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posted by janrinok on Tuesday October 22 2019, @03:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the to-the-sea-and-beyond dept.

Guess what's on the receiving end of more NASA dollars for SLS?

Hint: It rhymes with 'throwing' as lawmakers baulk at lobbing an unknown amount of cash into the 2024 lunar bonfire[.]

NASA brought a smile to faces of Boeing shareholders this week with the announcement that it would be ordering 10 Space Launch System (SLS) core stages from the US aviation giant for Artemis rocket launches to the Moon. Although paying for the things could be tricky.

[...]It is expected that the next batch of rocket core stages will not suffer the same hideous cost overruns and horrendously drawn-out birthing process of the first build, which might finally fly in 2021 after years of delay.

While more ex-Shuttle RS-25 engines will be needed for dumping into the ocean after the non-reusable SLS is expended, NASA also wants Boeing to finally get on with building the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) to be used from Artemis IV. The EUS is essential to send heftier payloads of the order of 45 tons into lunar orbit.

The comparatively weedy Interim Cryogenic Propulsion stage will be used on the first three Artemis missions in NASA's headlong rush to get those boots on the surface to meet US President Donald Trump's 2024 deadline.

And that arbitrary 2024 date is causing some furrowed brows. At a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee's Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee into NASA's proposal to bring the Moon landing forward from 2028, US lawmakers hauled the agency over the coals as the price tag for all the lunar japery remained unclear.

See also: A House budget committee has likely killed the 2024 Moon landing
NASA will award Boeing a cost-plus contract for up to 10 SLS rockets
Rocket Report: The Falcon 9 goes for four, Boeing's big cost-plus deal


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  • (Score: 2) by sgleysti on Tuesday October 22 2019, @12:34PM (2 children)

    by sgleysti (56) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 22 2019, @12:34PM (#910264)

    I wonder if proper training in engineering project management is no longer widely available. Perhaps for SLS they just don't care as long as they're making money. In my job, I'm dealing with some coworkers who keep asking to use certain technologies and topologies in a product while at the same time being oblivious to a variety of engineering constraints ("Why do we need voltage isolation?" "Wow, that current budget is tiny..."). They've been at it for months and I just joined the project; I'm nervous about the situation but am working hard to engineer my way out and already have some good alternatives. However, it is quite concerning that project managers say things like, "we just need to make a decision and stick with it." or "we can't reevaluate that until it's completely infeasible." when the decisions were made without looking at the whole system and several good options were not properly considered.

    ..., and so many other things - all wrapped up into one little lifetime of 80 years? Part of the reason I'm of the simulation hypothesis mindset. How ridiculously random and lucky is it to get to live through all of this and see it with our own 14 billion eyes?

    Consider that only someone living now could say this. I put the simulation hypothesis to one of my coworkers, and he replied, "who the hell would simulate my life?" I think that's a good objection from someone who doesn't think much about philosophical topics. If this universe is a simulation, I fancy the idea that the entity running it is fascinated by black holes and dark matter and doesn't give a f*ck about the rest.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:18PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:18PM (#910325) Journal

    Perhaps for SLS they just don't care as long as they're making money.

    It's pretty simple, and they have a name for it: cost plus.

    Members of Congress, particularly Senator Shelby, want to funnel as much cash into it as possible, as a stimulus package for their constituents.

    Failure = more money. Boeing/ULA has an incentive to fail enough to get more money but not so much that the program is jeopardized. SpaceX Starship will be a threat, so they need to be mindful of that going forward.

    House Spending Bill Offers NASA More Money Than the Agency or Administration Wanted [soylentnews.org]
    Northrop Grumman Exec Warns of Coming "Affordability" in the Space Launch System's Future [soylentnews.org]
    Lunar Gateway Could be Killed to get More Money for Space Launch System [soylentnews.org]

    Note that last one. Lunar Gateway isn't as useful as SLS funding to the Beltway bandits if SpaceX rockets are used to build and service it, as some countries already planned:

    SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Could Launch Japanese and European Payloads to Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway [soylentnews.org]
    White House Budget Request Would Move Launches from SLS to Commercial Providers [soylentnews.org]

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:57PM (#910406)

    > I put the simulation hypothesis to one of my coworkers, and he replied, "who the hell would simulate my life?"

    I think there's a pretty mundane answer here. Think of humanity in the not so distant future. Technology, history, and all of these other topics will be so immense that even a cursory education in traditional means will become impossible. However, what if we were able to effectively simulate these periods in a time accelerated fashion? What feels as 80 years to us is day 1 of 'universal history 101'. There's another unique coincidence about this era as well. Thanks to the widescale data collection of entities such as the NSA, this is also the first time in history that you could create a compelling situation of a time period with historically accurate 'filler.' Assuming these data are not erased, we're effectively creating a 'time capsule' that encompasses a quite large chunk of our entire civilization. Not a fan of the NSA stuff, but I can't help but be enamored by this aspect of it.

    But even if it were for entertainment, think of things such as the games you play. Do you prefer to start as a king, or a peasant? The pleasure in a game is not in self indulgence once you reach a height, but in the journey and struggle towards that height. So perhaps I take an even more unusual spin on the simulation hypotheses by proposing one that's somewhat boring. No need for omnipotent beings simulating our universe for imperceptible reasons - it could be just us plain old meatsacks engaging in exactly the same sort of things we engage in today, just with a bit fancier tech.

    Fair point in wondering who could get pleasure engaging in a mostly draining for 40 hours a week, every week, to no real end. Who knows? Anyhow gotta go pick a few hundred more digital tulips. My herbalism skill is almost at level 10, then I can start grinding out some potions to raise my alchemy skill!