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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the building-bridges-to-space dept.

A bridge linking the Kennedy Space Center to the mainland needs replacement:

In fast-track fashion, traffic engineers hope to finish design work on a future replacement State Road 405 bridge across the Indian River by January 2021.

The aging bridge serves as a critical corridor linking the mainland with Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station — and the bridge must shoulder heavyweight spacecraft payloads and similar freight.

But by 2021, the drawbridge could prove unsafe for spacecraft and other heavy cargo, a NASA engineering study determined. Bridge replacement could cost $140 million — and no construction funding has been earmarked yet, said Bob Kamm, Space Coast Transportation Planning Organization executive director.

Traffic in and around the Kennedy Space Center has increased massively in recent years.

Congressmen want more money to upgrade the facilities at Kennedy Space Center, as well as to provide for the Space Launch System and Orion projects:

A letter sent last month by U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, the Rockledge Republican who sits on the House Space Subcommittee, and co-signed by 10 other members of Florida's delegation, urges $557 million for the exploration ground systems improvements in the 2019 federal budget, and another $17 million for other construction. It also calls for $150 million in 2019 to build a new mobile launcher that could support the SLS rocket for 40 years, a recent NASA policy direction change from plans now seen as problematic to retrofit the current mobile launcher. The letter also calls for another $2.15 billion for the SLS rocket development, and $1.35 billion for the final Orion crew vehicle development.


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 16 2018, @01:34AM (5 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 16 2018, @01:34AM (#667448) Journal

    reports appear of problems that didnt exist last week

    Just from curiosity: how do you know the problem didn't exist last week?

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday April 16 2018, @03:52AM (4 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Monday April 16 2018, @03:52AM (#667492) Journal

    Well, it wasn't an SLS-related problem last week, was it?

    I've worked on projects where one, minor change request was then used to shoehorn an additional spend equivalent to 60% of the total project budget.. SLS seems to be worse - need an upgrade to anything within 100miles of SLS? Put it on the (possibly infinite) SLS budget!

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 16 2018, @04:19AM (3 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 16 2018, @04:19AM (#667505) Journal

      Well, it wasn't an SLS-related problem last week, was it?

      I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way; a problem (that you don't know about) may still exist.

      Otherwise, following the same (slightly solipsistic "if you didn't know about it, no problem exists" argument), a problem can't ever exist (because you can continue to willfully ignore it day after day, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, using "It can't be a problem, since I didn't know about this problem yesterday").

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 16 2018, @05:15AM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 16 2018, @05:15AM (#667518) Journal

        a problem (that you don't know about) may still exist.

        But it remains that it wasn't an SLS problem until someone needed to attach $4 billion in pork to it.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 16 2018, @06:27AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 16 2018, @06:27AM (#667530) Journal

          But it remains that it wasn't an SLS problem until someone needed to attach $4 billion in pork to it.

          Do you know for sure there's a causal relationship? Can you present the evidence if so?
          (I'm not saying anything about it is or it isn't, I'm just asking because I don't know and nothing in TFS indicates as such).

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @09:20AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @09:20AM (#667555)

          Hi, Invisible Hand here. I keep trying to give those darned Commies helpful hints but they just don't listen.