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from the better-faster-cheaper....-pick-two dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Poor NASA: it's got a president who doesn't like its climate research and wants it to pay more attention to putting humans on the Moon and Mars – but its launch vehicle for that kind of mission is costing too much.
That vehicle is the Space Launch System, a rocket hoped to be capable of one day hauling loads up to 130,000kg and reaching Mars.
In a Request For Information (RFI) that hit Federal Business Opportunities late last week, the agency revealed wants to trim the costs to build, operate and maintain the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground System (EGS) projects.
As the RFI notes: "Given NASA's assumption of flat funding levels, minimising POM [production, operations and maintenance – The Register] costs for SLS, Orion, and EGS is critical to free resources for re-investment".
The money it hopes to free up would make it easier to fund space walks, docking systems, Mars exploration and safety efforts.
The RFI opens up pretty much the gamut of SLS and Orion activities, including whether or not there's a commercial user base for the lifters.
At the end of last week, NASA announced that the SLS's propulsion system is in the Marshall test stand, ready for the first test of its Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:42PM
You forgot the Shuttle itself. It wasn't just the engines that needed a full overhaul between each flight. The heat shield tiles had to be inspected and replaced every time, as well. And they weren't even all the same size or shape, so you had thousands of individual tiles that needed to be crafted. Heck, early on it was taking about forty hours to attach a single tile, and there's about 31,000 of them...
No, the real reason so much of the Shuttle is being reused for the SLS is pork. Got to keep it spread around. The only reason the SRBs were done the way they were (ie. in segments) is transportation limitations, and it's the segmentation that caused the Challenger disaster (along with management, of course).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @12:52AM
That's an oversimplification. You can't make a single vessel that size in one piece, and reasonably work with it either. It needed to be in smaller parts apart from the transportation aspect. And the transportation aspect wasn't an issue of pork. You weren't going to have a factory to manufacture those things right there in Florida.