Good point. Still progress though, and I would guess they have been spending some real time on design too, though we can’t be sure of that.

“What happens to their cost structure when SLS is cancelled, and they have to absorb the entire overhead of SRB production?”

That would also mean that they would have to fully absorb the costs of using and maintaining the two crawlers, as well as the crawlway. Probably lots of other stuff too that they plan for the government to pay for in the name of “providing a vital national service”.

I know they have been talking about $180M/launch for just the Liberty, but I just don’t see how they can do that. Not with all the cost add-ons for passing along profit for Astrium on the launcher. Then you add Lockheed Martin for the capsule – those companies are not cheap to work with.

Actually, all we know is that it has forced them to make speeches and issue press releases saying that they are. What happens to their cost structure when SLS is cancelled, and they have to absorb the entire overhead of SRB production?

Thanks. That tape will make interesting listening, someday, I hope one much further down the road. Those system limits explain the Apollo 13 oxygen bottle screw-up as well.

Wasting money on SLS is disastrously bad, wasting it on Liberty while killing SLS is merely somewhat inefficient.

I want to point out that those astronauts lost friends in Project “Apauling” as they called it before the Apollo 1 fire. They all do know how political engineering works – not well>>

Several years (well two decades!) ago I was the Senior Check Airman at FlightSafety International’s training center here in Houston…and I had the oppurtunity to both check and do some flying with one of the astronauts who played a major role in the post fire rebuild and a flight after that…I’ve agreed to keep the name private until his death…but he was kind enough to talk openly about the fire, the post fire and post fire flights…and did an oral history on tape for me.

Apollo 1 is in the history of NASA accidents a sort of stand alone…I agree with this former astronaut that the “root cause” of the fire was that the entire Apollo project was probably at the limit (given the time constraints) of what the technology and methods then in place for managing that large a program could handle. And that was only after some major changes to the management (not people) structure and techniques were made after the fire. Up to the fire it was just a massive project (Rocket, three vehicles and a ground system) that all interacted and yet was being tracked mostly by methods which up utnil then had been barely able to handle Polaris and the submarine that carried it.

The astronaut office in additioned to being “overwhelmed” technically was also viewing the entire effort like a “test” program with little or no operational part of it.

My point is that there doubtless was politics involved in who got this or that effort; the Gemini 9 angry alligator problem is a good example of internal corporate and NASA politics as to who worked on what…but Apollo was pushing the limit of the scope of a project that could be managed.

What is impressive to me about the Shuttle near misses and the ones that went bang…is that they were not so much “program management” as simply not paying attention to basic safety rules…and the astronaut office in particularly the Chief Astronauts and the flunkies who are “Safety” …simply nodding their head and going along…and I am pretty sure that is a political issue. RGO

“I watched as litigation and insurance costs nearly completely killed the US general aviation industry. It was a bi-partisan effort which saved what was left, and Senator Dole played a central role in getting that legislation through.”

YES…the notion of what “bi partisan” means has been screwed around, as have the “liberal/conservative” labels by ideological twits who have litmus test that have no real value except to simpletons.

Bi partisan use to mean that differing philosophies of government came together to solve recognized problems.

You name one…the liability issue for General Aviation. My Dad had a minor role in that actually he was defending one of the general aviation airplane manufactors and wrote a memo or two on the issue in terms of the pending liability reform.

the problem today is two fold

the first is that there is no ideological consistency much more in the GOP. They are all against “big government” but SLS/Orion make us a) proud, b) wonderful symbols of America, c) inspire us…etc. They want to privatize everything but human spaceflight is to important dangerous etc to privatize.

The second is that this has lead to political based ideology not a philosophical one. Invading iraq on at best exaggerated information is OK but Obama doing what he did in Libya…horrible.

There is a “bi partisan” compromise in human spaceflight…but IT SHOULD BE about keeping human spaceflight going and doing things which have some value. For instance if one of the compromises is that we have “human exploration” the notion should be around actually having it…not simply maintaining programs that use that as their moniker. But of course having SLS/Orion as the moniker of exploration is important not for exploration but for the need to have the programs.

Lugar/Dole/Bradley/Hillary Clinton (well she is not a good example she left the Senate for something else…) lets say Kerry of Nebraska…all were people who believed in different philosophies of government but could at least work together to address issues.

Today we have people who do not even recognize the notion of the debt defaulting. Hard to be bipartisan with that.

The GOP is fracturing along the lines of corporations feeding BS to low information voters to maintain their industrial complex links to the federal treasury. This election is going to be in my view at least entertaining RGO

“devolutionary”?

If we all had to drive Formula 1 cars to get groceries, we’d all starve.

If we all had to drive Peterbuilts down to get the groceries, we’d all starve.

We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned LEO launchers for the money wasted on the Ares 1, all with no displacement of our technical base.

Plain fact is, ATK is a crummy company which could not deliver a crummy rocket anywhere near on time or on budget, and that is what got us into this mess.