Boeing is helping develop NASA's next-generation megarocket, but inspectors have found shortcomings in that work. Meanwhile, the company's Starliner spaceship waits in space.
The report included several recommendations, including levying “financial penalties for Boeing’s noncompliance with quality control standards.” The inspector general said, however, that NASA decided not to introduce any kind of financial discipline.
Goddamnit.
The new report said the SLS Block 1B version is likely to cost $5.7 billion by the time it launches.
The assessment is the latest setback for NASA’s return-to-the-moon program, which has been beset by holdups and budget overruns. NASA has spent more than $42 billion over more than a decade on its Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft.
Last year, NASA’s inspector general estimated that each Artemis launch would cost $4.2 billion.
Hot take: The government should not give Boeing any more money with which to do stock buybacks, instead of hiring qualified people, and performing the best QA possible.
In the entire history of NASA, they’ve never manufactured any boosters for themselves. Redstone was from the army. Titan, also military. Saturn I and V were designed by NASA but contracted to big aircraft manufacturers as contractors. Shuttle was Boeing / Rockwell for the orbiter, ATK for the boosters. SLS is basically all the Shuttle contractors, again. (That was the point.)
I hear what you’re saying. But NASA would need to spin up an entire company from scratch to build their own rockets. That’s not what their mandate is, and it’s not what they’re good at.
The difference is that NASA was really on top of them. There are entire manuals and documentaries not just on how they did Apollo, but also on how they organised it, and how they ran every process.
And they chucked all of that away for some of the most insane hodgepodge improvised bullshit imaginable. The entire SLS/HLS split is ridiculous, and serves no propose other than giving companies more money for little gain.
A lot of the Apollo work also got done in basically one administration (Johnson largely continued JFK’s policies). As soon as Nixon was in charge, NASA got gutted, and then they only had the resources for shuttle. Later Apollo missions got cancelled because Nixon thought the money was better spent killing more Vietnamese people.
Switching administrations means vastly changing policies, if for no other reason than the new boss hates the old boss. SLS “succeeded” (got hardware made and launched, at least) where Constellation failed partly because they buttered everyone’s bread in the right way.
HLS is dumb. SLS is dumb. But similarly to Commercial Cargo and Crew, it survived administration changes partly because NASA wasn’t directly at the helm, so the new guys didn’t just hit the big red stop button.
Private businesses are not the problem, corporations are.
Venture Capitalism is the problem. When a private business beholdens itself to a stock-price, that stock price becomes the ONLY thing that matters. You keep that stock rising no…matter…what.
Have to use cheap labour? Fuck you…stock price.
Quality Control cuts corners? Fuck you…stock price.
Corruption and perverse incentives are problems that apply to government bureaucracies as well as to companies. Not to say that it can’t be done that way successfully, but the failures of the Soviet space program for instance seem to be a clear indication that it isn’t a silver bullet in this case. Whatever the underlying economic system there are big organizational challenges to overcome.
Imagine the good that could be done on Earth with that money. Why build a base on the moon? There must be someone, somewhere, with qualifications saying it’s a good idea. But I can’t imagine why this spend is justified.
That good is mostly being done on earth. We aren’t shipping money to space, we are investing in research, manufacturing, and businesses that can exist because we are pushing the bounds forward of what is possible. You can thank NASA for a lot of the technology that you use today.
Goddamnit.
Hot take: The government should not give Boeing any more money with which to do stock buybacks, instead of hiring qualified people, and performing the best QA possible.
NASA should start manufacturing things themselves.
state owned production?? what’s next: doing things not for shareholder profit?
You gotta transfer all wealth to the most kleptocratic incompetent capitalists otherwise literal communism.
In the entire history of NASA, they’ve never manufactured any boosters for themselves. Redstone was from the army. Titan, also military. Saturn I and V were designed by NASA but contracted to big aircraft manufacturers as contractors. Shuttle was Boeing / Rockwell for the orbiter, ATK for the boosters. SLS is basically all the Shuttle contractors, again. (That was the point.)
I hear what you’re saying. But NASA would need to spin up an entire company from scratch to build their own rockets. That’s not what their mandate is, and it’s not what they’re good at.
The difference is that NASA was really on top of them. There are entire manuals and documentaries not just on how they did Apollo, but also on how they organised it, and how they ran every process.
And they chucked all of that away for some of the most insane hodgepodge improvised bullshit imaginable. The entire SLS/HLS split is ridiculous, and serves no propose other than giving companies more money for little gain.
A lot of the Apollo work also got done in basically one administration (Johnson largely continued JFK’s policies). As soon as Nixon was in charge, NASA got gutted, and then they only had the resources for shuttle. Later Apollo missions got cancelled because Nixon thought the money was better spent killing more Vietnamese people.
Switching administrations means vastly changing policies, if for no other reason than the new boss hates the old boss. SLS “succeeded” (got hardware made and launched, at least) where Constellation failed partly because they buttered everyone’s bread in the right way.
HLS is dumb. SLS is dumb. But similarly to Commercial Cargo and Crew, it survived administration changes partly because NASA wasn’t directly at the helm, so the new guys didn’t just hit the big red stop button.
Is the US an oligarchy now? It certainly feels like it is.
Just mooting it would send a shot across the bow. And it would get the ball rolling if the private industry didn’t reform it.
Don’t give them any money at all. Private businesses literally should not exist.
Private businesses are not the problem, corporations are.
Venture Capitalism is the problem. When a private business beholdens itself to a stock-price, that stock price becomes the ONLY thing that matters. You keep that stock rising no…matter…what.
Have to use cheap labour? Fuck you…stock price.
Quality Control cuts corners? Fuck you…stock price.
Employees can’t afford groceries? Fuck you…stock price.
The best way to solve this though is through control of the means of production. Can’t have this if the business is owned by the state.
Or worker co-ops. If workers own their own companies then that would solve 90% of the problems of late stage capitalism
That too, yeah
Corruption and perverse incentives are problems that apply to government bureaucracies as well as to companies. Not to say that it can’t be done that way successfully, but the failures of the Soviet space program for instance seem to be a clear indication that it isn’t a silver bullet in this case. Whatever the underlying economic system there are big organizational challenges to overcome.
Imagine the good that could be done on Earth with that money. Why build a base on the moon? There must be someone, somewhere, with qualifications saying it’s a good idea. But I can’t imagine why this spend is justified.
Exploration and pushing our limits as a species are very good for our growth as humans and as a society.
NASA budget isn’t really the first thing we should be putting on the chopping block if your argument is “better things could be done with that money.”
There’s a whole bunch of other shit ahead of science and space exploration that you should be worrying about.
That good is mostly being done on earth. We aren’t shipping money to space, we are investing in research, manufacturing, and businesses that can exist because we are pushing the bounds forward of what is possible. You can thank NASA for a lot of the technology that you use today.
Nah
All that money is still on earth providing jobs for thousands of people.