Doug Loverro resigns as Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations

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On 2020-05-26 12:18, Jeff Findley wrote:

Yes, reportedly NASA's former chief of human spaceflight, Doug Loverro,
was one such person. We just discussed this less than a week ago:

At this point in time,. seeing SLS as the necessary evil needed to get
to 2024 goal doesn't mean that the guy really admired the SLS
architecture and loved it.

Actually, there is ample evidence to the contrary. The fact is, Doug
Loverro thought that distributed launch was more risky than fewer
launches of SLS. And he's not alone. Despite the crazy number of
launches used to build and maintain ISS, there are still people within
NASA who see every individual launch as a risk, so they want to minimize
that number. It's a false economy that results in an unsustainable,
hideously expensive, program, IMHO, but that's what they think.

On this group, I have not seen any technical love for SLS as a concept
and its flaws have been documented well enough that even *I* can
understand them (so that says a lot :-)

So if your mission is to land in 2024, and of the flawed tools you are
given to work with, you think SLS represents the best odds of working,
does that mean you like SLS and prefer its technilogy/architecture?

Not me personally, but again, lots of people inside NASA think that SLS
will be the greatest launch vehicle since Saturn V. I disagree based on
the facts (lower payload, lower flight rate, and insane cost for a
"modern" launch vehicle).

There are many supporters of "old space" within NASA. The SLS program
gives NASA more control than if they just procured commercial launches.

Does prefering to deal with the older legacy company mean that you
prefer the SLS architecture? Would NASA's engineering people have
designed/selected this, or were they told to work with it and champion
it even if they don't like it?

SLS was mandated by Congress to continue to develop a launch vehicle
with the same Ares contractors when Ares I and Ares V were canceled.
So, it stands to reason that those inside NASA working on and supporting
Ares I and Ares V would also support SLS, because their jobs literally
depended on it.

There is a lot of "not invented here" bias within NASA. They didn't
develop Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, Antares, Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, New
Glenn, or Omega. They developed SLS, so SLS is automatically "better"
in their minds.

Jeff
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In article ,
says...
SLS was mandated by Congress to continue to develop a launch vehicle
with the same Ares contractors when Ares I and Ares V were canceled.

Considering NASA was well aware of the SRB in the Shuttle, why was Ares
I even considered? Did engineers really think that the stick of dynamite
below the stack would solve all the problems of SRBs mounted to the
side of the Shuttle?

Yes. Many did. They looked at the data from the shuttle program and
saw that there was "only" one SRB failure during the entire program.

Curious on the process that goes on behind the scenes that would have
resulted in an SRB-only first stage even being considered and let alone
chosen.

Politically, keeping the shuttle contractors employed was more important
than objective engineering decision making. So, Ares I and Ares V would
be shuttle derived.

Jeff

--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.