A lot of work is put into making porn, facebook games, prayer, cigarette manufacturing, the gambling industry etc. I'm not saying these are all useless things, but most people wouldn't bat an eye at someone "discounting" their work. If the work going into SLS doesn't achieve anything, then they discounted the work themselves, no need for a 3rd party.

Since the rocket gets thrown in the ocean at the end of this, this is literally the sunk cost fallacy at play.

NASA TV loves to show a great infographic of how many parts have flown to space before and have been reusable... can't help but yell in my mind.. and that's the last time they'll be reusable.

Those engines belong in a museum.

Maybe we should just park the turkey in the VAB and turn the VAB into a museum.

It's not entirely sunk cost - there's reputational effects for a lot of people involved. Politicians who supported it look much worse if all this work (and money) has gone into it, only to have it not launch. How bad they will look is proportional to how much money was spent/work was done, so the work put in does matter to the outcome, at least for them.

That probably shouldn't be the case, but when it comes to politics, perception is very much reality in that people's perceptions translate directly to votes.

Those politicians are retiring, or already retired (except the one that is currently running NASA).

Still the sink cost fallacy though.

What is the point that you're trying to make here?

I'm sure we've all experienced situations where we realize that the work we're being paid to do is futile and will never reach achieve it's intended purpose. It's really demoralizing but the thing to remember in that situation is that you're still getting paid.

Would you rather be an aeronautical engineer who gets paid and doesn't launch of a rocket, or an aeronautical engineer who doesn't get paid and doesn't launch a rocket?

I would rather NOT be the engineer who pays taxes so that another engineer makes something that will never fly.

> ... the thing to remember in that situation is that you're still getting paid.

That's the spirit.

I’d rather just be the aeronautical engineer who gets paid to do nothing except stay in the U.S.

The work is shit, despite being done with forty year old, thoroughly understood and matured technology?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/new-report-finds-nas...

Cost overruns would have put NASA 33% over budget a few years ago, but they committed accounting fraud to cover it up.

The SLS is nothing more than a welfare check to Georgia and Florida.