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A comment on NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles above the surface. Parent comment

Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by bryanlarsen on Monday November 21, 2022 @04:06PM (#33697932)
That was a good argument in 2009 but it's a bad argument now. There are currently over 100 rocket companies in the US. Having those people work on dead end technologies like SLS rather than forward looking technologies like Starship or RocketLab Neutron or Relativity Terran R or Blue Origin New Glenn etc hurts rather than helps.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ceejayoz on Monday November 21, 2022 @04:41PM (#33698379)
> There are currently over 100 rocket companies in the US.

Zero of which are currently capable of putting a human around the Moon.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by bryanlarsen on Monday November 21, 2022 @05:19PM (#33698891)
Many of which would be capable of doing so if they got a fraction of the $40B that SLS got.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ceejayoz on Monday November 21, 2022 @07:30PM (#33700220)
They are getting fractions of that. NASA funds small missions across a wide variety of such companies. It’s how SpaceX started. It’s been one of the most effective NASA programs ever, IMO.

Prove yourself and the contracts get bigger.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by bryanlarsen on Monday November 21, 2022 @08:58PM (#33700826)
A good majority of the 100 aren't getting any NASA funding.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by panick21_ on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @04:11AM (#33703698)
By some definition of 'fraction'. They are getting basically nothing.

NASA budget is like 30% SLS/Orion for decades+.

> Prove yourself and the contracts get bigger.

If you hard allocate a huge part of the budget you can only give out so many other contracts for the best bids.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ceejayoz on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @09:17AM (#33706010)
The commercial programs have seen significant expansion in scope and spending as their benefits have become clear. The lunar landing contract to SpaceX is a great example of such.

Astra, Rocket Lab, etc. have to demonstrate capability to move up the ladder.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by panick21_ on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @09:55AM (#33706470)
Yeah but if NASA didn't need to spend 4-5 billion $ a year on SLS/Orion many more other projects would come available.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ceejayoz on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @10:53AM (#33707071)
Again, I doubt it. NASA funding doesn't really work that way. They don't get a big bucket of funds to distribute as they please. SLS was the pet project of a number of powerful Senators, to the point where the joke is it's the "Senate Launch System", and has been specifically appropriated for by Congress.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by panick21_ on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @11:19AM (#33707414)
There are ALWAYS politicians who are happy to give the money to their project. The idea that NASA budget would go down by 5 billion $ without SLS/Orion isn't really credible in my opinion. Some projects would be done, because Senators in space states wouldn't want the budget to just get lost.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by dotnet00 on Monday November 21, 2022 @04:44PM (#33698438)
SLS is incapable of doing so too.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ceejayoz on Monday November 21, 2022 @04:53PM (#33698558)
Sorry, meant to say Moon.
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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by dotnet00 on Monday November 21, 2022 @08:07PM (#33700510)
Technically, yes, SLS can send people around the Moon, but gotta remember that Starship is very much on the critical path to the actual goal of boots on the Moon.

So, 'currently' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, not to mention in general the idea of SLS being ready to send people to the Moon now is a bit of a stretch too since Artemis II will be ready to launch in 2024 if we're lucky, which is also when (if we're lucky), Lunar Starship should be starting its testing.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ceejayoz on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @09:18AM (#33706019)
Sure, that'll bring us to 1/100.
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