NASA's new rocket

[steingar]

Liquid fuel, projected to lift 77 to 110 tons into orbit and beyond at a projected cost of $18 billion over 5 years, according to the New York Times.

 

[zaitcev]

I remember how Clark Lindsey wrote "I expect that all the news services will uncritically parrot the 18 billion figure", and he was right! Also, the lies about the liquid fuel, of course! NYT are masters of spin not only when they are in the tank for liberals, but on any kind of unrelated topic too. If you read the article well, you can see that the liquid booster is only a vague plan, far in the future, which may or may not happen. And meanwhile, taxpayer money are going to "Doc - revolving door" Horovitz' company in Utah -- possibly forever! But NYT did not LIE to you, did they? They just spun it.

 

[nddons]

Interesting. I had no idea of the magnitude difference between what shuttle rockets could carry and what the Saturn V could carry. This new rocket sounds like a C-17 solution - something in between a C-130 and a C-5.

 

[Anthony]

Is this it?

 

[zaitcev]

The point about the Booz Allen report which everyone seems to miss is that while indeed the 18 billion to IOC was realistic, the costs of the program absolutely explode afterwards and NASA pretended that nothing happened. This is typical bait-and-switch, the kind they already tried with Ares. I saw the sand diagrams that came out of Augustine commission, and like everyone else I was shocked to see how Ares I continued to suck 2 billions every year, forever, even after the end of the development. And that is even after some creative accounting wrt the shared infrastructure. The SLS is just like that, only worse, because once they fly out remaining 15 engies, they need to stand up the production of RS-25, and who's going to pay for that?! President Obama was right when he cancelled the whole bondoggle.