NASA's $17 Billion Dollar SLS Moon Rocket May Be A Huge Bust

originally posted by: rickymouse
The question to ask is.....do we really need to spend all that money to put people on the Moon? Does any country actually need to spend taxpayer or consumer money to put men on the moon? We were supposedly there, but I doubt if all the photos taken were from the moon though. A little Hollywood style extra pictures could have been created here to justify all the expense.

A lot of money is spent on multiple science projects and research and often they do not compare and analyze the research properly, instead they keep giving the scientific community more money to do even more research when the answers are in research that has already been done two or three times over.

In one respect it always has been a matter of showing off - it is possible to do a lot with remotely controlled probes. However, what the probes lack is peripheral vision and intellectual curiosity - the ability to deviate from a plan because they saw something and make decisions on the spot, rather than have a small committee debate what something might possibly be and have to vote on whether it's worth deviating from the mission directives.

originally posted by: Shockerking
WTF is with going to the moon nowadays? Why not do it micro? With todays sensors using a Arduino or a Raspberry pi or other micro controller boards or mini computers; why can't just send a smaller Gemini, Saturn or Apollo rocket and do this again. Without Astronerds and use micro robots also.
Just send a smaller rocket with a small payload. Send it up with a droned platform then stabilize and launch from a platform to get a easier escape velocity.

Pretty simple actually considering all the knowledge we have already.

On a way smaller scale this could be relatively cheaper and more efficient? I would think so.

To be fair that is pretty much what has been done for the last few decades, and with greater intensity over the past few years. The problem with the space programme is that it is a political football, and lots of presidents have tried to use it to make themselves look good rather than achieve anything, usually changing direction and wiping the board clean each time so that NASA has no idea what its priorities are supposed to be from one administration to another. Even Kennedy's success was not aimed at acquiring knowledge and furthering science - that was tagged on to the political aims of showing the Russians how much better the USA could do things.

Meanwhile we an Israeli probe about to land, a Chinese rover scooting about on the far side, Indian missions in the works and a widely predicted Chinese footprint in the near future.

a reply to: shawmanfromny

Another way to see this is that we are all being deceived by these events and that they are; or are part of; a cover story for participating in and facilitating the secret space program that Kerry Cassidy from Project Camelot talks about.

a reply to: Azureblue

You think that Kerry Cassidy/Project Camelot is credible?

Soldiers who are alleged to be going to Iraq or Afghanistan are actually being sent off planet to places like Mars to fight battles alongside other alien races. Those men and women will have their minds wiped when they come back. This is why we're having a lot of suicides with ex-soldiers. In some cases their minds have been wiped so many times they become unbalanced as a result. When they return, they don’t know where they’ve been. They think they’ve been to the Middle East, but they’ve actually been elsewhere. —Cassidy, as interviewed in Sneaky magazine, 2014[1]

OK.........
I know soldiers who have been on tours of Afghanistan. They haven't been to Mars.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: osoespacialpoco
a reply to: chr0naut

Why keep the SLS when the private sector can do the same thing but better and cheaper?

Because the next stage of space utilization will also require heavy lifting, as well as the MicroSats.

We aren't going to build infrastructure out there with tiny payloads. And, after we've built the infrastructure, we need to move personnel in numbers.

You can't do that with a launch system optimized for CubeSats.

good thing then space X are developing there own heavy launch system that will be cheaper.

a reply to: shawmanfromny

However, it's three years behind schedule and nearly $7 billion dollars over budget, with some doubting it will be ready for a 2020 test flight.

But I bet everyone got ample insurance, sensitivity training, comp time, government paid psychologists for the stress, government day care, equal opportunity training, sexual harassment prevention training, weeks and weeks of maturity leave, vacation, tenure, government union job protection .........

The riggers of public service...,,,

Somebody surprised by runaway graft in a government project? I'm sure people have been complaining about this kind of thing since Gobekli Tepe. "I paid a decent number of good deer hides for a good temple, and I get this behind-schedule, bloated monstrosity instead? And you want to bury it and start again? Argh!"

Maybe all this money is getting siphoned off for the real projects. I've always wondered if they've had vehicles far more advanced than rockets for decades and that building rockets is just a side show distraction but dangerous because it costs lives. So let's encourage the public to do it. Meanwhile, the money is used for advanced technology spacecrafts and operations that they don't want us or other countries to know.

originally posted by: TamtammyMacx
Maybe all this money is getting siphoned off for the real projects. I've always wondered if they've had vehicles far more advanced than rockets for decades and that building rockets is just a side show distraction but dangerous because it costs lives. So let's encourage the public to do it. Meanwhile, the money is used for advanced technology spacecrafts and operations that they don't want us or other countries to know.

Nobody knows where the billions of dollars go. It's kind of scary. That's the only reason any sane person would want to be President. To siphon off billions for their cohorts (excuse me, I mean "campaign contributors"). There is supposedly some oversight, but I can't see where it's even possible to track all that money and where it's "spent."