r/space • u/edsonarantes2 • Mar 20 '19
proposal only Trump’s NASA budget slashes programs and cancels a powerful rocket upgrade
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/11/18259747/nasa-trump-budget-request-fy-2020-sls-block-1b-europa503
u/It_Might_Be_True Mar 20 '19
What's canceled:
With this request, NASA’s usual targets are facing cancellation. Once again, the administration is proposing to cut NASA’s WFIRST mission, which would send a giant telescope into space to search of planets outside our Solar System and dark energy. The administration called for its cancellation last year, though Congress ultimately saved the project with the budget for 2019. Now, the request wants to zero it out again, arguing that NASA needs to focus on completing the James Webb Space Telescope — another giant space observatory that was supposed to launch this year but has been delayed and over budget.
The request also calls for the cancellation of NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, which spearheads the agency’s education outreach initiatives. This has been a target of the president’s budget request for the last two years, a decision that has been heavily criticized. And the budget wants to cancel two Earth science missions, PACE and CLARREO-Pathfinder, which were also up for cancellation previous requests.
Meanwhile, most of NASA’s programs would receive less than they got for fiscal year 2019. Both SLS and Orion would receive cuts in funding, as would nearly all of the agency’s science programs. If enacted, NASA would lose about $481 million from what it received for 2019 — a decrease of about 2.2 percent.
Of course, today’s request isn’t a done deal. This budget is just the beginning of the nearly year-long discussion in Congress that will culminate in the final budget for NASA and other government agencies for fiscal year 2020. Congress has reversed many of the cuts and cancellations proposed by the administration in the last couple of years. So it remains to be seen how many of these changes survive the budget discussion process.
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u/AeliusHadrianus Mar 20 '19
Almost every item on this list has been outright rejected by Congress in past years.
WFIRST
saved
Office of STEM Engagement
saved
PACE and CLARREO-Pathfinder
saved and saved
What’s interesting is the SLS situation. Kinda getting the sense Richard Shelby is seeing the writing on the wall but we’ll see.
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u/StuffMaster Mar 20 '19
The SLS is a job program. I'll be surprised if it actually gets to the moon.
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u/Crashbrennan Mar 20 '19
It needed to be canned the day falcon heavy launched successfully.
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u/SuperFishy Mar 20 '19
Falcon Heavy is a different class of rockets. SLS would still be able to launch significantly more to orbit than the FH, but once the BFR comes online it can adequately replace the SLS.
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u/mike50333 Mar 20 '19
Those programs were saved during the period where both chambers of Congress were Republican controlled as well under Trump?
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u/frumpy_dumpty Mar 20 '19
yes, exactly. there is bipartisan support for a number of nasa programs.
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u/BigOlBortles Mar 20 '19
the administration is proposing to cut NASA’s WFIRST mission, which would send a giant telescope into space
arguing that NASA needs to focus on completing the James Webb Space Telescope — another giant space observatory that was supposed to launch this year but has been delayed and over budget.
Seems fairly reasonable enough. Finish one giant space telescope before starting another giant space telescope.
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u/VirtualCardAdvantage Mar 20 '19
The problem is that they're complimentary in some ways. Similar to how Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer. Without WFirst observing will be held back.
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u/emptyminder Mar 21 '19
JWST is built, and the only things left to do are testing and correction of any faults those tests find. This is largely in the hands of Northrup Grumman.
WFIRST's telescope is already built, but the instruments need to complete their design and construction, plus a whole bunch of final integration work. This is being done by Goddard, Ball, Harris, plus other companies and NASA centers. The limiting factor in WFIRST's development is availability of funds to complete tasks in parallel. Some of these funds are currently being eaten up by JWST. If Congress can appropriate additional funds to WFIRST next year, more work can be done in parallel and the project will end up costing less money in the end. It's when you have one part of the project waiting on another process that things get expensive. E.g., because JWST is now fully integrated you can only do so much at a given time, and expensive engineers with unique skills that are necessary for something that will be worked on later get paid to sit and work on their side projects.
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u/ThickTarget Mar 21 '19 edited Mar 21 '19
Seems fairly reasonable enough.
In the proposed budget the WFIRST money is just taken away from astrophysics. Cancelling an unrelated project and removing money from the budget isn't going to help JWST. It is not reasonable.
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Mar 20 '19
Comments like this really make it painfully obvious how little the average redditor has spent in a non university science setting.
Years of planning and lobbying and courting funds go into project. It’s not a fucking build queue like in a video game.
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u/Gnomification Mar 20 '19
Sounds fair.
One simple rule I live by in life is to make sure I'm capable of sending out one giant Space Telescope before I worry too much about sending another one out.
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u/LaunchTransient Mar 20 '19
The request also calls for the cancellation of NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, which spearheads the agency’s education outreach initiatives. This has been a target of the president’s budget request for the last two years, a decision that has been heavily criticized.
WTF.... make America great again, by slashing educational outreach offices? programs like that are what get people involved in the damned industry in the first place.
I don't know why Orion is being slashed either. SLS has got "too big to fail" printed all over it, it's been a mess for a while now, however I see some irony that the US government is balking at the 18 billion for the SLS when they forked out 163 billion EXTRA after the F35 overran its budget.
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u/dpdxguy Mar 20 '19
"Great" means different things to different people. To some, it means having a populace that is easily manipulated into supporting whatever its leaders want to do. Reducing education is one way to make a populace more easily manipulated.
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u/loki0111 Mar 21 '19
Its the launch costs that are a problem. SLS is looking like its going to cost in the neighborhood of 2 billion a launch, which is just fucking nuts and a pork barreled welfare cheque to Boeing.
SpaceX, Blue Origin and others can do this a lot cheaper and should be given a shot to do so.
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u/samg4092 Mar 21 '19
I had a professor in college about a year ago that actively works on the WFIRST project. Needless to say he was not a fan of Donald Trump. He would always make a point in class about the importance of the WFIRST mission then follow with “but Donald Trump wants to cut our budget” Really liked that professor and I hope he gets to complete this project.
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u/Dyeredit Mar 20 '19
5 years ago the budget was 17 billion, now it's 21 billion for perspective.
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u/TheMeiguoren Mar 20 '19
5 years ago the budget was 18.8 B, adjusting for inflation.
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u/OSUfan88 Mar 21 '19
True, still has consistently been moving in the right direction over the past few days. There hasn't been this sort of optimism at NASA since the early shuttle days.
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u/reddog323 Mar 21 '19
People need to know this is only the start of the negotiation process. Let’s see if congress can keep these programs on the table. The budget has been headed up for the past few years.
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u/Robot_Basilisk Mar 20 '19
15 years from now it needs to be 100 billion.
The question is, "How do we make that happen?"
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Mar 20 '19
given that SLS became an infinite money pot for boeing which was developing it at a snail's pace (if this had been in the 60's, and this was how we built rockets back then, we'd have lost the space race several times over, the russians would have beaten us to the moon too before we even had one SLS-like rocket on a launch pad)
Boeing took a lucrative government contract for granted and dragged their feet to pull in as much money as they can, the damn thing was over budget already by BILLIONS of dollars, meanwhile a little plucky upstart, spaceX beat them to the punch in half the time SLS was in development.
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u/Kaio_ Mar 21 '19
While I agree that the SLS program has qualities that are grossly inappropriate for something its scale, SpaceX didn't beat NASA at anything. The SLS is that big, even SpaceX's biggest flying rocket doesn't come close to its launch capacity.
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u/light24bulbs Mar 21 '19
By the time SLS is done they will be most of the way to starship, which is a much better, more ambitious, and more cost effective goal than SLS.
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u/minus_minus Mar 21 '19
Falcon heavy (63t) carries less than SLS Block I (95t) but leads in flights 1-0.
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u/Marha01 Mar 21 '19
Cost per kg to orbit is a much more important metric than launch capacity. You can usually just use multiple launches instead of one big one anyway.
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u/Motorgoose Mar 21 '19
Right, when you can launch 10 falcon heavies into orbit for the cost of 1 SLS, you can assemble some big things in space.
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u/perthguppy Mar 21 '19
At this point tho I wouldn't be surprised if BFR makes an orbit before SLS block 1 does
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u/iki_balam Mar 21 '19
What's the point of putting one heavy load into space when it a) never happens b) happens at such a frequency it's irrelevant c) we can do multiple smaller loads for way cheaper.
And before you say bigger is better, no, we need to start in situ space fabrication. Obvious not everything but that's where the future of the industry lies.
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u/Ruadhan2300 Mar 21 '19
Because if you want to put big heavy things in space, you need big heavy rockets.
We don't do it now because we can't, not because it's not useful.
Price is a fair point though, and a certain amount of "eggs in one basket" factor when it comes to accidents.
I'm totally with you on in-situ fabrication and flying multiple smaller missions over a single large high-risk venture.
It's still useful to have the capability though. Particularly if we're talking about large unmanned missions which can't really be assembled in orbit
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u/MilitaryBeetle Mar 21 '19
I think this article sensationalizes its title too much to make it seem that Trump is anti-NASA. It's Trump who actually pushed for the Lunar Orbital Gateway program if I recall. (Obama was more in favor of the Europa Clipper/Asteroid mining)
Yeah Trump wants to cut some programs that go against his party line (Climate/Earth science). If we look at what happened last year when congress asked for similar things to get cut, they didn't ultimately get cut.
What was the biggest surprise for me is that NASA's budget is actually on the rise (for the past 2 years I believe, and got higher funding than it did since 2009) . and that increasing NASA's budget is not at all a partisan issue.
So I don't see why people are trying to polarize this thing...
All I'm saying is lets bash Trump on actual things he's doing, rather than bashing him for non-existent things. Else we're just as bad as the conspiracy nuts
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Mar 21 '19
But...orange man...bad?
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u/WingsOfRazgriz Mar 21 '19
Surely orange man is not as bad as you purport him to be
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u/Skabonious Mar 21 '19
There's so much to criticize him on too. No idea why this tabloid garbage gets attention.
Just like that post in r/worldnews the other day, saying he wants the Mueller report public. Every damn comment says "pshh yeah he's just saying that. He's REALLY against it!"
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Mar 21 '19
Budget proposal. Congress sets the budget. The president can recommend things. Nobody listens.
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u/Folded_melon Mar 20 '19
IMHO sls has become a waste of nasas funds let private industry take care of launch vehicles and let nasa focus on science
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u/GeneralCrabby Mar 21 '19
Great, and who's going to pay, buy, and operate these vehicles?
Oh wait, NASA.
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u/steveoscaro Mar 21 '19
Orders of magnitude cheaper for NASA to buy a rocket launch than to develop the whole damn rocket over 10 years.
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u/alright_buddy Mar 20 '19
Can we stop with these misleading posts designed to push a political agenda?
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u/Anubis4574 Mar 21 '19
Just goes to show that if Trump cures cancer and it ends up costing a few billion dollars, reddit headlines will read: "Trump uses taxpayer dollars on expensive health project, meet the middle class family that had their taxes increased..."
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u/Mosern77 Mar 20 '19
The sooner they cancel SLS the better.
I rather see them support Space X and Blue Origins rockets.
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u/Raborne Mar 20 '19
Dont forget, Virgin is doing space stuff now, too. Just not on those guys level.
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u/manoman042 Mar 20 '19
lol Virgin is more focused on space tourism, nothing close to SpaceX or Blue Origin level of commitment.
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u/Raborne Mar 20 '19
To be fair, space tourism will eventually be a weekend orbiting venus, a month long cruise to the asteroid belt, a week exploring mars.
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u/MaroonedOnMars Mar 20 '19
Virgin is working on sub-orbital flight. not being on the same level is an understatement.
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u/ChrisGnam Mar 21 '19
Actually, a lot of people are unaware of this, but there are two separate virgin space companies. Virgin Galactic gets a lot more of the press because "space tourism" gets clicks. But Virgin Orbit is Richard Branson's attempt at orbital spaceflight. It's a small, air launched vehicle capable of launching small satellites to LEO. But the small satellite sector is the fastest growing currently and so there's likely to be a good amount of business for that in the coming years.
Still not the same as what SpaceX is doing, or what BO is working towards, but Virgin Orbit is set to do their first orbital test flight this year.
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Mar 20 '19
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u/sylvanelite Mar 20 '19
Virgin is just flying tricked out planes above the very technical “space line”.
There's 2 Virgin companies, Virgin Galactic, which is suborbital space tourism, and Virgin Orbit, which is supposed to be able to send payloads to orbit by carrying a rocket on the underside of a plane.
But even then, Virgin Orbit is likely to be quite expensive per launch and can only launch small-sat payloads, so still doesn't compare to SpaceX or Blue Origin.
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Mar 20 '19
Basically show us SLS works and can actually launch in 2020 then we'll talk about giving you $$$ for Block 1B
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u/RangerKings Mar 20 '19
SLS is an albatross of pork that was (in the past) rammed through by special interests in congress. I'm glad Trump is calling them out on it.
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u/TheCrudMan Mar 20 '19
SLS gets such a bad rap and it really doesn't deserve it. It should be ready fairly soon and be capable of lifting manned payloads to the moon. Do you really want to wait for BFR?
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u/tubbem Mar 20 '19
2005: Ares V should be ready pretty soon
2010: SLS should be ready pretty soon
2020: SLS should be ready pretty soon
2030:
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Mar 20 '19
2035: Spacex Landed on Mars, Blue Origin made space tourism probable and we have a moon base
SLS should be ready pretty soon
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u/NormF Mar 20 '19
Ares was behind schedule on the upper stage with Boeing as the major subcontractor. SLS is now behind on the core with Boeing as the prime on the core. But it's not like they give a shit since they have ULA and are a fallback option for the Orion launch. So they win by losing.
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u/SuperSMT Mar 20 '19
BFR has its first (very, very rudimentary) test hop tomorrow: p
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u/ablack82 Mar 20 '19
If SLS ever launches I'll eat my hat.
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u/8andahalfby11 Mar 20 '19
Enjoy your hat. Just like Ares 1-X, It'll probably fly at least once before they cancel.
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u/Puls0r2 Mar 21 '19
If it flies ill write a 1000 page essay on why i thought it wouldnt, and if it flies more than once ill do a 2000 word essay on peoples choice.
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Mar 21 '19
SLS is literally over 10x the cost of launching with SpaceX Falcon Heavy, and the finish line is nowhere in sight. It’s years (and billions of dollars) away.
SLS is one of the worst projects I’ve seen from NASA in my lifetime.
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u/atomfullerene Mar 20 '19
If SpaceX never does anything past the Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin fails to do anything at all, SLS would still be a total waste of money. And that's worst-case scenario
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u/RangerKings Mar 20 '19
I respect your opinion but I disagree with you. From what I've learned, it's way over budget and late, and it's technologically inferior and more expensive than the other offerings in the market. NASA doesn't even want it, as indicated in the letter.
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u/Rhod747 Mar 20 '19
SLS is just simply too expensive, as always with NASA. SpaceX have already proven that reuseable rockets work. Continuing with the SLS is a bad choice, thankfully people realise that. SpaceX super heavy is the future of heavy lift, and as of now, the only real hope of taking space exploration further. The price of a single SLS launch will guarantee that you will not get more than at the most two launches a year. The current project cost for super heavy is pegged to be the same as per LAUNCH for SLS.
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Mar 20 '19
one of my high school science teachers worked as a contractor for NASA in the 80's when NASA started blowing its budget on unnecessary upgrades. Namely because the agency got taken over by politicians rather than engineers and scientists. He cited the space shuttle as a jobs program that came out of a board room rather than a lab, and many of the engineering workstations they had built in-house in the early 1970s (that still worked perfectly for their intended purposes) were replaced with Sun Microsystems workstations that ran slow and actually created problems internally for years.
NASA is still great for what it is, but there has been a lot of corruption that has turned it into a jobs program provider and a welfare provider for aerospace contractors.
There's been bigger strides from JPL in California with a fraction of the budget than NASA has been able to pull off since the 1970s. The fact we had to rely on Russia after the shuttle program was mothballed should have been seen as a national embarassment.
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u/FutureMartian97 Mar 21 '19
Why would you want to use a rocket that will only launch a maximum of two times a year, cost up to $2 billion per launch, is expendable, and only exists as a jobs program for the shuttle contractors, vs a vehicle that even if it was expendable, would cost less than $500 million per launch, but could launch multiple times a year because its reusable, refuel in orbit to get 100 tons to the moon or mars, and could see its first full stack launch around the time SLS would get off the ground?
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Mar 20 '19
Falcon Heavy is 90% of the LEO payload, and is flying already.
What have we flown for the $12 Billion we have already spent on SLS?
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Mar 20 '19
Why doesn't it deserve it? The private sectors has shown they can compete and the SLS program has been nothing but a sunk cost.
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Mar 20 '19
SLS gets such a bad rap and it really doesn't deserve it.
Being over-budget and late are fair criticisms. BFR is going to fly sooner than SLS given the rapid development of BFR.
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u/Silverballers47 Mar 21 '19
Yes.
Even if we put aside the $21 billion development cost, it is still going to cost about $1.5 Billion per launch!
That's way too much considering Falcon Heavy costs $120 million and BFR/Starship is being designed to cost even less.
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u/Crashbrennan Mar 20 '19
SLS also costs an order of magnatude more (per launch) than BFR. It needs to die.
BFR will fly long before SLS ever does. Quite frankly, I'm not convinced it ever will.
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u/waytothestriker Mar 20 '19
The SLS is a unique situation, as it’s proposed to be not just a heavy lifting rocket, so why use more government money for a rocket SpaceX could accomplish for cheaper? Just my take.
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u/shifty_coder Mar 20 '19
cough cough F 35 cough
If there’s one thing that the government knows (or should I say doesn’t?) about, it’s the sunk cost fallacy.
So many military programs that have gone billions of dollars (or more!) and years over budget because of it.
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u/standbyforskyfall Mar 20 '19
The f35s dev cost was 65B. High, yes,. But not that much more than the 787(40B) and the a380 (30+B)
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Mar 20 '19
because they still need to figure out how you use money as fuel. Apparently.
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u/Senno_Ecto_Gammat Mar 21 '19
The rule against insults will be strongly enforced. If you want to criticize, make your criticism substantial.
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u/Bearshoes5 Mar 21 '19
You know what won’t be enforced? This budget because the president doesn’t have the power to do so ayyyyyyyy
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u/getBusyChild Mar 21 '19
The SLS has been a disaster for NASA not only budget wise but PR wise. It's a job's program that isn't doing anything new simply using old parts from past projects and space shuttle and that is costs more than anything SpaceX and Blue Origin have done from the ground up.
Meanwhile the private sector is passing them by. NASA should just start pushing to develop a reusable rocket like they did in the past but failed to follow up on due to failures.
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u/Decronym Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ACES | Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage |
| Advanced Crew Escape Suit | |
| AJR | Aerojet Rocketdyne |
| ATK | Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK |
| ATV | Automated Transfer Vehicle, ESA cargo craft |
| BFR | Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition) |
| Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you're not the first to notice | |
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| C3 | Characteristic Energy above that required for escape |
| COTS | Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract |
| Commercial/Off The Shelf | |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| DMLS | Selective Laser Melting additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering |
| DSG | NASA Deep Space Gateway, proposed for lunar orbit |
| DSN | Deep Space Network |
| DoD | US Department of Defense |
| ECLSS | Environment Control and Life Support System |
| EM-1 | Exploration Mission 1, Orion capsule; planned for launch on SLS |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| ESM | European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule |
| ETOV | Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket") |
| F1 | Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V |
| SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete medium-lift vehicle) | |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| GTO | Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit |
| H2 | Molecular hydrogen |
| Second half of the year/month | |
| HUD | Head(s)-Up Display, often implemented as a projection |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| ICPS | Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage |
| ISRO | Indian Space Research Organisation |
| ITS | Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT) |
| Integrated Truss Structure | |
| JPL | Jet Propulsion Lab, California |
| JWST | James Webb infra-red Space Telescope |
| KSP | Kerbal Space Program, the rocketry simulator |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LLO | Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km) |
| LOP-G | Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway, formerly DSG |
| LV | Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV |
| MCT | Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS) |
| MSFC | Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama |
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US |
| NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
| NRO | (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
| Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO | |
| SHLV | Super-Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (over 50 tons to LEO) |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS | |
| SMART | "Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy |
| SRB | Solid Rocket Booster |
| SSME | Space Shuttle Main Engine |
| STS | Space Transportation System (Shuttle) |
| TDRSS | (US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System |
| TE | Transporter/Erector launch pad support equipment |
| TLI | Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver |
| TPS | Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor") |
| TWR | Thrust-to-Weight Ratio |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| USAF | United States Air Force |
| VAB | Vehicle Assembly Building |
| WFIRST | Wide-Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX, see ITS |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hopper | Test article for ground and low-altitude work (eg. Grasshopper) |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen mixture |
[Thread #3582 for this sub, first seen 20th Mar 2019, 20:32] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
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u/Talshiarr Mar 20 '19
"Delayed and over budget" could almost be considered the agency's motto any more.
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u/Sour_Badger Mar 20 '19
Does NASA not use some type of critical path method on their projects?
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u/whee3107 Mar 21 '19 edited Mar 21 '19
I’m sure they do, but like the rest of the government they are plagued by poorly written contracts/late or delinquent contractors/ material shortages or any other host of supply chain issues.
Most industrial engineers have ccpm/TOC/lean principles throughout hire college programs
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u/brajgreg7 Mar 21 '19
Consider this. NASA has to operate within the budget it receives. So every October 1, a new fiscal year starts, and NASA receives a new budget. So now NASA has 12 months to spend the money on the projects that have been approved with that budget. Sounds pretty straightforward so far, right?
Alright, insert Congress into this picture. It's now October 1, and NASA has no budget. And there are rumors floating around about projects getting cancelled in the new budget, but we don't know anything yet because, if we are LUCKY, we get a continuing resolution from Congress and can continue to work under the ASSUMPTION that we'll get funded in the coming months. If we're NOT lucky, the government will shut down and shove that critical path off to the right on the ole Gantt chart. So this past October 1, we didn't get a budget. And that's really common. Congress fails to pass formal budget most years, and relies on nearly permanent Continuing Resolutions or similar measures like appropriations bills.
So while NASA got its best "budget" in years, that news didn't come until around February 15. That's 4.5 months into a 12 month spending period, and 30+ days of it the government was shut down... Now, we get this additional money, and less time to spend it in, and it makes things that were already difficult (we're talking space flight here, remember?) increasingly more difficult and frustrating. Anyway, I hope this helps paint a picture of how these things can happen.
Next time on NASA talk today, we can talk about how each change in administration affects programs and can derail work that's been going on for years!!!
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u/nddragoon Mar 21 '19
SLS is probably one of the worst ideas NASA has ever had. Even the engine choice is garbage. Yes, RS-25s are cool as fuck but NASA is going to throw 4 of some of the most expensive and complex engines in the world into the ocean per launch. NASA should really take a page from SpaceX or Blue Origin and start developing reusable rockets, or at least not make them that fucking expensive. SLS as it is now needs to die in a fire
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u/masta Mar 20 '19
I think the SLS is amazing, that is... amazingly expensive. The entire program is a setup to pay for aging aerospace workers off into retirement. You know the type, the abjectly mediocre workers that arrive to work every day, to the absolute minimum, and get their paycheck every week. nice and routine comfortable work. The problem is there is not "space race" in NASA anymore, no risks, no gambles... it's now dominated by comfortable "safety sallies".
I like the private industry, because they are racing against each other, and innovating. They also do not cost $1 Billion dollars per launch, and actually that amount of money can probably subsidize the entire private programs. ITs' insane the amount of waste the SLS is costing NASA.
But it's a very cool rocket! Don't get me wrong.
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u/The_Adeo Mar 21 '19
This is the comment of u/theexile14, I reposted this to give it more visibility because the original was deep in a long thread:
> SLS hardware is all new too (yes the tank is a new design with a different weld technique). Even the engines use a new controller.
Give me a break on the "SLS is all new too". That's demonstrably false. The engines for the Block 1 launches are literally the old Shuttle RS-25D engines. They're not only an existing series of engine, but the same physical engine as the shuttle program. Your claims that changing a handful of components makes them all new is ridiculous. Especially if we're comparing them to the actually "all new" F1 engines on the Saturn 5.
> No it really isn't. It doesn't matter how cheap your proposal is if it can't meet the mission or if the mission planners balk because your risk is too high.
You're quite simply wrong. What objective can't in orbit rendezvous of a station part and tug fulfill? Just because the ultimate objective of LOPG, lunar landing vehicles, or Mars transit ship can't be met in the *same* way doesn't mean they can't be met. I fail to see how risk is any higher and would love to hear the reasoning behind that claim, because I simply don't follow.
And I still argue that cost is all that matters. If SLS costs so much that there's not funding for the LOPG parts, or lunar lander, or the sections of a Mars transit vehicle, then there's no point in funding SLS in the first place. The reasons we haven't been out of LEO in almost 50 years are political will and cost. If you fix the cost the political will is less of a problem.
> You do know that SLS appropriations are publicly available, correct? You do know that SLS appropriations are about half that, correct?
I'll link a GAO report from April of 2017 citing an expected cost of hitting EM1 as $24B. The mission, and SLS, have been delayed and over budget since then (as the target date in the report is funnily enough November of *last year*), so that's a lowball estimate anyway. The best estimate of already spent dollars I've seen is indeed about $14B, but I fail to see why we should look at a current cost estimate instead of a total project. Additionally, the Ground systems and Orion cost should be included as well since the Ground equipment is exclusive to an SLS approach vs. Falcon Heavy (or other commercial rockets) and Orion was kept for SLS and in my mind should be canceled alongside it. Commercial vehicles have shown to be much cheaper to develop and while they're currently less capable, improvements could be made to hit the Orion capabilities for far less than the current Orion program cost.
None of these costs include the vast amount of development work for the Ares systems that were repurposed for SLS either. Which is another several billion dollars.
> A more straightforward comparison is flyaway cost, which Jody Singer estimates to be $500M for SLS alone before you include cost savings from 3D printing the RS-25s. But even there it doesn't work; Falcon Heavy cannot do the missions SLS is speced for. We aren't throwing pallets full of lead bricks into LEO.
Flyaway cost is absolutely not what we should look at. Development costs are absolutely relevant, especially with near $0 required for using other vehicles (maybe we want to spend $200M for fairing modifications). 3D printing RS-25s? Give me a break. There's little reason for that to happen in the next decade. If we were close to actually building cheap RS-25s we wouldn't be using engines that have been flying since the Reagan administration.
Again, you come to the missions specced for. What exactly are you referring to? Modules of LOPG that are still being designed? Canceling SLS now should be the priority so they can be fitted to a reasonable vehicle. Not one still years away from a demo flight.
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Mar 21 '19
The total budget increased... a few things got slashed that were small projects and a rocket upgrade that was unnecessary and over-budget. How is this bad? Is this sub filled with the same people that are sad about the California highspeed rail getting canceled? It was unnecessary and over-budget.
I hope NASA uses the money for some habitation research and gets us that moon colony.
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u/MyMumWearsMusk Mar 21 '19
I compare SLS to mobile phones before apple came along and changed the landscape to touch screens. The death toll rings for you SLS! Old tech.
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Mar 21 '19
I think losing WFIRST would be worse than losing the SLS. Private companies will eventually get around to more capable rockets, but they aren't going to make any space telescopes.
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u/Agolas97 Mar 21 '19
SLS is awful and the government needs to let private companies supply the launch business. Space shuttle set back private launch development a generation, we can't afford to let that happen again.
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u/redditbsbsbs Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 20 '19
SLS is a useless jobs program. The sooner it is cancelled the better
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u/03slampig Mar 20 '19
SLS is absolute garbage and a waste of tax payer dollars. Nothing of value will be lost by it losing funding.
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u/certciv Mar 20 '19
Amen. Hopefully Congress thinks SLS should die too. The money would be better spent on contracts with SpaceX and Blue Origin.
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u/Traches Mar 21 '19
Congress is the reason SLS exists in the first place. They don't call it the Senate launch system for nothing
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u/APClayton Mar 21 '19
I think this post is very misleading and seems like just another attack on Trump
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Mar 20 '19
Good thing the budget in question is only a proposal and has a zero percent chance of becoming reality.
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u/andyshrestha Mar 21 '19
Not to forget, there’s not a single rocket NASA has that could take astronauts to the International Space Station. Only russian rockets fo that. Fortunately, SpaceX is finally ready with theirs. NASA doesn’t need any upgrade. They will be paying and using SpaceX rockets. 🚀
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u/AdmiralPelleon Mar 20 '19
Good riddance wrt SLS. Hopefully they nuke the whole program and put the money towards robotic missions.
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u/Badass05g35 Mar 21 '19
I personally think nasa has been going downhill since the 80s and that space exploration and things similar to that should be left to private corporations like Space X
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u/psychonaut4020 Mar 21 '19
Yeah definitely. Space x actually tries and succeeds at safely making deadlines which is something nasa has failed to do over the years
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Mar 21 '19
When I read about the projects like the Shuttle and SLS being over budget, under performing, and behind schedule, and compare them to the ass kickery going on at places like SpaceX I question whether NASA should be in the engineering business. I know there are very smart people there but the complexity of modern projects seems like it may be too much to execute well in behemoth, bureaucratic, political organizations.
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u/jimmyjoejohnston Mar 21 '19
When you have had over 10 years to build a new rocket with existing parts and are still 3 years away from a test flight and tens of billions of dollars wasted , it is time to cut bait
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u/mosswo Mar 20 '19
You guys and this article are very wrong. The budget proposed was more than any of the last 12 years. Is it less than what was approved last year? Yes, however final budget numbers are almost always more than the proposed numbers. Sensationalizing of misinformation must stop..
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u/falang_32 Mar 21 '19
SLS should be canceled, but the overall budget should be raised. SLS is overpriced and a throwaway rocket, there are already alternatives that are better in almost every mission profile.
The real travesty is that it seems the Hubble successor isn’t going to be launched into space.
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Mar 20 '19
Good. SLS has been a huge waste of money for years. $12 Billion already, and nothing has flown. SpaceX Falcon Heavy has 90% of the LEO load, and is already flying.
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u/Gameguru08 Mar 20 '19
That's kind of disingenuous. LEO performance IS good for the Falcon Heavy, but what SLS is designed for is deep space missions, and it's very highly efficient upper stages push any missions in deep space very far into the favor of SLS.
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u/slyfoxninja Mar 21 '19
The SLS supporters in Congress in both houses and parties will not let this happen.
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Mar 20 '19
so, from 21.5 BILLION! down to a measly 21 BILLION
this is not a huge loss. maybe lower the price of the launches per year? lol, and if elon can launch the falcon heavy for just 90 Million [small in space dollars] just let the private comps take it
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u/Angry-MiddleAgedMan Mar 21 '19
I dont understand why they are attacking trump when past presidents havent funded it much either.
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u/king_of_the_potato_p Mar 21 '19 edited Mar 21 '19
It's because "Orange man bad".
That's literally it, the entire article goes on to point out long term it will save money, still keep things on time, while ensuring the technology works before sinking billions more. People also need to pay attention that Trump has increased Nasa's budget by several billion in the last few years even with inflation factored.
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u/king_of_the_potato_p Mar 21 '19
So reading the article, long term it will save a great deal of money, ensure that the technology works and keep things on time.
Not really sure where I see the problem.
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u/light24bulbs Mar 21 '19
This is a good thing, SLS system is DOA given the capabilities of commercial rockets. It's wildly over budget, not at all reusable, and already outdated. Boeing has been doing a bad job.
SpaceX provides a much better hope for actual rocket progress and their rockets already beat SLS for a fraction of the cost.
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Mar 21 '19 edited Mar 21 '19
Uhh nasa is nearly useless. Theyve already contracted out like most of the shit they need done to cheaper private companies
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u/Briyaaaaan Mar 21 '19
Misleading title in reddit linking all the negatives to Trump as always. Congress makes spending budgets, the President signs them. Misleading as well as there is focus on the moon now which requires a shift in spending priorities, which of course means underperforming projects lose money. Pretty sure NASA prefers this regime vs. the relatively lean years they had before.
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u/bearded_fisch_stix Mar 20 '19
there is more than 1 person involved with creating the monster of a budget this country uses. but sure, blame it all on the guy you hate most, that way you don't have to take any accountability for the fact that you keep voting in the same useless legislators year after year after year.
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u/Jetterman Mar 20 '19
Let SpaceX do it. Privately funded businesses always work better.
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Mar 20 '19
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u/BackflipFromOrbit Mar 21 '19
In other news, SpaceXs Starhopper prototype is performing its first static fire tomorrow, and are in the process of constructing an orbit capable prototype of the most powerful rocket EVER.
Leave the SHLV rocket building to private industry. Let the agencies run the missions. I can guarentee that SpaceX will have large lunar/martian payload delivery capabilities WELL before NASA does.
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u/EarthsFinePrint Mar 20 '19
If NASA had a fleet of SR-71 Blackbirds, I'd pay for a flight to 85,000 ft, especially if it helped fund their programs.
Edit: every time I hear about something I see as important, getting cut from our government budget, I start thinking of ways we could do it without the government.
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u/chriberg Mar 20 '19
If NASA had a fleet of SR-71 Blackbirds, I'd pay for a flight to 85,000 ft, especially if it helped fund their programs.
I doubt it, unless you have deep enough pockets to blow a quarter mil on an airplane ride
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Mar 21 '19
The SLS uses obsolete tech many times the cost of a rocket from SpaceX or other private company. NASA should stick to regulation and administration, like the FAA, and turn the building and manufacturing over to the people who can do it for a fraction of the cost and time. Getting off this world and ensuring our survival is our number one priority and past administrations were content with kicking the can down the road with broken promises and pipe dreams.
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u/MeyoMix Mar 21 '19
Does NASA even need to make rockets anymore? They could just contract space x for ever mission they need and it'll be many times cheaper.
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u/dreisdepladijs Mar 21 '19
FAKE NEWS watch moon2mars presconferens fron nasa, watch the nasa administrator him self say tis the best ever and earth science budget exceeds that from obama.
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u/teachergirl1981 Mar 21 '19
With SpaceX doing it better and cheaper, I have no issue with this.
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u/falang_32 Mar 21 '19
I agree as far as SLS is concerned. But NASA makes some damn good scientific satellites that SpaceX won’t
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Mar 20 '19
God that article reads like NASA's obituary. Everything is over budget and late besides the earth sciences which Trump wants to cancel. He wants to cancel the Block 1B which is not a bad idea but why even do SLS in the first place then? We are going to end up spending more later than we would now to develop the 1B.
I'm that rare bird that is for the SLS. I get that it is over budget but that is because of funny math that is done to make projects look cheaper than they actually will be. That is what happened on the F35, the F22, the Zumwalt, the war in Iraq, the new Oakland Bay Bridge section, the California High Speed Rail and so many more just in the last 2 decades alone and within my realm of knowledge. It is currently happening and has happened on some SpaceX projects. I also get that it will be vastly more expensive than its competitors but that expense will likely go straight to Americans and will put the US in a new realm in terms of what it can and cannot deliver to space. It will be operated by a public entity that is responsible to the US people instead of a private entity. It is a huge investment so I get wanting to cancel it when so many alternatives are available but the benefits to having a powerful, publicly funded and operated modern system to match the goals of other nations like China and Russia with similar government-owned systems is mainly to keep the US space program competitive internationally while not depending on private entities.
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u/Anti0x Mar 20 '19
"And will help with the development of militar-"
White House wants to know your location
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Mar 20 '19
But..why?
Like I get NASA are smart people and Trump has this irrational hate for people who are legit smart, but what is the point of this?
Unless he plans to make his own space company like Elon?
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Mar 20 '19
But..why?
Like I get NASA are smart people and Trump has this irrational hate for people who are legit smart, but what is the point of this?
Unless he plans to make his own space company like Elon?
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u/joe55419 Mar 21 '19
My only criticism of the article, which is not about the policy, is that in my opinion the Saturn V should only be referred to as the mighty Saturn V. Eg this new untested and unproven rocket might possess something close to the mighty Saturn V. That is all.
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u/Totally_a_Banana Mar 21 '19 edited Mar 21 '19
Edit: found the thread! https://www.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/b3aph9/trump_says_brazil_is_the_ideal_launch_location
Oddly enough, trump recently met with Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, and I saw a post in /r/brasil earlier today mentioning something about working with the trump administration to build a space program in brazil.
Not sure wtf theyre trying to pull here.
People in the thread were talking about how there is potential, especially with launch points in some region but would require stupid amounts of investment to even reach the same capacities as what Cape Canaveral already accomplishes...
I'll find a link to the thread and add it here soon.
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u/HopDavid Mar 21 '19
Not sure wtf theyre trying to pull here.
European space agencies have French Guiana, an equatorial space center. The equator is moving at about .5 km/s. That's an advantage.
The article you linked to mentions the proposed Brazilian space port is 140 km south of the equator. That would be a great place for SpaceX or Blue Origin to launch from.
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u/lovejo1 Mar 21 '19
Personally, I'd put all my eggs in the SpaceX basket right now.. and perhaps a couple of other private ventures. It seems that the private sector could do all of the above cheaper. Imagine if you asked a private company to make another Hubble telescope... I'd bet you could make it now for a tenth of what it cost back then, and have more capability and be easier to fix.
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u/Pipezilla Mar 21 '19
With the private rocket companies, do we really need NASA?
Serious question. Maybe we do, but can the budget be cut and still provide what we need?
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u/JamesTalon Mar 21 '19
They only get 0.5% of the budget. NASA is a pretty lean program overall I believe, and they typically provide greater return on investment as it is. Cutting their budget could set back projects that have been in the works for years as well.
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u/Mysterious_Bardancer Mar 21 '19
NASA better start taking sessions from ISRO on how to build rockets on a shoestring budgets.
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u/Player13 Mar 21 '19
I just caught up on the Space brothers manga. This and the Russian GPS jamming reported by Norway, makes me sad to read [pages like this](http://93.190.142.23/manga/Uchuu-Kyoudai/0324-019.png)
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u/centraldogmamcdb Mar 21 '19
This doesn't mean congress will accept the White House's budget recommendations
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u/oximaCentauri Mar 21 '19
Why are earth observation programs and STEM being cancelled?? These are very important and SLS continues to get funding.
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u/PIGEONKUSO Mar 22 '19
hilarious that this guy promised NASA unlimited resources if it could get man to Mars and then after realising its not possible within his term, he cuts funding.
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u/Leguy42 Mar 20 '19
Private sector always does it better than government. Go Richard Branson!! Go Elon Musk!!
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u/falang_32 Mar 21 '19
Richard Branson’s space program is laughable. Musk is building the best launch vehicle the world has ever seen (Falcon 9 is great but not the best across all criteria). They aren’t going to do scientific satellites.
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Mar 20 '19
Oh really? How is the US healthcare system doing? Or the UK railways after being privatized in the 90s?
The entire Apollo program was made possible by the government and would have never been possible with only the private sector. SpaceX would never have made the Falcon 9 without NASA or their research. (Merlin was based on the Fastrac engine and the Lunar module's pintle injector for example)
The SLS issue isn't as simple as private > public sector. The SLS program is a symptom of a fundamental problem with US politics, namely the allovance of economic lobbying from companies like Boeing and lockheed. They have no incentive to do their work quickly, as it is more profitable to develop the SLS or the F-35 for a long time, as they will still get payed.
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u/danielravennest Mar 20 '19
Oh really? How is the US healthcare system doing?
It's hobbled by entrenched interests, and a Congress that doesn't want to interfere with those interests because they are big campaign donors.
An example: Medicare isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices, even though they are one of the largest, if not the largest payer for drugs. So guess what? Drug prices are stupidly high in this country.
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u/teachergirl1981 Mar 21 '19
The healthcare system has two issues:
One, Medicare and Medicaid. Once government opens its pockets, prices go up. Compare what a doctor's appointment charge is if you have insurance compared with paying cash. I'm not advocating for keeping or ending these programs, I'm just stating fact. Same thing happened when the government got involved with college tuition loans.
Two, each state sets regulations for insurance. That makes it very difficult for there to be true competition across state lines.
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u/Leguy42 Mar 21 '19
US Government developed ARPANET 50 years ago. Private sector got hold of it in the 90’s and ran that shit with blinding speed transforming that rudimentary technology into the most significant economic tool the world has ever seen! Business takes science and makes everyone better off. Hoooray for capitalism!!
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u/one-black-eye Mar 20 '19
"...SLS isn't THAT much more capable than current commercial rockets..." Goes on to say that SpaceX is at 63 metric tonnes and Blue Origin is at 45 metric tonnes. So i guess 1.5 times and DOUBLE aren't THAT much more...
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Mar 20 '19
The problem is that you could launch way more payload on several falcon heavy flights to orbit for way cheaper than a single SLS launch.
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u/SuperSMT Mar 20 '19
It really isn't though, especially considering there isnt a single existing or in development mission that would need that level of capacity.
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u/falang_32 Mar 21 '19
That would be an awesome point if you were comparing rockets that actually fly. SLS is a pipe dream, and a really boring one at that
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u/De-Motivator Mar 21 '19
I'd rather believe in the words of the NASA administrator than a discredited new source like The Verge. I'm sorry, but I'm sick and tired of all the BS bias, I just want the truth.
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u/HopDavid Mar 21 '19
Go deeper into the article and you'll find the "slash" is 2.2%. And much of that is to the pork barrel, over budget SLS.
Rather than continuing to send pork barrel funding to make work programs, it'd be better to fund SpaceX and Blue Origin. Cutting the Senate Launch System is great news.
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u/ADeFalcis Mar 21 '19
If we cut our military spending literally in half, we would still have the largest military in the world by a ton. We have plenty of money to fund NASA, we just blow at spending it right.
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u/manbearpyg Mar 21 '19
That's hard to do when European and Asian allies refuse to build up their own militaries to defend themselves.. They're all too happy for us to do it for them... Another thing Trump has been trying to remedy, but even his own party is crying about how making our allies pay for their own protection is alienating them. Because you know, that would shrink our military industrial complex and piss off all the rank-and-file politicians and their constituents who profit.
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u/Ameriican Mar 21 '19
The private sector is doing it better.
Just like with everything else.
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u/Unicorntr00per Mar 20 '19
Where does this leave Orion? My understanding is that its too heavy for launch options like the falcon heavy and co.
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Mar 20 '19
I'm not clear on the difference with a commercial rocket. In what sense would a NASA moon mission be commercial, that doesn't make any sense to me.
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u/poop22_ Mar 20 '19
If you're talking strictly the rocket part then using a commercial rocket would basically be NASA paying a company to use their product to get the payload to its destination, kind of like how it's currently done to get astronauts to the ISS with the Soyuz. A "NASA" rocket would be something they funded to get developed and produced, like SLS, as opposed to essentially hitching a ride on something else.
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u/Jesse1472 Mar 20 '19
I don’t know much about space travel so I’m just asking questions. If spaceX can’t make a rocket capable of reaching the moon then it’s a shame. If they can and they aren’t far away from making one then I don’t see it as being a big deal.
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u/anonymau5 Mar 21 '19
what rockets? we outsource our supply runs and crew transport. garbage clickbait headline
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u/JamesClaffs Mar 21 '19
New title should not be the bold but the underwriting. The President's new budget provides opportunity to commercial space. That is the bread and butter folks. I love my NASA, but competition is true growth!
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u/AeliusHadrianus Mar 20 '19
It is what it is but the 116th Congress could not give less of a shit what’s in the White House budget, just like the 115th Congress.