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Comment by Steltek | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the need to bag on the Shuttle program here. The Shuttle was designed nearly 50 years ago with drastically different requirements and stakeholders.

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It's not that the Shuttle wasn't an absolutely astonishing display of engineering proficiency - it was - it's that if that money had gone into a Falcon-9 style rocket instead, we would all be much better off now in 2022.

It's because people still defend it, or imply it was more worthy than it actually was. And because the same mistake is being repeated right now (SLS).

SLS isn’t the currently-in-development spacecraft that utilizes hundreds of ceramic tiles to aerobrake through the atmosphere. SLS is basically a modern Saturn V. A complete departure from the Shuttle, with the exception of-re-using the SRB design. On paper a very conservative choice.

Starship looks a lot like Shuttle 2.0 to me. Except the landing is somehow even more terrifying.

As far as I can tell the idea with Starship is to design a vehicle that can survive losing a few tiles because that’s inevitable.

The point of SLS is that it's a politically motivated boondoggle. This is also what the shuttle was. Nixon ok-ed it not because it was a good idea, but because of aerospace votes in California.

What is that based on?

Which part? The bit with Nixon is well known (see, for example, John Logsdon's book "After Apollo?"). As for SLS, it's called the "Senate Launch System" for a reason. Shelby in particular has saved it, to the extent that work on propellant depots was targeted for extermination (no one in NASA is to utter the "D" word.) Depots and propellant transfer render irrelevant the SLS's supposed advantage of large payload mass.

The Nixon bit isn't well known, but thanks for the reference. I've never heard the rest. Is there a source?

It's easy to attribute political reasons to whatever Congress does, because Congress is filled with politicians. But members have other motives too, and private businesses, despite the hype, have plenty of corrupt and political motives - throwing contracts to allies and friends, undermining enemies, etc. - though they are far less transparent and are unchecked by the public or other institutions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-say...

which references

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1156294287245660160

Quote:

> Digging through some old notes. Found this quote from a few years ago from a senior academic engineering source at the time.

> "Senator Shelby called NASA and said if he hears one more word about propellant depots he’s going to cancel the space technology program."

The evidence is someone (person A) on Twitter's old notes about a story someone else (person B) told them, about an event involving persons C and D (and potentially others), with no indication of person B actually witnessing it.

Aren't we supposed to start by considering the accuracy of the information?

That person is a very respected space journalist. If you are still dubious, that's a "you" problem, not a "me" problem, and I encourage you to expend your own effort to deal with it.

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