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from the Which-will-first-orbit-the-Earth?-NASA-SLS-or-SpaceX-Starship? dept.
SLS debut slips to April 2021, KSC teams working through launch sims
Preparations continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first launch of the Space Launch System, or SLS rocket – NASA's gigantic rocket the agency hopes to use to launch humans to the lunar surface and to the commercial-rocket constructed Lunar Gateway.
But while Kennedy prepares for the rocket's arrival and first mission, various NASA centers are now actively planning for a No Earlier Than 18 April 2021 launch for the rocket's debut.
[...] The 20 February 2020 NASA press release regarding the KSC launch team's performance of Artemis 1 countdown and launch simulations was the first NASA release to publicly confirm SLS will not fly this year, noting "NASA is preparing for the first uncrewed flight test next year of the agency's powerful new rocket and spacecraft in development for the Artemis lunar exploration program."
The previous NASA-provided No Earlier Than (NET) November 2020 launch date of Artemis 1 was always viewed as political in nature and not an accurate reflection of the rocket's readiness.
See also: Cruz skeptical about prospects for NASA appropriations or other legislation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @02:35PM (1 child)
Taking money out of politics is nonsensical. Politics in modern full-suffrage democracies are essentially driven by persuasion of a mostly uninformed electorate. It doesn't matter if you're persuading them by directly purchasing advertisements, or by indirectly spending money to convince "influencers" who can "organically" persuade them, or whatever other means ones might enlist. In the end it's all the exchange of some form of X for Y - where Y is, ultimately, votes. Getting rid of money would be little more than a change in semantics. The problem we have is much more basic, but also not really possible to solve in any politically correct fashion.
That problem is that we live in a democracy, but most of the people voting tend to be generally uninformed. And the personal characteristics that make one appealing to this demographic tend to fall rather outside the desirable characteristics for a political leader. In fact the characteristics that we, defacto, require politicians to have overlap 1:1 with conmen: fast-talk, charisma, persuasion, and an utter lack of morals. Trump vs Clinton. If we had an omniscient being that could somehow rank the general objective fitness of leadership of every person in this country, where do you think those two would have ranked?
The one thing that makes me optimistic here is Sanders. He is not especially charismatic nor even especially persuasive. He's simply a man who stuck to his values for decades living in a country where those values came gradually to be seen as more desired. I, now a days, disagree with him on just about everything - but I'd vote for him. An honest politician is about as common as a unicorn, and I think he's the closest we've come since perhaps JFK.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Saturday February 29 2020, @04:46PM
>>> An honest politician is about as common as a unicorn, and I think he's the closest we've come since perhaps JFK.
I think you overlooked Carter. And when it comes to "utter lack of morals", certainly outshines JFK.