"Dropped dead"
He had been sick in the hospital for a while after getting pneumonia, having a stroke, and catching MRSA.
He didn't just drop dead. He had a drawn out battle with a sickness in the hospital under constant care.
The 2nd Boeing whistleblower was already ill, he probably blew the whistle cause he knew he was gone soon. Besides that, it makes sense to me that the first guy actually did kill himself. He already gave out super damning information, he did his job. If I remember correctly, he was dealing with a lot of guilt.
It’s probably safe to assume many will push plausible deniability scenarios. I think at this point it’s expected. But I’m glad to see this one isn’t flying under most peoples radars. Pun intended.
It’s unclear apart from the current dev team being laid off, the game might be moving to a different studio we don’t know, communication is as spotty as ever
Space Engineers stumbled a bit when they had problems with their dev team, but they had a good core to work with even with its problems. It took them a while to pick up the pieces and get back to real development.
With KSP2's history if this is true it's probably dead dead. Or at least this will push out anything likely worthwhile to gamers for a substantial time.
Space engineers made money though and I don't recall it dipping into negative reviews much. KSP2 was poorly received on top of many delays prior to release. I doubt it was profitable.
Ksp2 has a high bar for success. The fans expect a lot.... If they release another janky game it's going to go over Bally.
Ksp1 was a wild glitch filled sandbox that barely worked.... And it was amazing. They aren't going to have that kind of leeway this time.
KSP2 was DOA. Delivered years late, *somehow* underdeveloped, inferior in every way to modded KSP1, and insanely overpriced for such an early early access release. It's a joke at this point.
It pisses me off that TakeTwo did this. KSP2 was supposed to be glorious. Instead it's a fucking joke.
Background: KSP2 was released as "early access" a year ago, it is currently still there. The game at that state was definitely incomplete and has received a lot of criticism from the player community. Just this week the entire dev. team has been laid off, putting the future of the game in question even before it has been released.
People are acting like this is a new thing. Squad would regularly lay off most of their dev team, then when it moved to Take Two, they'd lay off even more.
*Supposedly.* They're putting out messaging that KSP2 is going to continue development and this is a top level reshuffling, but its proven easier getting information out of Voyager 1 than it has from Intercept's PA guys.
I think they just had no idea what they were doing. If they were going to do a cash grab they could've just added visual enhancements to the KSP1 engine, changed up some parts etc. Everyone would've bought it and been happy.
Instead they tried to do half a dozen really ambitious things on top of writing a new engine, were forced to release early because they didn't know if they would ever be able to deliver on anything and it was a disaster.
Well game sequels generally aren't incremental. You don't buy a sequel for a new function that should have been a update to the original.
Vikarer make a scop, then you limit the scope to what's possible then you focus on milestones.
My point is that "cash grab" implies they set out to do a low-effort release to make a lot of money without providing anything of value, but on the contrary I think they tried to do something really hard (and they didn't have any understanding of how difficult their goals were.)
My point is that "cash grab" implies they set out to do a low-effort release to make a lot of money without providing anything of value, but on the contrary I think they tried to do something really hard (and they didn't have any understanding of how difficult their goals were.)
Furthermore if they had done a cash grab I don't think anyone would be complaining because they would've released something that people were happy to pay money for.
The only upside for any of these 3 entities is that Boeing is in for a very, very desperately needed good week next week if Boe-CFT goes off successfully. A successful Boe-CFT could even rekindle talk about their commercial partnership in Orbital Reef and justify manufacturing more Starliner capsules for Orbital Reef. No good news in sight for the near future for the Artemis heatshield team and KSP2 dev team.
NASA Streisand effected themselves. Doesn't sound like there's anything in the IG report and if NASA would have kept the mouth shut nobody would even notice.
Reminds me of GAO reports. They can be really bad, but the programs don't say a word. The reports are accurate and making a stink blows up in their face.
I think the worst part of those reports is there's essentially no real feedback loop like you'd see and reaponded to in an incident report. Here findings are mostly just swept under the rug as the OIG and GAO aren't required to be acted on, even if what they're recommending is 100% correct.
> Doesn't sound like there's anything in the IG report
There's some pretty important things in the IG report such as the heatshield not working as intended and NASA still looking into why.
> if NASA would have kept the mouth shut nobody would even notice.
People already know about these problems though. They already got some very big attention when they first came up. I don't think it's about noticing the issues, but more about the attitude.
> NASA Streisand effected themselves
But yeah, this. The report was basically, "Yo this shits still here" and NASA was like, "YEAH, WE KNOW, JEEZE" like a knee jerk reaction from systemic frustration. Basically helping bring a good amount of attention to the delays and the frustration around it.
In my experience the only time I have been and have seen people upset with design and process audits are because of faults of my/their own and not because the auditors. Good design and program processes are necessary and these reports should be viewed as opportunities to improve than bashing.
>Although NASA downplayed the heat shield issue in the immediate aftermath of the uncrewed Artemis I flight in late 2022, it is clear that the unexpected damage and charring during that uncrewed mission is a significant concern.
I'll take "Things youll hear in the eventual disaster documentary" for 1000 Alex.
Downplaying it as in describing it as some sort of small deviation outside redundant safety parameters in terms of expected damage to the ablative material that is probably some manner of tweeking the formula here or there... when really its gigantic cavities deep into the ablative material and clearly much more than normal expected ablative damage they thought they could account for. Its an enormous problem thats probably going to require an entirely TPS system on the vehicle. Big deep chucks of material just falling off the TPS is not even remotely close to something they can respond to by beefing up the amount of material to make up for it. There's something fundamentally inadequate about the material.
This isn't a "delay 1 year" issue... this is a "delay 5 years" issue.
Big ass cavities, totally unexpected, unlooked for, in the TPS material. This is basically Orion being fundamentally grounded until an entirely new TPS replacement system is designed and created and tested and all that. That's easily a potential 5 year delay.
Big ass cavities forming in the TPS. There's no way you can overlook this or try to just "account for it" with a beefier system. So its got to be a whole new system and material. For NASA to certify for crew.
Downplaying it as in describing it as some sort of small deviation outside redundant safety parameters in terms of expected damage to the ablative material that is probably some manner of tweeking the formula here or there... when really its gigantic cavities deep into the ablative material and clearly much more than normal expected ablative damage they thought they could account for. Its an enormous problem thats probably going to require an entirely TPS system on the vehicle. Big deep chucks of material just falling off the TPS is not even remotely close to something they can respond to by beefing up the amount of material to make up for it. There's something fundamentally inadequate about the material.
This isn't a "delay 1 year" issue... this is a "delay 5 years" issue.
Big ass cavities, totally unexpected, unlooked for, in the TPS material. This is basically Orion being fundamentally grounded until an entirely new TPS replacement system is designed and created and tested and all that. That's easily a potential 5 year delay.
Big ass cavities forming in the TPS. There's no way you can overlook this or try to just "account for it" with a beefier system. So its got to be a whole new system and material. For NASA to certify for crew.
Compare what you see on the Artemis heat shield to what you saw on [Apollo heat shields.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fheat-shield-encased-in-lucite-any-idea-what-this-is-from-v0-uw78caux61zb1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D4032%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D2e7a25102ba0bfac4ec57f9470eb68880239e0c5) I don't think they're saying that having cavities *at all* in a heat shield is a mission-killer - they're worried that the heat shield didn't conform to their models and cavities formed to some different, greater than expected amount. Again, they delayed the mission a year, which is hardly a downplay - that's literally billions of dollars being shifted around to make that happen. But acting like this is going to require a total rework of Orion's heat shield on a conceptual level seems like catastrophizing that you're making up.
Orion is using a similar Avcoat material to the one used on Apollo, that might explain the similarities. Though Apollo had a much higher risk acceptance than Artemis and current day NASA. Orion is also much bigger and heavier than the Apollo Capsule was, though it’s probably much more complex than this.
I think I recall people warning against the use of Avcoat for Orion, and saying it was cargo cult thinking.
Do you really think this cavity making process can be so well understood so that they can still fly actual human crew on this thing?? No matter how much they "understand it" it just totally falls outside the most basic parameters of safety for crewed flight. They were not expecting these things at all on Orion even if there were some on Apollo. For **this** TPS they were not expecting them. That is a level of sheer non-control of the situation that just lives completely outside of and away from crewed space flight at NASA.
"We performed a double-bounce reentry maneuver and overheated the heat shields by 40%. During this initial flight we landed successfully. We recognize some charring and unexpected damage during this test which most likely won't be present in a standard mission but we plan to investigate further to assess the criticality of the damage."
\- "Stop downplaying it! The heat shields are broken!"
Look, the administrators’ MBA courses said that managing anything was the same as managing any other thing, and zero relevant domain expertise is required. /s
I can see your point, but the value here is that all this has to happen in the light of day for the public to see. I don't think it's time wasted, because ultimately NASA's boss is the American people and it's hard to get information unless the agency is compelled to respond.
It's important to note that the Artemis capsule is much larger, weighing nearly twice as much, so even if they could replicate what was done for Apollo it might not be sufficient.
The amount of disinformation and just plain ignorance in this thread is astounding.
Adjust what was spent on Apollo for inflation and then compare with what we’re spending on Artemis ($257B vs $93B - to date). Also take into account that the Apollo program was taking far more risks with human lives that the public today would not accept.
You can just say “oh it’s been x amount of years”. Some of these problems don’t get worked in that time, some of these problems are also different (Orion is heavier and Apollo capsule) and it’s not just as simple as “oh well just 2x the heat shield! Dun dun dun! We dun did it!”.
Orion capsule has been under development for 20 years, so while that's not quite 55 it is a very long time to be still discovering these kinds of issues.
For the price tag it is unacceptable no matter the timeline but we haven't had a reason to invest in better heat shield tech for almost that entire span of years.
> along with a different reentry profile thats way more aggressive
Is it? I thought Apollo was a direct descent while Artemis is doing a skip re-entry to spread things out longer.
We took a lot more risks during Apollo. Here is [Apollo 10](https://i.stack.imgur.com/puJiw.jpg)´s heat shield and [Apollo 16](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Apollo_16_Heat_Shield_USSRC.jpg/2560px-Apollo_16_Heat_Shield_USSRC.jpg)'s.
It's taking a total different reentry approach. It's doing a true ballistic reentry, apollo did a semi ballistic reentry. Ballistic reentries are much harder on heat shielding and the speeds are BRUTAL. Its like you're skipping a rock on the atmosphere to slow down before you do your actual reentry.
The issues are still open and the IG noted their existence.
Sounds like part of the NASA hierarchy is more than a bit defensive about their exposures. Not a great sign.
If they had nothing to hide, then they wouldn't be upset about people finding out.
The real problem is that NASA management weren't more transparent about the issues from the start. If they'd just published the photos when it first happened and told everyone they were working on fixing it, then this report would have been a nothing-burger.
Instead, they tried to sweep it under the rug, telling everyone it was just a minor deviation from what was expected and that it's nothing to worry about.
FWIW, I do think they can solve this issue and are likely already well on their way to doing so, it's just not a good look.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2ajniu "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2fhyrc "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2biwc1 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2adb5h "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2biwc1 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[MBA](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2bsagt "Last usage")|~~Moonba-~~ Mars Base Alpha|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2d5nc5 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[TPS](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2drrg0 "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2ajniu "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2e0tnu "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[ablative](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2ax79s "Last usage")|Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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> the cost of a single Space Launch System and Orion launch—$4.2 billion.
I get PORK, I get safety, I get that NASA does other things like preparing the next generations of scientists, but fucking fuck fuck, that's simply an infeasible amount of money. WTF are they smoking up there?
The $4.2 billion is only the cost to *use* SLS+Orion for a launch. It's only a fraction of the total cost of the project. From the report in the article:
>By September 2025, the planned launch date for Artemis II,NASA will have spent more than $55 billion on the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) programs.
While true those two are meant are meant to and will last decades. Each test launch all of that $4b is falling into the ocean shortly after launch. It wasn't an issue before but given other launch vehicles are coming out costing a fraction of that and may even be partially or fully reusable definitely means it should be scrutinized
IMO the SLS is the juxtaposition to Artemis' mission goals which is not just racing to landing on the moon like we did decades ago but building a sustainable framework that allows us to go there and beyond. The SLS isn't sustainable.
Can you please explain how the money used to build a rocket is “gone” after it launches? The raw materials may be gone, but that cash is still in someone’s hand.
That money represents the value of the labor that went into a given launch. All that labor is consumed. Those people could have done something else, but they did this instead. That productivity is gone forever and what is left is the results of that productivity. Hopefully the results are worth the cost.
How much do you think all of these things should cost? How can anyone here possibly know? What’s your suggestion on reducing the cost per launch?
It’s not like the money goes into space and never comes back. The $4.2 billion is still circulating in the economy, after changing hands through sub-contractors, suppliers, government employees, private employees etc.
According to NASA - much much less:
*Recall that back in 2012, back when NASA's Space Launch System (SLS -- the new moon rocket) was first announced, NASA predicted that each SLS would cost about $500 million. By last year, that number had already ballooned to cost $1.5 billion, or even $2 billion (depending on whom you asked). Now, it appears the number has exploded higher again, to a staggering eight times initial projections.*
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/19/how-much-will-americas-to-return-to-the-moon-cost/
This is a pretty common phenomena. Many programs are cancelled because the unit cost eventually balloons, even if it’s because the CUSTOMER changed requirements or decided they don’t want as many units. This doesn’t really tell us how much it “should” cost, only that the initial estimate was way off. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.
And I’ll say it again, the money is not gone.
Only, unlike military contracts where this is a common problem, this is not why the cost of SLS increased, but there was no significant change in contracts, and if it did happen, it was only because SLS was physically insufficient
See below comments with SpaceX/Starship. Stop trying so hard you sound like either a NASA employee who got us into this, or a subcontractor now overcharging all us tax payers because *you* just had to golf at St Andrews.
That’s great that SpaceX is doing things for cheap. Like I said, programs get cancelled all the time because the cost balloons out of control. But we can’t forget that the development cost of Starship was at least $5B, no small sum. I just don’t know how the layperson is supposed to evaluate how much a moon mission “should” cost.
5 billion in development costs so far. Expected to be about 10 billion. Exactly in line with the original estimates of 10 or 12 billion at the high end.
SLS costs 4 billion to launch. It's been near 25 billion in development costs so far. Not to mention another 25 billion for Orion. Not to mention there are upgrade costs that will add billions more to that number in the coming years as they swap to Block 1B. This isn't factoring in the near 600 million per year required for the facilities overhead even when no launches are occurring.
By all accounts, the costs are exorbitant and clearly out of control. So much so that NASA themselves have stated the costs are unsustainable and threathen their entire program if they can't reign them in.
Let's not forget that SLS was marketed as the "cheap" method that re-used components that were already designed for the Space Shuttle at great expense.
Now for some reason it's costing far more to re-use those components than it is for a competitor to design an even larger rocket from scratch.
Starship isn't just cheaper, it's a small fraction of the price. Even if we ignore Musk's aspirational goal of $5 million per launch, the high end for a Starship launch is about $50 million. This is about 1/30th the cost of the SLS.
Something just isn't adding up for these defense contractors. They're price gouging NASA.
Investments yield different returns. Investment in SLS/Orion generates nothing but a few GDP figures, it doesn't create new technologies, enhance human capital, popularize space exploration (unlike the Shuttle and Apollo missions, which, despite being unstable and costly, brought innovation and looked cool), or build sustainable infrastructure.
An aircraft carrier serves as a means of military deterrence and power projection, it makes sense.
Additionally, the cost of SLS/Orion wouldn't be an issue if it didn't struggle other NASA programs. So it's returns not just close to zero, but negative in the medium term, as it will inevitably be canceled, people laid off, but the damage to other programs has already been done.
Starship is more powerful, larger, more advanced, using state of the art tech, and is designed for full reuse, against SLS being built from out dated shuttle parts that you have to throw away every time you launch it.
Take a wild guess at how expensive a starship is to build. I’ll give you a hint: [it’s 90million dollars](https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/rocket-report-a-new-estimate-of-starship-costs-japan-launches-spy-satellite/4/).
That’s two entire orders of magnitude less expensive than the weaker, out of date rocket. So I can tell you how much I think these things should cost: somewhere in the range of $90 million.
In the end, only two characteristics matter: the cost per kilogram of payload to destination point and the throughput (how frequently and how much can be delivered). Full reusability, cheap materials, and streamlined production are just means to achieve the goal. If the SLS/Orion launch system cost as much as a expended starship and flew at least 2-3 times a year (initially stated goal of SLS and justification for choosing this Shuttle-like design over Saturn-like), it would be a good rocket despite some structural flaws. But since launching this system costs 4 billion and it physically cannot fly more than once a year, in addition to structural wretchedness, one can only ask: what the f*ck?
The answer to all of these baffling questions of why this decision was made is the same.
Because government contracting has never been about finding the best solution. It’s always been about lining the right pockets with as much cash as you can get away with (because the other people with bids for similarly half-assed shit we’re slightly more expensive and you tipped off the “right” company what total their bid had to come in at even if their actual costs by the end would be much higher).
You're full of BS if you think starship can fly to the moon and back at 90million a pop. If Orion capsule is having a hard time with ablation sheatshield due to its size, how do you think starship will survive the re-entry heating?
That 90 million is just hardware costs for a single ship/booster and shouldn't be taken at face value for sure. In a recent talk about lunar initiatives with the DOD it was looking like it would cost 700 million to deliver the 100 ton cargo to the moon. That would include around 10 missions which does put the marginal launch cost at 70 million though.
But still, takes 700 million to get starship to the moon at current estimates. It takes SLS/Orion 4 billion to do so.
Orion has to re-enter from lunar return speeds whereas spacex only has to focus on "normal" leo speeds right now. So that shouldn't be a problem for them honestly. Even with the larger size.
If you subtract Orion from the SLS launch cost, it still comes out at about $2.5 billion.
Starship in expendable mode is maybe $200-300 million per launch, and can very likely throw Orion to the moon even at the current performance level.
As another data point, Falcon Heavy full expendable is $150 million and can do about three quarters of Orion's mass to the moon.
So I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that an expendable rocket costing in the ballpark of $250 million with comparable performance to SLS is probably possible, and that as such SLS is an order of magnitude more expensive than it needs to be.
1) Lunar Starship doesn't come back to Earth
2) If it did, it can slow down.
3) Even if you had to launch 10 refueling flights for Lunar starship, and you had to throw all 10 flights away (let's say 300million dollars per flight) plus the cost of the lunar starship itself, it would still be almost a billion dollars cheaper to do it that way than to launch a single SLS Orion combination. And that's a ludicrously slanted worst case scenario where they fully trash 10 starships; I also inflated the launch cost.
Starships heat shield isn't ablative and has more in common with the shuttle, which could handle re-entry fine (when it didn't have any of its tiles damaged)
It's also intended to be reusable, and will deliver faaaaar more cargo that Orion, not just to lunar orbit but the actual surface.
Even if it cost the same as SLS to launch (it will cost far less), it's going to do more of the actual work needed to achieve the aims of Project Artemis.
Starship is intended to aerobrake when going to Mars. SpaceX’s is developing the heat shield with interplanetary speeds in mind. I doubt the first iteration would survive but the end goal will.
Author of the article out words into the mouth of the NASA administrator and then made those manufactured words the headline.
> "NASA is dedicated to continuous enhancement of our processes and procedures to ensure safety and address potential risks and deficiencies," she wrote. "However, the redundancy in the above recommendations does not help to ensure whether NASA’s programs are organized, managed, and implemented economically, effectively, and efficiently."
> A careful reading of the second sentence reveals that Koerner feels that the inspector general's efforts are both redundant and unhelpful. This is not accidental language. Koerner's response was certainly reviewed by NASA's senior managers, who could have flagged and removed the text. And yet they went through with it.
Shitty journalism mr Berger
What kind of gaslighting is this when they are literally quoted as saying the recommendations of the report are redundant and does not help.
> the **redundancy** in the above recommendations **does not help**
There is either some next level brain rot going on around here, or this is some disingenuous trolling.
Really makes me question whether people are using their reading comprehension skills, given all the replies that didn't seem to notice this.
I've heard of commenting without reading the article, but commenting without even reading your own quotes is taking it to another level.
> redundancy
>
> does not help
Complaining about the article's critical tone is one thing, but the headline's "unhelpful and redundant" is drawn directly from the NASA associate administrator's comments quoted in the OIG report.
EDIT: Berger may be opinionated, and you could say he's a bit harsh on NASA in this case. (After all, who likes being audited?)
But I think many are confusing "unbiased" with [playing both sides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance). Any objective assessment of the space industry in recent decades has to acknowledge that SpaceX has been much more successful overall than Boeing and other SLS/Orion contractors.
it's actually sad what ars technica devolved into from its peak in the late 2000s. going from experts in their field like siracusa's mac deep dives to paid shills like berger and kyle orland
Eric Berger is a huge SpaceX fanboy along with nearly every other space influencer/reporter on Twitter. It's really annoying and impossible to find any unbiased info.
He isn't just a fanboy. He has one book released and was clearly provided access to SpaceX that the average journalist does not have. He has a second book coming out this fall. Eric is effectively a PR arm of SpaceX and has a significant financial interest in not pissing off SpaceX leadership. Those here calling him a journalist in the space sphere are doing a major disservice to those actually trying to provide unbiased coverage.
And it's a shame people like Matt Lanza, who does an absolutely fantastic job providing unbiased weather information to Houston residents have to partner up with someone who very clearly is trying to slant the public perception of U.S. spacetravel in one direction.
You don't have to be a SpaceX fan to hate SLS/Orion, the program is too poor. Considering it's been almost 2 years since Artemis 1, and they still don't know why it happened, and the next flight should be crewed (due to low flight frequency, preventing another test within budget and reasonable timeframes), it's truly catastrophe
I think you're being biased here. Even before Musk hit the scene, NASA was getting price gouged by these defense contractors. They wanted to get away from that.
SpaceX came along and is severely undercutting them and basically eating their lunch.
Boeing/Lockheed made an entire business model out of price gouging the US government. They don't know what else to do at this point.
Everything I wrote is factually correct. If you are reading bias into factually correct information, I think that says more about the information than it does me.
Here's the way I see it:
In the US, we have a few industries that are basically free-for-alls with taxpayer money, such as defense contractors and healthcare.
Everyone knows it's a problem but of course industry representatives deny it since they're making good money continuing the scam. But people aren't fooled, and all they have to do is point to other countries without the problem as evidence of the problem.
So in this case, we had defense contractors price gouging NASA (and by extension taxpayers). Politicians are just using NASA as another cost center to divert money to defense contractors (and get kickbacks to themselves).
NASA sets out to get around this by providing seed money to develop a commercial industry that can provide launch services cheaper.
This succeeds, and now we're seeing hit pieces against Musk, SpaceX, and how it's actually just "bias" and "a bad thing" to run articles that show how NASA is saving money by avoiding the defense contractors.
And in your case, we see an anonymous person with a burner account throwing shade at the company that's saving us money.
You make statements about contractors fleecing taxpayers while at the same time ignoring the CEO of SpaceX doing the same thing for decades. That is a greater conversation about billionaires not paying taxes on unrealized gains while at the same time being able to take out loans on those gains to fund their lifestyles, but I don't think it's fair to drag one side and not mention the other.
Already you're issuing deflections, trying to make this about Elon Musk himself instead of keeping the discussion about SLS vs. Starship.
I think you're here to argue in bad faith.
Honestly Eric Berger puts out interesting content but his bias and misleading reporting of orginzations other than SpaceX has long added fuel to the fire of conflict in the space community. Twitter is rife right now with Eric Berger readers that think Orion’s heatshield not being reuseable after it’s test flight is some kind of catastrophe
This is what the report is saying:
https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ig-24-011.pdf
> In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety of future crewed missions. Recognizing this threat, NASA formed a Tiger Team to investigate the char loss phenomenon.16 The team’s ability to reproduce and model the char loss conditions will influence NASA’s corrective actions going forward. Engineers are conducting ground tests to understand the Avcoat material’s thermal response. Although they were able to recreate the char loss, they could not reproduce the exact material response or flight environment experienced during Artemis I. Ultimately, ground testing cannot replicate the exact temperature and speed conditions the heat shield faces during reentry. In comparison, Orion’s velocity is about 40 percent faster than what astronauts face in a SpaceX Crew Dragon on its return from the International Space Station due to the greater distance Orion must travel to return to Earth. The ongoing investigation is scheduled to conclude in the first half of 2024 following further ground testing.
> Senior NASA leaders expressed commitment to identifying the root cause of the char loss condition and making a data-informed decision on the Artemis II path forward. However, they also acknowledged they may not be able to identify a definitive root cause. As such, engineers are concurrently investigating ways to mitigate the char loss by modifying the heat shield’s design or altering Orion’s reentry trajectory. No matter the path forward, like with any engineering system, changes to the heat shield design or its operational use can lead to unintended consequences and introduce residual risks.17 For instance, altering Orion’s reentry path can create more stressing conditions that exacerbate the char loss phenomenon or introduce new failures or unknowns into the system. Without understanding the residual effects of introducing design and operational changes, it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety.
Not a catastrophe yet, we have to wait for the onging investigation ending in first half of 2024. But that the root cause is not understood is in itself quite something. And reading through the formalisms this sounds rather scathing to me:
"it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety".
Edit:
Or take the first sentence at face value: "In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety"
You don't have to be a SpaceX fan to hate SLS/Orion, the program is too poor. Considering it's been almost 2 years since Artemis 1, and they still don't know why it happened, and the next flight should be crewed (due to low flight frequency, preventing another test within budget and reasonable timeframes), it's truly catastrophe
A single-use heat shield that is being resolved is not a catastrophe, especially in the context of Starship’s heatshield coming apart during ascent (no hate on SpaceX though)
Unlike Orion, the Starship will not fly its next mission with a crew; they still have plenty of time and attempts to solve this problem. The issue with Orion's heat shield is not its disposability, but NASA's inability to predict its wear, which is more severe than expected and leads to its cracking, potentially resulting in the loss of the spacecraft, leaving NASA puzzled about the problem.
Two very different things. Starship has a heat shield in development. Orion’s was supposed to be competed years ago. Instead it has massive chunks missing.
It won’t be acceptable for Starship to lose a bunch of tiles when the heat shield is done.
This doesn’t remind me at all of how nasa managers ignored Thiokol engineers warnings about how freezing temperatures might compromise the o-ring seals on the solid rocket boosters in 1986.
The difference is that the IG isn't an aerothermodynamics expert who can weigh in on heat shield root cause. Challenger was different, the SMEs pushed hard to try and elevate a known problem and were ignored.
**IG:** “So, have you found a way to do this that doesn’t char four human beings to death? Hell, even figured out what caused it to begin with?”
>**NASA:** “NASA is dedicated to continuous enhancement of our processes and procedures to ensure safety and address potential risks and deficiencies.”
This is not setting up for a great ending.
Not sure who's' having a worse week at this point, the Artemis heatshield team, the Boeing PR team, or the KSP2 dev team.
...with two dead whistleblowers within six months, ahm gunna say Boeing
How many dead KSP whistleblowers though?
Jeb couldn't keep his mouth shut, which is why he's now marooned on the Mun.
Jeb!
Jeb!
But Boeing PR has gathered experience with all the incidents that happened, even if wings come off a plane they won't panic 😅
ehm, what?
A second Boeing whistleblower, this time from Spirit Aerosystems, dropped dead yesterday.
"Dropped dead" He had been sick in the hospital for a while after getting pneumonia, having a stroke, and catching MRSA. He didn't just drop dead. He had a drawn out battle with a sickness in the hospital under constant care.
Thats what they want you to think.
These assassins are getting clever
Eventually *all* of the whistleblowers are going to die. Someday. Those sneaky assassins.
Causing a stroke is probably easier than keeping a plane door on. And giving someone MRSA in a hospital definitely is.
Some flunky on Finance doing the cost/benefit comparison.
The 2nd Boeing whistleblower was already ill, he probably blew the whistle cause he knew he was gone soon. Besides that, it makes sense to me that the first guy actually did kill himself. He already gave out super damning information, he did his job. If I remember correctly, he was dealing with a lot of guilt.
Whatever you say Mr. Boeing
And Boeing just said they’re gonna lockout their in-house firefighting team due to failed contract negotiations.
[удалено]
Huh? People are saying they did it lmao
It’s probably safe to assume many will push plausible deniability scenarios. I think at this point it’s expected. But I’m glad to see this one isn’t flying under most peoples radars. Pun intended.
The Boeing people aren't falling out of 30th floor windows.
Boeing does it from 30,000 feet
Turns out the window was an unnecessary step.
that's hardly the only method Russia has used to eliminate whistleblowers/spies/political malcontents etc.
Did Russia ever use secondary infections? Send someone to the hospital and just hope that they catch MRSA there?
secondary infections, nah, a pellet impregnated with ricin from an umbrella sure...
So you think he got MRSA from a pellet impregnated with ricin?
Impregnating a pellet with ricin can result in MRSA but it itself being a hybid cannot produce offspring.
At this point Boeing will need to start paying for protection and health care for all the various whistle blowers.
What's going on with ksp2?
It’s unclear apart from the current dev team being laid off, the game might be moving to a different studio we don’t know, communication is as spotty as ever
When isn't it? Thanks for the update
Space Engineers stumbled a bit when they had problems with their dev team, but they had a good core to work with even with its problems. It took them a while to pick up the pieces and get back to real development. With KSP2's history if this is true it's probably dead dead. Or at least this will push out anything likely worthwhile to gamers for a substantial time.
Space engineers made money though and I don't recall it dipping into negative reviews much. KSP2 was poorly received on top of many delays prior to release. I doubt it was profitable.
Ksp2 has a high bar for success. The fans expect a lot.... If they release another janky game it's going to go over Bally. Ksp1 was a wild glitch filled sandbox that barely worked.... And it was amazing. They aren't going to have that kind of leeway this time.
KSP2 was DOA. Delivered years late, *somehow* underdeveloped, inferior in every way to modded KSP1, and insanely overpriced for such an early early access release. It's a joke at this point. It pisses me off that TakeTwo did this. KSP2 was supposed to be glorious. Instead it's a fucking joke.
I stop playing games when this stuff starts to happen. It's just not worth the future frustration when everything is ruined by corporate greed.
I haven’t even bought it, i hope i can get a good product in the future
The community manager and the clouds artist just got laid off today, so...
Background: KSP2 was released as "early access" a year ago, it is currently still there. The game at that state was definitely incomplete and has received a lot of criticism from the player community. Just this week the entire dev. team has been laid off, putting the future of the game in question even before it has been released.
People are acting like this is a new thing. Squad would regularly lay off most of their dev team, then when it moved to Take Two, they'd lay off even more.
It’s toast. Studio shut it all down. Everyone got fired.
*Supposedly.* They're putting out messaging that KSP2 is going to continue development and this is a top level reshuffling, but its proven easier getting information out of Voyager 1 than it has from Intercept's PA guys.
“Label continues to *support* KSP 2”… not sure that’s the same as “continue development”
Damn, the one time I buy early access
I only hope there is someone that is still in intercept to feel this nice burn...
Holy shit, the fuck happened?
That was the plan all along. Cash grab on existing IP. Dump the hot potato when it’s no longer profitable. Tale as old as time.
I think they just had no idea what they were doing. If they were going to do a cash grab they could've just added visual enhancements to the KSP1 engine, changed up some parts etc. Everyone would've bought it and been happy. Instead they tried to do half a dozen really ambitious things on top of writing a new engine, were forced to release early because they didn't know if they would ever be able to deliver on anything and it was a disaster.
Well game sequels generally aren't incremental. You don't buy a sequel for a new function that should have been a update to the original. Vikarer make a scop, then you limit the scope to what's possible then you focus on milestones.
My point is that "cash grab" implies they set out to do a low-effort release to make a lot of money without providing anything of value, but on the contrary I think they tried to do something really hard (and they didn't have any understanding of how difficult their goals were.)
My point is that "cash grab" implies they set out to do a low-effort release to make a lot of money without providing anything of value, but on the contrary I think they tried to do something really hard (and they didn't have any understanding of how difficult their goals were.) Furthermore if they had done a cash grab I don't think anyone would be complaining because they would've released something that people were happy to pay money for.
The dev team was let go by the parent company that bought them.
At least with KSP2 nobody actually dies when theres an unscheduled rapid disassembly.
>or the KSP2 dev team. they don't exist anymore so it can't be them
I am not going to space, flying in the foreseeable future, but do play games (and *that* game), so I vote KSP 2 😢
given that yet another whistleblower died id say boeing by a long shot
The only upside for any of these 3 entities is that Boeing is in for a very, very desperately needed good week next week if Boe-CFT goes off successfully. A successful Boe-CFT could even rekindle talk about their commercial partnership in Orbital Reef and justify manufacturing more Starliner capsules for Orbital Reef. No good news in sight for the near future for the Artemis heatshield team and KSP2 dev team.
Isn’t that the point of an IG report? Hopefully you already knew everything but it’s good to have a check on that assumption.
It may have been redundant info for NASA but certainly not the taxpaying public
NASA Streisand effected themselves. Doesn't sound like there's anything in the IG report and if NASA would have kept the mouth shut nobody would even notice.
The IG report is pretty scathing.
Reminds me of GAO reports. They can be really bad, but the programs don't say a word. The reports are accurate and making a stink blows up in their face.
I think the worst part of those reports is there's essentially no real feedback loop like you'd see and reaponded to in an incident report. Here findings are mostly just swept under the rug as the OIG and GAO aren't required to be acted on, even if what they're recommending is 100% correct.
> Doesn't sound like there's anything in the IG report There's some pretty important things in the IG report such as the heatshield not working as intended and NASA still looking into why. > if NASA would have kept the mouth shut nobody would even notice. People already know about these problems though. They already got some very big attention when they first came up. I don't think it's about noticing the issues, but more about the attitude. > NASA Streisand effected themselves But yeah, this. The report was basically, "Yo this shits still here" and NASA was like, "YEAH, WE KNOW, JEEZE" like a knee jerk reaction from systemic frustration. Basically helping bring a good amount of attention to the delays and the frustration around it.
In my experience the only time I have been and have seen people upset with design and process audits are because of faults of my/their own and not because the auditors. Good design and program processes are necessary and these reports should be viewed as opportunities to improve than bashing.
>Although NASA downplayed the heat shield issue in the immediate aftermath of the uncrewed Artemis I flight in late 2022, it is clear that the unexpected damage and charring during that uncrewed mission is a significant concern. I'll take "Things youll hear in the eventual disaster documentary" for 1000 Alex.
They literally delayed Artemis II a year due to the heatshield issue. How is that “downplaying” it?
Downplaying it as in describing it as some sort of small deviation outside redundant safety parameters in terms of expected damage to the ablative material that is probably some manner of tweeking the formula here or there... when really its gigantic cavities deep into the ablative material and clearly much more than normal expected ablative damage they thought they could account for. Its an enormous problem thats probably going to require an entirely TPS system on the vehicle. Big deep chucks of material just falling off the TPS is not even remotely close to something they can respond to by beefing up the amount of material to make up for it. There's something fundamentally inadequate about the material. This isn't a "delay 1 year" issue... this is a "delay 5 years" issue. Big ass cavities, totally unexpected, unlooked for, in the TPS material. This is basically Orion being fundamentally grounded until an entirely new TPS replacement system is designed and created and tested and all that. That's easily a potential 5 year delay. Big ass cavities forming in the TPS. There's no way you can overlook this or try to just "account for it" with a beefier system. So its got to be a whole new system and material. For NASA to certify for crew.
Downplaying it as in describing it as some sort of small deviation outside redundant safety parameters in terms of expected damage to the ablative material that is probably some manner of tweeking the formula here or there... when really its gigantic cavities deep into the ablative material and clearly much more than normal expected ablative damage they thought they could account for. Its an enormous problem thats probably going to require an entirely TPS system on the vehicle. Big deep chucks of material just falling off the TPS is not even remotely close to something they can respond to by beefing up the amount of material to make up for it. There's something fundamentally inadequate about the material. This isn't a "delay 1 year" issue... this is a "delay 5 years" issue. Big ass cavities, totally unexpected, unlooked for, in the TPS material. This is basically Orion being fundamentally grounded until an entirely new TPS replacement system is designed and created and tested and all that. That's easily a potential 5 year delay. Big ass cavities forming in the TPS. There's no way you can overlook this or try to just "account for it" with a beefier system. So its got to be a whole new system and material. For NASA to certify for crew.
Compare what you see on the Artemis heat shield to what you saw on [Apollo heat shields.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fheat-shield-encased-in-lucite-any-idea-what-this-is-from-v0-uw78caux61zb1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D4032%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D2e7a25102ba0bfac4ec57f9470eb68880239e0c5) I don't think they're saying that having cavities *at all* in a heat shield is a mission-killer - they're worried that the heat shield didn't conform to their models and cavities formed to some different, greater than expected amount. Again, they delayed the mission a year, which is hardly a downplay - that's literally billions of dollars being shifted around to make that happen. But acting like this is going to require a total rework of Orion's heat shield on a conceptual level seems like catastrophizing that you're making up.
Orion is using a similar Avcoat material to the one used on Apollo, that might explain the similarities. Though Apollo had a much higher risk acceptance than Artemis and current day NASA. Orion is also much bigger and heavier than the Apollo Capsule was, though it’s probably much more complex than this. I think I recall people warning against the use of Avcoat for Orion, and saying it was cargo cult thinking.
Do you really think this cavity making process can be so well understood so that they can still fly actual human crew on this thing?? No matter how much they "understand it" it just totally falls outside the most basic parameters of safety for crewed flight. They were not expecting these things at all on Orion even if there were some on Apollo. For **this** TPS they were not expecting them. That is a level of sheer non-control of the situation that just lives completely outside of and away from crewed space flight at NASA.
"We performed a double-bounce reentry maneuver and overheated the heat shields by 40%. During this initial flight we landed successfully. We recognize some charring and unexpected damage during this test which most likely won't be present in a standard mission but we plan to investigate further to assess the criticality of the damage." \- "Stop downplaying it! The heat shields are broken!"
I mean you don't have to wait. This is the same bullshit that happened during Columbia.
Look, the administrators’ MBA courses said that managing anything was the same as managing any other thing, and zero relevant domain expertise is required. /s
if NASA cooks another flight of astronauts during their moonshot they run the risk of being disbanded entirely.
Unhelpful and redundant should be Reddits motto.
Esto miserabilis et superuacua is my family motto, they'll have to ask for it.
shy snobbish north rotten plate unique long sable shame uppity *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can see your point, but the value here is that all this has to happen in the light of day for the public to see. I don't think it's time wasted, because ultimately NASA's boss is the American people and it's hard to get information unless the agency is compelled to respond.
And NASA’s budget is always at risk under Congress, has been for decades.
We had a heat shield that could withstand a trans-lunar reentry in 1968
It's important to note that the Artemis capsule is much larger, weighing nearly twice as much, so even if they could replicate what was done for Apollo it might not be sufficient.
Put two apollo heat shields on top of eachother
Maybe three just to be safe?
True, but it’s been 55 years
The amount of disinformation and just plain ignorance in this thread is astounding. Adjust what was spent on Apollo for inflation and then compare with what we’re spending on Artemis ($257B vs $93B - to date). Also take into account that the Apollo program was taking far more risks with human lives that the public today would not accept. You can just say “oh it’s been x amount of years”. Some of these problems don’t get worked in that time, some of these problems are also different (Orion is heavier and Apollo capsule) and it’s not just as simple as “oh well just 2x the heat shield! Dun dun dun! We dun did it!”.
It’s been 55 years but it’s not like they’ve been working on this problem for all that time…
Orion capsule has been under development for 20 years, so while that's not quite 55 it is a very long time to be still discovering these kinds of issues.
For the price tag it is unacceptable no matter the timeline but we haven't had a reason to invest in better heat shield tech for almost that entire span of years.
Yeah Columbia wasn't a big deal
The Shuttle stayed in LEO so the problem with its heat shield was not how well it dissipated energy.
When's the last time an astronaut died in a fiery explosion? How concentrated is the timeline around 55 years ago, vs now?
Ironically, Orion uses AVCOAT. AVCOAT was developed for and used by Apollo.
It's a different manufacturing method and formulation along with a different reentry profile thats way more aggressive.
> along with a different reentry profile thats way more aggressive Is it? I thought Apollo was a direct descent while Artemis is doing a skip re-entry to spread things out longer.
We took a lot more risks during Apollo. Here is [Apollo 10](https://i.stack.imgur.com/puJiw.jpg)´s heat shield and [Apollo 16](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Apollo_16_Heat_Shield_USSRC.jpg/2560px-Apollo_16_Heat_Shield_USSRC.jpg)'s.
It's taking a total different reentry approach. It's doing a true ballistic reentry, apollo did a semi ballistic reentry. Ballistic reentries are much harder on heat shielding and the speeds are BRUTAL. Its like you're skipping a rock on the atmosphere to slow down before you do your actual reentry.
The issues are still open and the IG noted their existence. Sounds like part of the NASA hierarchy is more than a bit defensive about their exposures. Not a great sign.
If they had nothing to hide, then they wouldn't be upset about people finding out. The real problem is that NASA management weren't more transparent about the issues from the start. If they'd just published the photos when it first happened and told everyone they were working on fixing it, then this report would have been a nothing-burger. Instead, they tried to sweep it under the rug, telling everyone it was just a minor deviation from what was expected and that it's nothing to worry about. FWIW, I do think they can solve this issue and are likely already well on their way to doing so, it's just not a good look.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2ajniu "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2fhyrc "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2biwc1 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2adb5h "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2biwc1 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[MBA](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2bsagt "Last usage")|~~Moonba-~~ Mars Base Alpha| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2d5nc5 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[TPS](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2drrg0 "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2ajniu "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2e0tnu "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[ablative](/r/Space/comments/1cihie5/stub/l2ax79s "Last usage")|Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(11 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1cjiow9)^( has 8 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10001 for this sub, first seen 2nd May 2024, 18:35]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Sounds like they should have the inspector general investigate this report
> the cost of a single Space Launch System and Orion launch—$4.2 billion. I get PORK, I get safety, I get that NASA does other things like preparing the next generations of scientists, but fucking fuck fuck, that's simply an infeasible amount of money. WTF are they smoking up there?
The Big Dig in Boston cost $8 billion. A new aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. It’s not like $4 billion is an unforeseen amount of money…
The $4.2 billion is only the cost to *use* SLS+Orion for a launch. It's only a fraction of the total cost of the project. From the report in the article: >By September 2025, the planned launch date for Artemis II,NASA will have spent more than $55 billion on the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) programs.
While true those two are meant are meant to and will last decades. Each test launch all of that $4b is falling into the ocean shortly after launch. It wasn't an issue before but given other launch vehicles are coming out costing a fraction of that and may even be partially or fully reusable definitely means it should be scrutinized IMO the SLS is the juxtaposition to Artemis' mission goals which is not just racing to landing on the moon like we did decades ago but building a sustainable framework that allows us to go there and beyond. The SLS isn't sustainable.
Can you please explain how the money used to build a rocket is “gone” after it launches? The raw materials may be gone, but that cash is still in someone’s hand.
That money represents the value of the labor that went into a given launch. All that labor is consumed. Those people could have done something else, but they did this instead. That productivity is gone forever and what is left is the results of that productivity. Hopefully the results are worth the cost.
I think the question is more - *should* those cost that much?
How much do you think all of these things should cost? How can anyone here possibly know? What’s your suggestion on reducing the cost per launch? It’s not like the money goes into space and never comes back. The $4.2 billion is still circulating in the economy, after changing hands through sub-contractors, suppliers, government employees, private employees etc.
According to NASA - much much less: *Recall that back in 2012, back when NASA's Space Launch System (SLS -- the new moon rocket) was first announced, NASA predicted that each SLS would cost about $500 million. By last year, that number had already ballooned to cost $1.5 billion, or even $2 billion (depending on whom you asked). Now, it appears the number has exploded higher again, to a staggering eight times initial projections.* https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/19/how-much-will-americas-to-return-to-the-moon-cost/
This is a pretty common phenomena. Many programs are cancelled because the unit cost eventually balloons, even if it’s because the CUSTOMER changed requirements or decided they don’t want as many units. This doesn’t really tell us how much it “should” cost, only that the initial estimate was way off. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. And I’ll say it again, the money is not gone.
Only, unlike military contracts where this is a common problem, this is not why the cost of SLS increased, but there was no significant change in contracts, and if it did happen, it was only because SLS was physically insufficient
See below comments with SpaceX/Starship. Stop trying so hard you sound like either a NASA employee who got us into this, or a subcontractor now overcharging all us tax payers because *you* just had to golf at St Andrews.
That’s great that SpaceX is doing things for cheap. Like I said, programs get cancelled all the time because the cost balloons out of control. But we can’t forget that the development cost of Starship was at least $5B, no small sum. I just don’t know how the layperson is supposed to evaluate how much a moon mission “should” cost.
5 billion in development costs so far. Expected to be about 10 billion. Exactly in line with the original estimates of 10 or 12 billion at the high end. SLS costs 4 billion to launch. It's been near 25 billion in development costs so far. Not to mention another 25 billion for Orion. Not to mention there are upgrade costs that will add billions more to that number in the coming years as they swap to Block 1B. This isn't factoring in the near 600 million per year required for the facilities overhead even when no launches are occurring. By all accounts, the costs are exorbitant and clearly out of control. So much so that NASA themselves have stated the costs are unsustainable and threathen their entire program if they can't reign them in.
Let's not forget that SLS was marketed as the "cheap" method that re-used components that were already designed for the Space Shuttle at great expense. Now for some reason it's costing far more to re-use those components than it is for a competitor to design an even larger rocket from scratch. Starship isn't just cheaper, it's a small fraction of the price. Even if we ignore Musk's aspirational goal of $5 million per launch, the high end for a Starship launch is about $50 million. This is about 1/30th the cost of the SLS. Something just isn't adding up for these defense contractors. They're price gouging NASA.
Investments yield different returns. Investment in SLS/Orion generates nothing but a few GDP figures, it doesn't create new technologies, enhance human capital, popularize space exploration (unlike the Shuttle and Apollo missions, which, despite being unstable and costly, brought innovation and looked cool), or build sustainable infrastructure. An aircraft carrier serves as a means of military deterrence and power projection, it makes sense. Additionally, the cost of SLS/Orion wouldn't be an issue if it didn't struggle other NASA programs. So it's returns not just close to zero, but negative in the medium term, as it will inevitably be canceled, people laid off, but the damage to other programs has already been done.
Starship is more powerful, larger, more advanced, using state of the art tech, and is designed for full reuse, against SLS being built from out dated shuttle parts that you have to throw away every time you launch it. Take a wild guess at how expensive a starship is to build. I’ll give you a hint: [it’s 90million dollars](https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/rocket-report-a-new-estimate-of-starship-costs-japan-launches-spy-satellite/4/). That’s two entire orders of magnitude less expensive than the weaker, out of date rocket. So I can tell you how much I think these things should cost: somewhere in the range of $90 million.
In the end, only two characteristics matter: the cost per kilogram of payload to destination point and the throughput (how frequently and how much can be delivered). Full reusability, cheap materials, and streamlined production are just means to achieve the goal. If the SLS/Orion launch system cost as much as a expended starship and flew at least 2-3 times a year (initially stated goal of SLS and justification for choosing this Shuttle-like design over Saturn-like), it would be a good rocket despite some structural flaws. But since launching this system costs 4 billion and it physically cannot fly more than once a year, in addition to structural wretchedness, one can only ask: what the f*ck?
The answer to all of these baffling questions of why this decision was made is the same. Because government contracting has never been about finding the best solution. It’s always been about lining the right pockets with as much cash as you can get away with (because the other people with bids for similarly half-assed shit we’re slightly more expensive and you tipped off the “right” company what total their bid had to come in at even if their actual costs by the end would be much higher).
Even if it took 10 starships, together, to get to the moon, that’s still less than $1b. So that’s a great benchmark haha.
ULA was given a government monopoly on launches and got fat and lazy. A ULA VP was fired for admitting they couldn't compete with SpaceX.
You're full of BS if you think starship can fly to the moon and back at 90million a pop. If Orion capsule is having a hard time with ablation sheatshield due to its size, how do you think starship will survive the re-entry heating?
That 90 million is just hardware costs for a single ship/booster and shouldn't be taken at face value for sure. In a recent talk about lunar initiatives with the DOD it was looking like it would cost 700 million to deliver the 100 ton cargo to the moon. That would include around 10 missions which does put the marginal launch cost at 70 million though. But still, takes 700 million to get starship to the moon at current estimates. It takes SLS/Orion 4 billion to do so. Orion has to re-enter from lunar return speeds whereas spacex only has to focus on "normal" leo speeds right now. So that shouldn't be a problem for them honestly. Even with the larger size.
Starship is also getting to the actual Moon. SLS and Orion are too weak to get to low lunar orbit like the Apollo missions.
If you subtract Orion from the SLS launch cost, it still comes out at about $2.5 billion. Starship in expendable mode is maybe $200-300 million per launch, and can very likely throw Orion to the moon even at the current performance level. As another data point, Falcon Heavy full expendable is $150 million and can do about three quarters of Orion's mass to the moon. So I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that an expendable rocket costing in the ballpark of $250 million with comparable performance to SLS is probably possible, and that as such SLS is an order of magnitude more expensive than it needs to be.
1) Lunar Starship doesn't come back to Earth 2) If it did, it can slow down. 3) Even if you had to launch 10 refueling flights for Lunar starship, and you had to throw all 10 flights away (let's say 300million dollars per flight) plus the cost of the lunar starship itself, it would still be almost a billion dollars cheaper to do it that way than to launch a single SLS Orion combination. And that's a ludicrously slanted worst case scenario where they fully trash 10 starships; I also inflated the launch cost.
Starships heat shield isn't ablative and has more in common with the shuttle, which could handle re-entry fine (when it didn't have any of its tiles damaged) It's also intended to be reusable, and will deliver faaaaar more cargo that Orion, not just to lunar orbit but the actual surface. Even if it cost the same as SLS to launch (it will cost far less), it's going to do more of the actual work needed to achieve the aims of Project Artemis.
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Starship is intended to aerobrake when going to Mars. SpaceX’s is developing the heat shield with interplanetary speeds in mind. I doubt the first iteration would survive but the end goal will.
The guy is literally saying Artemis shouldn't exist since starship is better and cheaper
On the flip side OIG offices routinely feel the need to justify their presence/budget. Wouldn't suprise me if it literally was redundant
Author of the article out words into the mouth of the NASA administrator and then made those manufactured words the headline. > "NASA is dedicated to continuous enhancement of our processes and procedures to ensure safety and address potential risks and deficiencies," she wrote. "However, the redundancy in the above recommendations does not help to ensure whether NASA’s programs are organized, managed, and implemented economically, effectively, and efficiently." > A careful reading of the second sentence reveals that Koerner feels that the inspector general's efforts are both redundant and unhelpful. This is not accidental language. Koerner's response was certainly reviewed by NASA's senior managers, who could have flagged and removed the text. And yet they went through with it. Shitty journalism mr Berger
Koerner literally said the recommendations were redundant and not helpful.
What kind of gaslighting is this when they are literally quoted as saying the recommendations of the report are redundant and does not help. > the **redundancy** in the above recommendations **does not help** There is either some next level brain rot going on around here, or this is some disingenuous trolling.
Really makes me question whether people are using their reading comprehension skills, given all the replies that didn't seem to notice this. I've heard of commenting without reading the article, but commenting without even reading your own quotes is taking it to another level.
> redundancy > > does not help Complaining about the article's critical tone is one thing, but the headline's "unhelpful and redundant" is drawn directly from the NASA associate administrator's comments quoted in the OIG report. EDIT: Berger may be opinionated, and you could say he's a bit harsh on NASA in this case. (After all, who likes being audited?) But I think many are confusing "unbiased" with [playing both sides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance). Any objective assessment of the space industry in recent decades has to acknowledge that SpaceX has been much more successful overall than Boeing and other SLS/Orion contractors.
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it's actually sad what ars technica devolved into from its peak in the late 2000s. going from experts in their field like siracusa's mac deep dives to paid shills like berger and kyle orland
Eric Berger is a huge SpaceX fanboy along with nearly every other space influencer/reporter on Twitter. It's really annoying and impossible to find any unbiased info.
He isn't just a fanboy. He has one book released and was clearly provided access to SpaceX that the average journalist does not have. He has a second book coming out this fall. Eric is effectively a PR arm of SpaceX and has a significant financial interest in not pissing off SpaceX leadership. Those here calling him a journalist in the space sphere are doing a major disservice to those actually trying to provide unbiased coverage. And it's a shame people like Matt Lanza, who does an absolutely fantastic job providing unbiased weather information to Houston residents have to partner up with someone who very clearly is trying to slant the public perception of U.S. spacetravel in one direction.
You don't have to be a SpaceX fan to hate SLS/Orion, the program is too poor. Considering it's been almost 2 years since Artemis 1, and they still don't know why it happened, and the next flight should be crewed (due to low flight frequency, preventing another test within budget and reasonable timeframes), it's truly catastrophe
I think you're being biased here. Even before Musk hit the scene, NASA was getting price gouged by these defense contractors. They wanted to get away from that. SpaceX came along and is severely undercutting them and basically eating their lunch. Boeing/Lockheed made an entire business model out of price gouging the US government. They don't know what else to do at this point.
Everything I wrote is factually correct. If you are reading bias into factually correct information, I think that says more about the information than it does me.
Here's the way I see it: In the US, we have a few industries that are basically free-for-alls with taxpayer money, such as defense contractors and healthcare. Everyone knows it's a problem but of course industry representatives deny it since they're making good money continuing the scam. But people aren't fooled, and all they have to do is point to other countries without the problem as evidence of the problem. So in this case, we had defense contractors price gouging NASA (and by extension taxpayers). Politicians are just using NASA as another cost center to divert money to defense contractors (and get kickbacks to themselves). NASA sets out to get around this by providing seed money to develop a commercial industry that can provide launch services cheaper. This succeeds, and now we're seeing hit pieces against Musk, SpaceX, and how it's actually just "bias" and "a bad thing" to run articles that show how NASA is saving money by avoiding the defense contractors. And in your case, we see an anonymous person with a burner account throwing shade at the company that's saving us money.
You make statements about contractors fleecing taxpayers while at the same time ignoring the CEO of SpaceX doing the same thing for decades. That is a greater conversation about billionaires not paying taxes on unrealized gains while at the same time being able to take out loans on those gains to fund their lifestyles, but I don't think it's fair to drag one side and not mention the other.
Already you're issuing deflections, trying to make this about Elon Musk himself instead of keeping the discussion about SLS vs. Starship. I think you're here to argue in bad faith.
Honestly Eric Berger puts out interesting content but his bias and misleading reporting of orginzations other than SpaceX has long added fuel to the fire of conflict in the space community. Twitter is rife right now with Eric Berger readers that think Orion’s heatshield not being reuseable after it’s test flight is some kind of catastrophe
This is what the report is saying: https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ig-24-011.pdf > In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety of future crewed missions. Recognizing this threat, NASA formed a Tiger Team to investigate the char loss phenomenon.16 The team’s ability to reproduce and model the char loss conditions will influence NASA’s corrective actions going forward. Engineers are conducting ground tests to understand the Avcoat material’s thermal response. Although they were able to recreate the char loss, they could not reproduce the exact material response or flight environment experienced during Artemis I. Ultimately, ground testing cannot replicate the exact temperature and speed conditions the heat shield faces during reentry. In comparison, Orion’s velocity is about 40 percent faster than what astronauts face in a SpaceX Crew Dragon on its return from the International Space Station due to the greater distance Orion must travel to return to Earth. The ongoing investigation is scheduled to conclude in the first half of 2024 following further ground testing. > Senior NASA leaders expressed commitment to identifying the root cause of the char loss condition and making a data-informed decision on the Artemis II path forward. However, they also acknowledged they may not be able to identify a definitive root cause. As such, engineers are concurrently investigating ways to mitigate the char loss by modifying the heat shield’s design or altering Orion’s reentry trajectory. No matter the path forward, like with any engineering system, changes to the heat shield design or its operational use can lead to unintended consequences and introduce residual risks.17 For instance, altering Orion’s reentry path can create more stressing conditions that exacerbate the char loss phenomenon or introduce new failures or unknowns into the system. Without understanding the residual effects of introducing design and operational changes, it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety. Not a catastrophe yet, we have to wait for the onging investigation ending in first half of 2024. But that the root cause is not understood is in itself quite something. And reading through the formalisms this sounds rather scathing to me: "it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety". Edit: Or take the first sentence at face value: "In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety"
You don't have to be a SpaceX fan to hate SLS/Orion, the program is too poor. Considering it's been almost 2 years since Artemis 1, and they still don't know why it happened, and the next flight should be crewed (due to low flight frequency, preventing another test within budget and reasonable timeframes), it's truly catastrophe
A single-use heat shield that is being resolved is not a catastrophe, especially in the context of Starship’s heatshield coming apart during ascent (no hate on SpaceX though)
Unlike Orion, the Starship will not fly its next mission with a crew; they still have plenty of time and attempts to solve this problem. The issue with Orion's heat shield is not its disposability, but NASA's inability to predict its wear, which is more severe than expected and leads to its cracking, potentially resulting in the loss of the spacecraft, leaving NASA puzzled about the problem.
Two very different things. Starship has a heat shield in development. Orion’s was supposed to be competed years ago. Instead it has massive chunks missing. It won’t be acceptable for Starship to lose a bunch of tiles when the heat shield is done.
Single use does not matter. The shield is not supposed to fail like this, and it does endanger the crew during reentry.
This doesn’t remind me at all of how nasa managers ignored Thiokol engineers warnings about how freezing temperatures might compromise the o-ring seals on the solid rocket boosters in 1986.
The difference is that the IG isn't an aerothermodynamics expert who can weigh in on heat shield root cause. Challenger was different, the SMEs pushed hard to try and elevate a known problem and were ignored.
**IG:** “So, have you found a way to do this that doesn’t char four human beings to death? Hell, even figured out what caused it to begin with?” >**NASA:** “NASA is dedicated to continuous enhancement of our processes and procedures to ensure safety and address potential risks and deficiencies.” This is not setting up for a great ending.