from Hacker News

NASA's SLS rocket's Mobile Launcher-2 increase from $383M to $2.7B

by guardiangod on 8/27/24, 6:24 PM with 71 comments

• by perihelions on 8/27/24, 6:58 PM

  How is it that government contractors can't build this thing on even a 9-year engineering schedule (July 2019–September 2028) when SpaceX is iterating almost exactly the same thing, on a timescale of months? They've already launched 4 SLS-sized vehicles, and have very visibly been redesigning the ground-support equipment each time around. The next launch for instance (next month!) debuts mechanical arms attached to the launch tower, which will attempt to capture the flying booster on its return.

  What exactly is it Bechtel and friends struggling with? The OIG document doesn't answer this in a way I can understand.

• by imglorp on 8/27/24, 7:06 PM

  OAG report on Launcher 2: https://www.oversight.gov/report/NASA/NASA%E2%80%99s-Managem...

  The contractor is Bechtel.

  Note, the Senate Launch System is already a huge success: money was transferred from the taxpayer to the contractors as a "jobs program". It doesn't matter if anything flies.

• by nerdjon on 8/27/24, 7:07 PM

  And it will be 3 years late!

  I honestly would love to know how much money is 'wasted' by NASA because of these companies that seem to, over promise and then need a lot more money.

  And I don't say wasted because I think that the money spent at NASA is not worthwhile. But how much else could be done if that money could be spent elsewhere or at the very least be properly estimated in the beginning so it could have been planned for. That money is (I assume) going to come at the cost of something else.

  I really don't love the idea of SpaceX not having a serious competition. But... they kinda don't right now anyways it seems. I really hope we have another company step up to be anywhere near what they are doing.

• by LarsDu88 on 8/27/24, 6:57 PM

  Say what we will about Elon, but him gambling his PayPal fortune was the best thing that happened to the US space program (and the global space race as whole!)

• by mahopa on 8/27/24, 7:15 PM

  von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management- To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.

• by akira2501 on 8/27/24, 7:03 PM

  For perspective 2.7B is 0.04% of the entire US budget for 2024. This is a rocket that goes to the moon. If your reaction is "lord help us" then perhaps space exploration just isn't in your blood.