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Trump on Falcon Heavy: "I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA"
During a cabinet meeting on Thursday inside the White House, President Donald Trump called attention to several model rockets on the table before him. They included an Atlas V, a Falcon 9, a Space Launch System, and more. The president seemed enthused to see the launch vehicles. "Before me are some rocket ships," the president said. "You haven't seen that for this country in a long time."
Then, in remarks probably best characterized as spur of the moment, the president proceeded to absolutely demolish the government's own effort to build rockets by noting the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. He cited the cost as $80 million. (The list price on SpaceX's website is $90 million.)
"I noticed the prices of the last one they say cost $80 million," Trump said. "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA.''
NASA has not, in fact, set a price for flying the SLS rocket. But Ars has previously estimated that, including the billions of dollars in development cost, the per-flight fees for the SLS rocket will probably be close to $3 billion. Indeed, the development costs of SLS and its ground systems between now and its first flight could purchase 86 launches of the privately developed Falcon Heavy rocket. So President Trump's estimate of NASA's costs compared to private industry does not appear to be wildly off the mark.
[*] SLS: Space Launch System
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @04:51PM (16 children)
Instead, he hides out in Washington DC and says so little that we have murky stories like, "The White House seems interested in the Falcon Heavy launch" [arstechnica.com]. And that story was all about Vice President Pence not Trump with everything gleaned second-hand from anonymous sources and a tweet from Pence's Chief of Staff.
As I see it, that doesn't say much for Trump's pragmatism, does it? But at least he's on the bandwagon now with time to spare.
And it's worth noting that his remarks, mild as they were, were the most pro-space a president has uttered in many a decade because they speak about the camel in the tent, the enormous cost and low expectations of NASA projects (particularly, manned projects) over the past forty years. Maybe this will be the start of the shakeup that NASA desperately needs to adapt to a reality of aggressive space activities by a good portion of the world and financial constraints on the US government.
(Score: 5, Funny) by BananaPhone on Friday March 09 2018, @05:35PM (2 children)
If you want *this* POTUS to show up, create a golf course with a McDonalds near by.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday March 09 2018, @10:53PM (1 child)
He's got his own Golf courses, and restaurants.
Huge savings over having the secret service rent an entire course for a whole day so Obama could play 6 holes [obamagolfcounter.com] and retire to shoot baskets.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Saturday March 10 2018, @05:09AM
They could always do the sane thing, and just.. play a round of golf. Like any other person with bodyguards. He's just a man, like any other. He doesn't need the whole damn course sectioned off to play on it. Catering to a politicians sense of self-importance only inflates their ego. Even if it is the POTUS.
- D
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday March 09 2018, @05:44PM (8 children)
Maybe this will be the start of the shakeup that NASA desperately needs to adapt to a reality of aggressive space activities by a good portion of the world and financial constraints on the US government.
NASA isn't really the problem here. Look at all the stuff they have done on much smaller budgets, that have been massive successes. New Horizons is a good example of this, as well as some Mars rovers, and various other probes.
The simple truth is that NASA simply can't get anything done that takes more than one Presidential administration's worth of time. If it's going to take more than 8 years to do, they just shouldn't even bother, because it's going to be a failure. Really, if it needs more than 4, they should think twice.
There's simply nothing that NASA can do about Congressional micromanagement and pork-barrel financing ("you need to do this, but it has to be in some flyover state that makes no sense to do it in because that's where my constituents are"), or about presidential administrations changing course every 8 years. So many decisions are made not because of technical needs, but political ones (using a particular supplier because of political connections for instance).
There's really nothing that can be done about all of this.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @05:46PM (4 children)
Except, of course, having a disciplined organization present a coherent plan and stick to it. Drop cost plus contracts while they're at it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday March 09 2018, @06:07PM (3 children)
The organization can present all the plans they want, it doesn't matter. They'll be overridden when there's a new election and the makeup of Congress changes or there's a new Administration.
There's nothing that can be done about it unless you either stop having elections so often (maybe every 20 years), or you somehow make it so NASA doesn't have to answer to Congress or the President, and can do whatever they want once they have some money. Obviously neither of those is going to happen, so NASA will never be able to have successful manned missions. It only barely managed to do as well as it did with the Apollo program because the political leadership was scared shitless about the Soviets and got into a "space race" when they were beaten by Sputnik, so they managed to stay politically focused long enough, and poured enough money into the project, to get it done. And even then they defunded it after they succeeded in landing on the Moon a few times and truncated the program.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 09 2018, @10:56PM
... And made it clear to the rest of the world that they could put way-more-than-necessary-of-mass nuclear payloads precisely anyplace they wanted to within 240,000 miles - one of the most major objectives of the space program.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday March 09 2018, @11:14PM (1 child)
Pretty sure khollow wasn't serious about fixing NASA. He well knows that ship has sailed.
With three (or is it four) companies competing for space launch capabilities, prices are coming down fast.
The best use of NASA is being a standard's body. Sure, it will be regulatory-captured eventually. But you should be
able to get a few decades of safety oriented standards review out of them.
Maybe they could used be like the Highway Department, keep the facilities maintained, clean up the mess after an accident, etc.
Set standards for vehicle minimum equipment.
Its sad, but that's what government does. Happened to ESA. Happened to the Russians (who actually beat the US to quasi-privatized hardware development).
I use to be NASA's biggest fan. They use to do crazy and cool shit like fly shuttles around the country on the backs of Airplanes ffs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:59AM
They did that less than 6 years ago [wikipedia.org].
I like cooler shit like discovering thousands of exoplanets [wikipedia.org], flying by Pluto [wikipedia.org], orbiting Ceres [wikipedia.org], returning samples from an asteroid [wikipedia.org], visiting Europa [wikipedia.org], orbiting the largest metallic asteroid [wikipedia.org], etc.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @07:12PM (2 children)
Why do you hate flyover states? Doing something in a flyover state makes more sense than doing it in 17 different non-flyover states.
Flyover states are affordable. The space industry is well-established in Huntsville, Alabama. That's a fine place to get things done. The same might be said of Stennis Space Center in Louisiana.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday March 09 2018, @07:19PM
I think the problem is not that it is being done in Alabama or Louisiana but that keeping these facilities open is a reason to continue to fund a program or to ignore waste in the system.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 11 2018, @02:34AM
Frequently, facilities are put in those states not because it makes any actual sense, but because some politician wants to bring home the pork. If it makes the most technical and logistical sense to put it there, fine, but it frequently isn't the optimal location. This process usually results in spreading work out all across the country, instead of more efficiently concentrating it.
Also, to get work done, you need people, usually with very specialized skills. You can't just plop a government facility someplace and expect people to come there; this isn't "Field of Government Dreams". You have to go where the workers are, at least when you have a competitive job market. If you build something out in bumfuck iowa or wherever, you could very well be missing out on more talented workers because they don't want to move to the boonies. There's a reason Musk put Tesla in Silicon Valley: there's a critical mass of tech workers there (plus an unused factory he could buy up cheap, but I'm really addressing the engineering here). I've seen this myself with the government: they just can't seem to figure out why they have a hard time getting experienced engineers to move to rural places where they thought it'd be a great idea to have a R&D facility. I guess it works OK if you're just looking for nuclear engineers (who don't have a lot of other commercial alternatives for work), but for software engineers in particular, it doesn't work that way. "Affordability" isn't very important when it comes to finding qualified workers. If NASA decided to do a ton of software work at the Stennis center, how much success do you think they'd have recruiting people? Not much. Slidell LA is the closest civilization within reasonable commuting distance (~30min), and that place is not going to attract many software engineers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 09 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
I see what you did there. But, you're thinking like a politician. Trump thinks more like a - uhhhh - a Trump. Subject for future research: Does Trump really think, or is he just acting a role? Or, How does Trump thought resemble human thought, while differing so much from human thought?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 09 2018, @08:52PM
Trump is very simple: at any given moment, he thinks "what can i say or do that, as far as I know, makes me look good, strokes my ego, and advances my agenda?" None of this is being thought in such explicit terms, mind; it's more that this is what his thoughts on the matter would look like if spelled out. He's a textbook narcissist.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday March 09 2018, @08:22PM (1 child)
Actually, it could be better for President Trump to distance himself from SpaceX and continue to let VP Pence handle NASA matters. Trump's mere presence at the launch would have politicized it. Compare to the tech/business council clusterfuck. Elon Musk left early, citing climate change. Other business leaders left after Trump's Charlottesville comments. Trump alternated between insulting the CEOs that left and saying that he understood the need to not put "pressure" on them.
If you look at the related stories, you'll see that the Trump administration appears to be standing behind SLS and Orion so far. So the waste will probably continue. These comments over here could signal a small possibility of defunding the SLS, but it's a difficult call since Falcon Heavy won't necessarily be able to replicate the missions SLS can (less payload, and SpaceX is going to skip flying humans with Falcon Heavy).
The Falcon Heavy launch was a symbolic victory for SpaceX, but BFR is necessary in order to kill off the SLS. Further delays to SLS could make it possible, but the Trump administration has not indicated any deviation from continuing to spend billions on SLS+Orion. And don't forget this clown [soylentnews.org].
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @10:14PM
So why is politicization supposed to be a problem? It's not the tech/biz council meltdown. If someone tries to politicize watching a launch and shaking hands, then Trump has won a minor victory on top of everything else.