The Next President Should End the ‘Senate’ Launch System Rocket: Rather than building an obsolescent, obscenely-over-budget jumbo rocket, NASA should turn to building truly innovative space technologies and plan a realistic lunar landing program.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-next-president-should-end-nasas-space-launch-system-rocket/
3 Comments
Submission Statement
America’s space program is in big trouble, and running on fumes & bulls**t.
This article does a great job of laying out all the dysfunctional reasons why, but I think the true picture is even more depressing. This article makes the mistake of taking SpaceX’s promises at face value. While SpaceX has had real and impressive success with reusable rockets, its promises about its Starship rocket are following a familiar pattern from its CEO of endlessly over-promising and under-delivering.
It’s reasonable to think Starship may succeed as a reusable heavy-lift rocket this decade, but not that it can replace a lunar program. At best, that is for the 2030s.
American partisan politics is such that the SLS/Orion/Gateway zombie may be unkillable, and it will stumble on sucking the life and money out of alternatives that might succeed.
This article says crewed lunar landings should be pushed back half a decade because starship can’t land on uneven ground. Please.
Absolutely. Permanently tie the NASA budget to a fixed percentage of the military budget.