The Dumbest NASA Decision In Years? Why NASA is Being Forced To Ground Rover and Sent Ballast. 

What rover?

@terp2726 - Perfect !!

Thats some big brain thinking right there

@@JoshuaR.Collins Alas, there would be a bureaucrat present at the loading that would make sure plugs of battery and solar cells are disconnected.

@@ivonakis exactly

@@SirSparris starship is constantly being developed and you can literally see new progress every few months, to say that starship will be just a scheme is incredibly shortsighted

​@@SirSparrislame argument many many reasons why.....

@@SirSparris ...meanwhile at blue origin who received more funding than starship they have had how many launches?

​@@SirSparrisThunderf00t, is that you? 😂

@@SirSparris doesn't sound like starship at all to me...

Absolutely flailing in government, quite disappointing

Shit, the same thing is true in big private companies. I was involved in designing and installing a huge paint system at my old job. We could have spend another ~$50k (on a multi-million dollar project) to install a system to partly coat the parts automatically as they went by, thereby eliminating 3 human painters from the system (down to 6, instead of 9) and greatly simplifying the design of the paint booth. I pointed out that doing this would pay for itself within a few months (as well as eliminating the need for 3 more people to stand in a hot booth full of poison wearing very bulky and hot PPE), and I was told that it didn't matter because it would be saving money from a different budget. The fact that it would save at least $200k/year wasn't relevant, because it would cost $50k *now*, and that wasn't acceptable.

@@a.p.2356 Dude, I -know-. This is something I deal with all the time in a not very large corporation, just a couple hundred employees. I try to cut through this stuff by escalating to parties who are accountable to both sets of problems, but that is a real challenge at times.

Apparently not the case here though: another comment got in contact with their representative in congress and actually got a real response. Apparently the main technical reason is that NASA isn't confident about the "finished" rover actually passing vacuum testing without revealing things that need to be fixed (delaying the launch until next year, because the launch window is missed), nor about the rover making a successful descent. And they simply don't have the budget to keep the teams on staff for another year. The 30% overbudget rule hasn't applied since 2017 and isn't the reason: the main (budget) reason is just overall cuts to the science budget and NASA wanting to keep Artemis funded with what they've got left. And just launching ballast because they've contracted and scheduled the rocket already is probably still cheaper than having to pay the company for the rocket anyway after a lengthy legal battle. Because the company that prepared the rocket has every right to expect their money. Not their fault that the rover company took too long to "finish" their end of the project.

we found it lying by the side of the road

This is why it's being disassembled now. No cheating

We even have proof. See! Here's a picture of us pulling it out of a storage crate marked -Rover- Mass Simulator.

"Then why is it moving?" "... Solar wind?"

@@camicus-3249 well, it was cheaper to use the Rover as a mass simulator rather than building one and we must have left the software active by accident

This. Absolutely.

Bingo

Cost overruns should hurt the company, not be a way to con the state out of more money.

The budget of NASA has increased constantly, so the corruption in the organization.

What? Are you anti Boeing?

Good to know.

I get launch windows matter when it comes to traveling to other celestial bodies like Mars, but the moon is approximately at the same distance from Earth all year round. Is there something special about reaching the poles that I don't understand?

@@rbgtk It's explained in the video, the rover needs to land at the start of the lunar polar day to have time to complete its mission before it gets dark for half a year again. You could land a few months later but that would pretty much be a waste of the rover anyway, so in practice there really is a narrow launch window every year, it's just dictated by the rover instead of the rocket.

Congress will always be the problem. Between budgets and time constraints and hearings Congress is as big of a pain to get anything done scientifically rather than religious extremist views. I suppose if we name the rover jesus take the wheel it'll get sent.

Thank you for taking the time to find and add this additional information. This changes my take away from the video completely, and the final decision to cancel the mission makes sense now. I'm probably not the intended audience for a video like this, I don't follow NASA and I'm not well educated. Just reading the comments section makes me feel dumb. But if you can a wider audience to follow NASA, get more people to care, maybe more funding will follow.

Yeah... I burned the roof of my mouth by eating some french fries that were extremely super hot, it really hurts!😢

November can't come quickly enough...

@@aldunlop4622 Nah, nothing is going to change in terms of Congress actually doing anything useful, regardless of who wins.

​@@NightKev- please don't take our hope away... might have to talk Congress into finding it.

@@NightKev Ehhhh there's a _certain side_ of the political aisle that doesn't seem too friendly toward science and education in general, and would likely completely gut all such federal programs (or just outright teach propaganda). They reject proven concepts like our planet being round, or the theory of evolution, climatology, vaccines...

It is very believable since the smallcaps are behind the market movements

Nothing horrendous about Starliner. Abd it has a fixed price.

@@paulopenteado5552 Space X is more reliable + cheaper

Boeing is running amok with their commercial planes too.

@@HenriFausthopefully they didn’t design the doors on the rover 😅

the man went to the moon and back in a single stage on regular petrol

The English space agency’s finest.

I was thinking the same thing. A rover that doesn’t work is, in effect, a mass simulator that *may* work.

And were supposed to believe they sent a rover big enough for a man nearly 60 year's ago?

@@only1thatmakessense ... yes? It's a fuckton easier to do things when your budget is basically a blank check than it is when you're getting table scraps.

@@only1thatmakessense And we're supposed to believe that the Soviet Union wouldn't have shouted the proof from the rooftops if it was fake, instead of sending their congratulations? Oh wait, I guess the whole USSR was _in on the conspiracy!!!_

@@keiyakins 60 years ago, just let that sink in

Welcome to the real word, a constant exercise in human absurdity!

And, I know it's nothing compared with the millions of dollars, but instead of flying a rover, we have to buy all that iron!

@@dakotahrickard Aerospace-grade iron? You know these companies are going to charge many millions for it.

Truth IS stranger and DUMMER than fiction.

Typical governmental agency

Yes there most certainly is a "museum of managerial incompetence"... it's called "The Planet Earth".

@@edgeeffect 🤣👍

He’d know, his mother was an American ….

The U.S. Government is far from having a monopoly on being utterly incompetent... There are plenty of others around the world who share that dubious honour.

Gotta wait for CN moon landing to happen before they got serious about it 😂

The only thing we exhausted comes out the back end.

Tbf as a Brit we are the only country to get an orbital space program then throw it away...

That would make too much sense

It might fail without it

​@@timedeathe if it fails you get data

@@timedeathe Mass simulator has a 100% chance of failing rover objectives

Not sending it is a 100% chance of failure. Not testing it is less than 100% chance of failure.

That's because DEI has become more important.

These days they are also missing brains.

@@reignman30 dude, that was a for all mankind quote

@@reignman30use more buzz words next time from your overlords.

​@@reignman30nothing to do with corporate greed right

Then it would just be a dead mass. Operating it takes money.

@@paulopenteado5552 Donate the dead Mass on the moon to a university. or at least a highschool for STEM.

@@paulopenteado5552 Better than it not being there. If someone has the foresight to add a wake command then you could risk trying it untested. There's a small chance of success that way, and 0% the other way

You nailed it, I am finding increasingly as I get older that common sense isn't so common! Bonkers decision making (or 'not' decision making, and they get paid for this)

This is the same political body that tries very hard to prevent actual discussion about why we're doing some of these dumb things.

it reduces "debt" by using austerity measures to reduce public spending but also reduces taxes on the wealthy and massive corporations.

They’re senile, what do you expect

@@nocturnemusique - Congress-critters all Senile? Hardly. Crooked as a dog's hind leg? Definitely. But why should they be the exception, in a world where powerful people get that way by _skirting the law_ or worse?

@@YodaWhat congress: "why cant we be both?"

Isn't it just put a thing in a vacuum chamber and turn it on, after 72 hours check the sensors. That's it

@@funguy398 Read "Roving Mars" by Steve Squyres. Similar spacecraft, and boy did they find unexpected problems

Or James Webb which is 1,000% over budget.

Because SLS is the Senate Launch System.

@@EdwardRLyons can we use it to send the senate to land on the sun?

@@EdwardRLyons you means the senate laundering scheme

Congress can vote to extend mission funding for viper, just like they did with james webb and SLS

They still need to test the rocket

​@@samsonsoturian6013No they don't? It's launching on a Falcon Heavy. The lander needs to be tested, sure, but that wasn't stopping them before. There's already risk in this mission, if it doesn't complete all the testing they wanted to do for budget reasons, just send the damn thing anyway. It's like paying for a non-refundable all expense paid vacation and then deciding not to go in order to save money.

*AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE:* Here's the lengthy (sorry about it) explanation, but I promise it will make explain what goes on. I have a classmate who is now very high up in the ISS Program. Basically if you don't have her signature it does NOT go to the ISS. When they were still constructing the ISS I got into an argument with her about how they were building it. I was in the camp that wanted to use the Shuttle C which was the shoot once version with nothing but a payload pod. The idea many at the time were saying was it was taking too many very expensive space shuttle flights and Shuttle C could lift as many as 5 ISS modules in a single flight. Part of my argument as it was for others we needed to get the ISS finished so we could get on with manned exploration. To say she slapped me down is an understatement. *FIRST -* As she put it I had no idea what it took to connect and commission any of the ISS modules. *SECOND -* She quite rightly pointed out that until we solve the propulsion and life support issues for long term manned missions NOBODY was going anywhere beyond LEO. Sadly those 2 technological hurdles of propulsion and life support have still not been solved. *THIRD - NASA does not decide its missions and this is still not widely understood.* The US Government (as in the politicians) decides what NASA missions do and do NOT happen. If anyone wants to see how badly that can work go and look up a video story Scott did on the Artemis Rocket from a couple of years ago and how there were 2 teams doing the same job on the same rocket and how that made all the decisions take longer and the whole thing be a GIANT CLUSTER F*CK. When Scott did that story on Artemis I knew exactly what was happening because it was exactly what my classmate had explained to me years earlier. The politicians make decisions FOR NASA based on political needs not technical needs. Another good example of that was during the post Challenger processes. Kelly Johnson (P38, U2, SR71) came out and said (paraphrasing) _"Don't build a replacement. Give my team the $3 Billion and we'll build you a single stage to orbit (SSO)."_ I have no idea what Kelly Johnson and his team had discussed or what their plans were. That's one of aerospace's great "what If?" mysteries. *HOWEVER* the decision to spend $3 Billion and replace Challenger with Endeavor was a POLITICAL DECSION not a technical decision. I was in college at the time and had a couple of heated arguments with people who weren't engineers. The reason to replace was that some MILITARY strategists (YES MILITARY) had *CLAIMED* that without 4 operational space shuttles America would lose its pre-eminence in space to the Russians because they new the Russians had Buran on the way. *So politics intervened and instead of moving on from the Space Shuttle NASA limped along with a technically brilliant but also faulty and expensive system for another 20+ years. It also lead to the decade long era where NASA could not even put men in space they had to pay the Russians to do that for them, which was kind of ironic.* So sorry for the long comment but I think its stuff that needs saying.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, only 8% of the ocean has been explored, that's right, here on earth but Nasa is looking for other Galaxies that have planets that can support human life AS WE KNOW IT but we couldn't even get there even in, well maybe never! Also, the effects on the human body after extended time in a weightless environment are well known, and we haven't even solved that problem either or how to keep one alive after a zillion light years of travel. First, it was just the moon. Then, it was the search for ET. Now, it's the planets for human life. Kinda reminds me of the "global cooling" that turned into the "global warming" that turned into the "climate change" grift.

@@tonywilson4713Strange that politicians with their 5-year election cycle, get to decide decade long projects.

SLS > Starship

@@blackhatfreak Yep. 4 billion per launch vs around 100million(fully unreusable) so SLS certainly is much > Starship.

@@NScherdin Thats the theoretical cost. Each starship test flight is closer to 0.7-1.2 billion all in. I work at starbase. Maybe instead of picking and choosing 'teams' we should just root for everyone.

@@ThePhantomRocket 1.2 billions is still 3.3 times cheaper than 4 billions, which is a lot. However, I agree with your last point, more options is better than fewer, or only one.

@@yonidellarocha9714 Your still wrong, Starship gutted is 1.2 billion. Throw in the crew rated parts and we are sitting over 4 billion. They don't even have one bit of research done on radiation shielding for Starship. Guess how many billions that is?

Ah, cancer will never get cured, unless there's a massive profit motive.

It's all these over budget projects that keep military contractors in business.

There is a lot of multiple ways of curing cancer. Current one is making medical companies big bucks

Yes. Imagine we would NOT run US space program in essentially socialist fashion, where everything in run by government and no one cares about costs, profitability, doing things efficiently. Maybe we would NOT have financially unsustainable Saturn V followed by financially unsustainable STS for effing FORTY years. You do understand that a Falcon9-like rocket could have been built in ~1990, thirty-four years ago? There were no _technical_ reasons why it didn't exist back then - only organizational ones.

Crowdstrike predicts a 1202 error and has recommended Apollo 11 be canceled.

@@bobroberts2371this is so perfect lmao

"Sorry guys, we're $5 short! Shut it down!"

Apollo got a blank cheque

Hasn't that been clear from the beginning? Constellation also wanted to return to the Moon. Humans on the moon are not really necessary, rovers are cheaper and can do most of the science anyway. Apollo was politically motivitated as a result of the cold war, so no. Also Lunar starship ain't gonna happen. Since there are international partners for Gateway we might get Gateway...

Artemis will have its own budget, which is much larger. As long as it too doesn't overspend by more than 30% I see no problem. It's like when you can't afford a Costa coffee but you can still afford your mortgage repayments. The absence of coffee doesn't imply that you're going to be homeless. Grownups call it 'budgeting'.

Yeah..... they'd probably scrub during the first delayed countdown like: "T minus 3 minutes and counting.... countdown hold due to LOX discrepancy...oh wait, we're over our 30% budget - launch cancelled - OK guys, everybody go home."

NASA he almost no budget if they a realistic budget these missions would be child's play

​@@nagualdesign Artemis is so far past 30% over budget that it's not even a joke anymore. According to the GAO, every mission will exceed $4 billion (in 2022 dollars), and that's just production and operations. It doesn't include the sunk development costs.

It does always strike me as strange that we give all of the important decision making roles to people who are clearly dribbling imbeciles without at least requiring them to pass some kind of simple test.

Wait why doesn't the 30% budget overrun trigger some kind of big congressional review instead of an instant cancel?

@@Ryukachoo Maybe the congress thought it would be hit often and didn't want to waste time on it? It sounds like an oversight or laziness to me.

@@Ryukachoo Because most of congress hates space travel and thinks its not focusing on the problems of earth. They also get rewarded for diverting funds and resources from it to other projects because a large portion of the population just doesnt undestand space, space travel, or what it takes to get something into space.... Basically its a bag of dumb people doing a box of dumb things.

​@@xugro Laziness, but also some amount of talk from other people. Their project is private, but not a secret. As soon as they hit the 30%, talk probably started to spread and competitors negotiated some "change of mind", indirectly causing NASA to consider canceling straight up. The decision was still on NASA, but with private commercial companies making quick progress, maybe they diverted attention to the ones already working and scrapped Viper's rover.

Scott says it does trigger a review in congress, that’s why he says it’s not an automatic cancellation, but he also goes on to say that he’s doubtful, this being a election year, that anyone in congress will risk supporting it. I’m sorry about your project, it totally sucks.

It is defintely Goon-worthy, even if it didn't actually originate there.

thats the most logical explaination. You would think the people in charge would be raising more of a fuss of their lifes work getting thrown out.

government inefficiencies, status quo, and nepotism

Yes because going over 'budget' is only an issue with NASA when they want it to be. Whatever the reason, this is a failed project.

jokes on you, i measure excitement on a scale from 0 to 1

@@emiliaolfelt6370 lol

​@@emiliaolfelt6370 Excited = 1 Measuring things like excitement in binary. 😂

​@@emiliaolfelt6370that's what real commitment looks like

It is more important to realistically estimate the budget. Apollo stayed very close to its estimated cost thanks to the planning and project management of James Webb (although the lesson wasn't followed by his namesake telescope).

Yeah great point, or at least build in regulation that triggers reviews before 30%

basically it used to, and they would spend the review increase... there isn't a good way to go about it...

It doesn't because NASA is still making stuff in waterfall methodology. National founding.

@@HanSolo__ lol when you are a national agency moving fast and breaking things usually isnt going to lead to supportive press. its very easy for a politician to say "well you blew up a vehicle in this test, so we should defund you", even if, you and I both know that testing inevitably leads to failures sometimes. theyre doing exactly what I would do in that situation, try and support private companies that can get away with doing faster design processes, and stick to a few flagship missions for national pride and science.

@@CheesyMez "Moving things and breaking stuff" is not Agile. It's simply idiocy. "Lol" Waterfall is far superior to whatever Musk is trying to make up. Imagine what miracles the company would make canceling his personal input. I have a friend who supplies SpeceX with raw materials. He says engineers treat Musk like a business-only side of the company. While outside he is portrayed as an amazing engineer He is an engineer. The shallow level. I have to give to him, he is a person who knows certain persons able to make big things move and tides change.

As if anything has ever made sense.

Liar

​@@samsonsoturian6013 pedo

@@samsonsoturian6013 "Stop being right g0y1m!"

Best comment I’ve read :) I think the problem would be the ongoing running and managing expenses of the team responsible for it. Such a waste

It would be wasting a rover. Because it would be a dead mass, doing nothing.

@@paulopenteado5552 phase two would be after the landing: "oh, by the way, that Mass Simulator was previously supposed to be something else, so it has some built in sensors..., how about taking it online and doing some science while we're on the Moon already?"

Quite honestly, I doubt that. There has been a LONG history of this kind of behavior from contractors.

If they can't stay within budget there should be a clause to get the money back.

It is sad, but consequences are what change behavior. Lack of consequence means lack of a reason to change for the next time

Not surprising when the head of NASA is so incompetent that he naively think that dark side of the moon doesn't have any sunlight

Post-Apollo NASA in a nutshell.

Marvel after endgame

Wait until you realize that no one was ever and no one ever will ... We were supposed to have a moon base in the 1990ies. What have we got instead? Just words, words and more words about 'going back'. When will this ring a bell with the majority of people AT LAST?

@@rh906 this is 100% congresses fault

"Sir... I'm sorry I have to tell you, but... You have been diagnosed with chronical optimism".

At 4.4 billion dollars a launch, NASA should give the whole space program over to Space X.

​@@davidhurlburt1075spacex will just eliminate all competitors, practically owning everything in space, then everyone has no choice but to pay whatever they ask

SpaceX will mess the moon missions so badly with their spaceship costs that it will get cancelled.

@@Yeshas_2107 not sure why they are going there in the first place? cause china is heading there? smh

Artemis is already dead in the water on account of SpaceX

you could make the case that sending it to the moon is cheaper than scrapping it and building a mass smiulator. and knowing the way government agencies spend money, that mass simulator might as well be made out of gold.

Spot on ??

Privatize NASA.

This

but when us invades a country we get oil or something, nasa ain't finding oil anywhere yet

But this robot would have been looking for ice. If ice was fou d they could generate rocket fuel from it. Rocket fuel is a lot more expensive than oil.

No the Nunn-mccurdy act shuts down military projects that go over budget like the zumwalts

​@laimejannister5627 youre talking as if oil is more precious than the benefits that come with space exploration

We should be smart and find NASA better, but it's still smart to cut losses and not fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy either.

You're no different

@@osbjmgSure but “rules is rules” is stupid and dogmatic. I understand that over-riding a rule sets a precedent, but procedural improvements should always be possible. As Scott says, it was due to external reasons that they went over-budget, eg the pandemic.

@@RussTillling I also tell my wife to keep from spending more on credit than we have in the checking account, they are just numbers after all

It's a very diverse government though, and that's what's most important. They'd rather fail with the entire rainbow than succeed with qualified people.

YES!!

Sure, but that also means bids will be quite high. The bid needs to include a buffer to account for an overrun on every project

Fixed price only makes sense for well understood products. For true innovation and pushing the boundaries with a one of a kind spacecraft that's just not reasonable, because there's no way to know in advance what challenges and costs will arrise during the course of RnD.

Fixed price contracts will make the requirements be studied more closely, and the contract broken down into different elements according to how innovative they are.

@bluesteel8376: Here's a novel idea. Why not explore the depths of the ocean? After all, only 8% had been explored. Why fund some child's space fantasy as an adult? UFO'S, have already been acknowledged, so why are we sending probes into deep space looking for ET (intelligent life) they're already here? If they're intelligent enough to travel here, well they're intelligent!

I think I'm going to reuse this quote. I see possibilities everywhere.

Cicero never said that. Tacitus was the source for the original _Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges_

Cicero? Cicero wasnt even alive during the roman empire lol

@harbi99 fair enough, I stand corrected. We probably agree though, that this situation is an insane dilemma created by laws not rooted in reality, just the social reality surrounding politicians jockeying for personal power and prestige.

He should talk, he lost to Caesar

Duh

Obvious boy is obvious.

Yes, and this should not even be political.

It is space politics in general. The rest of the world is not better. And the space industry is specialized on extracting the largest amount of money with the lowest effort possible.

Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Lala, NYC .... blue party

Ah, yes, the hospital with 500 administrators and no patients. "But it's the best-run hospital in the country, Minister!"

Consider the opposite too, private sector may want the credit and tech to become a private asset, so they yoink the rover for cheap, while being able to blame the gov for it. Some key bits form the clip that favor this variant are, scott mentioning sell it to basos now, dont let it go to waste, while saying this is likely a successful mission. Also the competing rocket companies may wanna deny the chance to their competition, effectively buying out winners of the contract to deliver it, even if they are giving some money to said competitor in the process. I.e. buying someones stock during a price war, then immediately reselling it for more than they bought it. While you would get some form of corruption in the process for either variant, it may not necessarily be in the direction favoring the civil servants. There can also be personal grudges at play here too, with the current state of the usa election possibly being an influence.

At last someone with a brain. However NASA will probably spend several years deciding on the font.

It would still require heavy funding to make ready for launch, a chunk of metal is ready.

@@WOFFY-qc9te NASA needs an E4 Mafia to get things done behind the backs of the MBAs.

@@alexradac589 also you would have to account for the parts.

@MusikCassette it's already built though

fr lmao

actual fix: use 16 bit computer

Its more like if the mechanic said he can't put the fixed engine back in because it cost a lot to fix up... So instead they'll put in a total broken engine of the exact same size and weight

SLS is a good example of this

This was not a "cost plus" contract. In fact, NASA originally intended to pay only a fixed amount covering about *half of the real cost*. The vendor of the lander was supposed to raise the remainder of funds from selling the space on the lander to interested commercial parties, and from private investors, by telling them a story about booming lunar economy "any time soon". In reality, there were a million of amendments to the contracts covering several overlapping missions. Even if one goes over all of them with a fine comb, it is hard to decipher how much NASA was _actually_ paying for this specific project.

@@cogoid I didn't relate "cost +" to this project. Simply stated the "cost +" notion should go. Furthermore, bids should be fixed cost - in general.

Costs plus contracts has set spaceflight back by 50 years. It's an embarrassment how much we've stagnated. If not for SpaceX we'd still be in the shit.

@@cpthornman1000%

That's Republicans for you

@@blackhatfreak maybe some are just shte ppl... both sides

@@blackhatfreakunfortunately this is definitely a case where either side of the political spectrum can find reasons to not care to fund it

@@alexsiemers7898 just tell them if they won't fund NASA these extra money are at risk of being spent on healthcare. This should do the trick

@@blackhatfreak both parties just want to line their pockets. this is not a partisan issue.

It’s almost like it’s a pile of science fiction.

@@gabrielrousseau_NM people werent so scared of failure in the cold war as a lot of apollo missions failed yet they still went on wich now with SLS they dont

@@captainheat2314 Branson and Bezos have continued on for well over a decade and once they finally finished their fancy vomit comets the news coverage was endless. A month or so later Space X flung 3 civilians around the earth without any fanfare bypassing the unwanted vomit comet model. Something funny going on with this space BS.

​@@captainheat2314 Copium. You guys are as bad as flat earthers at this point.

​@@MattyEnglandUSSR literally confirmed it, but sure mr matty from yt comments has better expertise in this area...

Going over budget by a certain amount should prompt a very close fraud investigation on the contractor. Over a certain point it stops being "Oops we guessed wrong".

And for a hard cut-off "cancellation if it would go over 130% of the budget" with "less than X% already spent" makes a lot more sense.

There is NO "automatic cancellation".

There is. It is not an automatic cancel. It went through review. And it got to the point where the budget Congress enacted was not enough to pay for the extra cost.

Nah then it wouldn’t be a government project

They should have named it after another venomous snake: Krait, perhaps.

@@Togidubnus You know it's an acronym right ? But feel free to tell us how you would have called it if you're so smart

​@@TehAzaackFind new words to describe it. You can force anything into an acronym if you abuse your thesaurus enough.

@@VoxAstra-qk4jz Okay let's see what you got. People are all so smart they can't even find a new name

@@TehAzaack We don't care that much. We're just saying that "Viper" is too cool of a name for what looks a box wrapped in aluminum foil.

No.... but the "Cost Plus" model for contractors definitely IS....

DEI FTW!! ... oh wait.

Agreed.

XSpace is crap

I think that was a forgone conclusion the day after they announced the Artemis programme.

Gonna be a LongMarch instead.

@@isekaiexpress9450 I thought the length doesn’t matter 😂

The money saved from the extra shuttle missions could have been put into life support & propulsion research - in a sane world. Point 3 is really the only relevant one. It seems like a mix of single-use and reusable shuttles could have gotten the pieces up there and assembled them. A failure of imagination, and a failure of the administrative state that is baked into our obsolete Constitution. Congress must be abolished, and all regulatory agencies need actual citizen oversight boards who team up with project managers, and, if needed, prosecutors. America needs a 21st Century Constitution to build a government where each agency is capable of leading itself, where successful projects get funding, and where cost overruns are analyzed to see if they're worth the money or if the people involved in the cost overruns get a bad mark on their record.

@@Nphen I'm actually Australian but did my degree in America courtesy of a sports scholarship. A bunch of my friends were pre-law and they used to drag me into their discussions to get another perspective. So I got an unorthodox but interesting education on the US Constitution. My opinion is that the US Constitution is one of humanities finest achievements but it has a major weakness in that it *guarantees freedom without responsibility* and that makes it easily exploitable by people with nefarious goals. We see this right now with SCOTUS and how a very small but well funded group called the Federalist Society hijacked the American Court System without anyone asking WTF they were up to. Do you know that the people behind all this are NOT Southern Fundamentalist Christians? They are actually Fundamentalist Catholics. Tied into that are the Libertarians who basically want the entire administrative state dismantled. YES they are totally nuts and unrealistic but they are also highly motivated and have a mountain of money. These are the people like Charles Koch who's a major funder behind the Heritage Foundation and CATO Institute. So the US Constitution isn't so much the problem it how its being exploited that's the problem and that manifests in things like the decisions forced on NASA and the funding NASA gets.

@@Nphen And the reason I always bring up those other points first is so people understand what decisions were made that have had long term effects.

Need data!

Liar

check out X27 night vision, it's really magical. that said, the moon does not have atmospheric scattering at night so it will be starlight alone which I doubt very much even this thing can do

nuh that was different

That is the project Congress cares about so that always gets extra money.

2026: Space station "Big Cheeto" poised to replace ISS in the early 2050s

using real concrete

I’m going to remember this line in the future when a situation exactly like this happens again :)

Starliner is private. Boeing.

No reason to. Already paid for and working.

No because it's flight proven unlike Starship lmaoooooooo

@@blackhatfreak It has flown though? I know you're trying to be a little peace disruptor and do some rage bait in the comments, but at least try to say stuff that makes sense?

@@blackhatfreak Sunk cost fallacy

The Senate is never going to cancel its own launch system.

@@EdwardRLyons that is the truest answer