JF Mezei wrote on Sat, 14 Apr 2018
16:23:52 -0400:

On 2018-04-14 15:34, Fred J. McCall wrote:

No. SLS was an expensive boondoggle when judged by the old standards.

Yes. But still a "placeholder" project to keep NASA rocket business
alive.


No. It's far too expensive for that. It eats the seed corn of any
future endeavour, so isn't holding a place for anything.


Out of curiosity, forgetting red tape and politics.

If you build a new rocket using existing technologies (SRBs, the ET and
SSMEs), is there a reason why it should take so long and cost so much?


Yes, there is, because those individual parts are expensive and would
be being used in ways for which they were not originally intended.
That means you have to do some amount of reengineering (in some cases
to the extent of essentially redesigning things).


I can understand the SRBs causing problems with vibration as you grow
them. But apart from that, shouldn't building SLS have been a no
brainer? What sort of challenges were there that caused the project to
fail so miserably?


Uh, I don't think the ET is used at all on SLS. Calling something the
same name doesn't make it the same thing.


They would have known right away that the ET would need structural
changes since it would no longer support a side load (the shuttle) but
instead support a top load AND engines at the bottom. So no surprises
there, right?


Not the same thing.


In terms of the SSME upgrades. Wouldn't the new electronics simply
re-use the same logic as the old controllers? (I realise that there
still needs to be tested, but if you already know the outcome, it
becomes easier to ensure the new controlers reproduce the same outcome
as the old ones.

(the fact that Rocketdyne would be studying new more efficient ways to
produce new SSMEs should not slow down the work to use already-built SSMEs)


NASA will stay in the 'rocket business' because that's where the
civilian jobs come from (manufacturing ****).


Wasn't much of Michoud converted into a movie studio? In the end, is
there logic behind maintaining a NASA presence there if there is no need
for that production facility?


Irrelevant. The jobs everyone cares about are at contractors like
Boeing and Lockheed.


If NASA were s private "Facilities" owner (aka: no red tape), would
outfits such as SpaceX see an campetitive edge in renting space at
Michoud to do work?


I wouldn't think so. What's the advantage in assembling things in New
Orleans when all your launches are somewhere else?


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw