed across online fora by proponents of commercial enterprises such as SpaceX.

There's an big argument to be made for the efficient investment of "taxpayer money".

Then again, the SLS program does fund the private space industry. While it's easy to dismiss it as a mere "jobs program", it did / does provide a bed for the next generation of engineers to learn, gain knowledge, become experts and so on. It also provided a bed for contractors and subcontractors to grow their businesses. Just like the Apollo program did.

The big difference with the likes of SpaceX is that the latter aims to provide a completely integrated platform with all the components. At a fraction of the cost. In a way, SpaceX aims to mimic Apple's business model. It's already a commercial brand in it's own right rather then some white-label name.

While choosing the cheaper, efficient option would seemingly be preferable, a public government isn't a private customer. It's the 'res publica' that represents society and its manifold interests. So, that leaves us a poignant question: Would the cheap price and efficiency offered by a single private actor who does everything, really be worth trading in supporting a diverse, competitive, advanced space industry as part of a public mission?

After all, when taxpayers point fingers to the Senate, let's not forget that this institution exists in a democratic model which the people of the United States have chosen as part of their own representation over the past 250 odd years. Pork and barrel politics are - ultimately - part and parcel of a well-functioning consensus model that doesn't let one dominant voice determine whose interests should be favored at the expense of all others.

Finally, in the grand scheme of things, NASA's budget in FY2020 represented 0.48% of all federal expenses. As far as the taxpayer is concerned, the cost of SLS over a decade pertains to a negligible fraction of their contributions through taxation on an individual level.

bryanlarsen5• 4 years ago

Then again, the SLS program does fund the private space industry. While it's easy to dismiss it as a mere "jobs program", it did / does provide a bed for the next generation of engineers to learn, gain knowledge, become experts and so on. It also provided a bed for contractors and subcontractors to grow their businesses. Just like the Apollo program did.

This is completely backwards. It traps highly-skilled, highly-demanded engineers in dead-end jobs that do absolutely nothing to advance the state of the art.

Same with the contractors. SpaceX doesn't use OldSpace subcontractors for very good reasons. They're too slow and too expensive. They famously use industrial grade components rather than aerospace grade components. You can blame the loss of CRS-7 on this practice. OTOH Falcon9 has a perfect record since CRS-7, the highest number of consecutive successes of any rocket ever.

tmikaeld• 4 years ago

Don't forget that the knowledge unlocked in the private space industry is locked and owned by these corporations.

While government funded programs can be re-used for generations to come and are more than often public domain.

CaptArmchair3• 4 years ago

I'd argue that progress for progress' sake is a meaningless goal. Especially when "advance the state of the art" or "industrial grade components" aren't argued as concrete tangible value.

When it comes the latter part, defining that value is the essence of the debate. No matter how advanced the technology is, it's just a tool that serves a purpose. Once a business establishes a market dominance, what incentives remain to keep advancing that tech? What guarantees could anyone offer that SpaceX will stay on the "cutting edge" once that point is reached? And how will that impact NASA's ability to make operational choices regarding it's launch capabilities and it's larger mission to foster human exploration of space starting on Earth itself?

Finally, we're not discussing CRS-7 or Falcon 9. This is about SLS and it's Starship counterpart and which developed within their shared, particular timeline.

Isinlor8• 4 years ago

Why would you care about access to space if you do not plan to do there anything valuable?

The biggest issue with SLS+Orion is that these 40 billions could be spend on launching space telescopes or missions to other planets.

You could get 3 or 4 James Webb Space telescopes. 60 missions like Kepler. 12 Curiosity/Perseverance rovers.

One, single, SLS launch will cost 2 billion dollars!

That's already 3 Kepler Space Telescopes right there or a Curiosity rover on Mars.

joshuanapoli• 4 years ago

Aside from comparing different launch programs that don't compete with each other, the article is also purely "20/20 hindsight". A more entrepreneurial path to a moon mission was obviously feasible when the Artemis program started. So it's not so much that we chose a more expensive option, it's that we have been blessed with experience and confidence with a new path since the original program began.

Isinlor8• 4 years ago

Obama wanted to get rid of Constellation and did not want SLS.

He knew that there needs to be a new approach. And the new approach he put in place works excellently.

bradgessler• 4 years ago

I don’t think people understand how bad the charter is for SLS. Obama tried to cancel the program (called Orion then) and Congress brought this back.

The rocket you see standing on the launchpad has 4 used space shuttle engines strapped to the bottom of it because Congress mandated they have to use existing components.

Imagine optimizing the design of a rocket for a congressional mandate like this—how does that provide a bed for the next generation of engineers?

leto_ii• 4 years ago

Within the next six months, SpaceX will put Starship into orbit.

Really? I haven't heard news about Starship in quite a while now.

Its biggest rocket yet, the heavy-lift vehicle will be able to carry similar payloads into space as the sls for, Mr Musk reckons, just a few million dollars a launch.

Mr. Musk reckons all sorts of stuff, mostly fanciful. He has also been reckoning that Tesla will achieve full self driving next year, for the past 7 years or so. He has also reckoned that Neuralink will allow people to communicate telepathically, that hyperloops make sense, that we'll have Earth to Earth rocket transport, that the boring company will revolutionize tunneling etc.

So far NASA has delivered vastly more than Elon Musk.

Given the increasing competition from companies such as Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, it is hard to see a role for nasa’s bloated sls.

Bloated SLS may be, but has Blue Origin actually done anything useful? Joy rides for billionaires don't count.

cyberge99• 4 years ago

There have been some Defense missions that sent “unlabeled” payloads to LEO, but I agree with you. The learning and takeaways from Nasa launches are highly underestimated here in the comments. Also, ask any Nasa engineer if they’re in a dead end job/industry; you’d be remise to find one.

Isinlor8• 4 years ago

It's not just Mr. Musk reckoning stuff, but NASA too.

Artemis program will not land on the Moon without Starship.

In fact, SLS is almost useless without Starship due to 2 billion launch cost.

There are no payloads for SLS besides Artemis program.

Even Europa Clipper spacecraft will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

tablespoon• 4 years ago

Thou shalt not blaspheme the market by collectively building anything.

This is the 11th commandment, handed down by the Economist in the City.

NASA’s newest rocket is a colossal waste of money

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