NASA's problems with launch tower for SLS are getting worse
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
As a reminder, for SLS they decided to modify an exiting launch tower (ML-1). The original estimate to modify the tower was $54 million. Final cost will likely be $1 billion. And delayed of course. It's only going to get a few launches.
You can see where this is going.
Then they decided to do a new launch tower, ML-2. This tower is only 7 feet taller. They planned to incorporate lessons learned from the mess of ML-1 (haha). Started at $400M. Now going to be $2.7 billion (and delayed of course badly).
These cost+ deals especially with multiple contractors are like rotting fruit that attracts maggots that glom on and provide negative value. Something that would take a day to a week elsewhere could be literally months. Every incentive is to move slowly. The contractor layers and paperwork needs on even basic changes are totally massive. The other thing that really jumps out is usually speed - these things will take FOREVER.
I once even saw something about 8 track data recording in a govt contract, It's wild what is stacked into these things. The overhead to do anything can be wild. I once worked a govt job, and we needed an ipad for whatever reason (think something like foreflight on an ipad - most normal people would just buy an ipad to run foreflight). For all sorts of dumb and dumber reason, an ipad could not be purchased. I'd estimate $25K - $50K maybe went into trying to buy this damn ipad and coming up with workarounds. Can only go through central IT which wasn't even selected for price performance, has no customer service, and doesn't have apple SKU's. That's just the beginning. By the time you've wasted attorney time, contracting teams time on this ipad purchase and your own time, your managers time, all the downline folks time... the mind boggles. I think the final solution was to do a contract with a third party for a service, who could then buy the ipad and install the app on it as long as that part of the contract was less than some capital item threshold, and then that third party could enter into another agreement to make it available for their use. But the time to do this, then the time to come up with the agreement to use the ipad owned by this third party... total joke! I understood why teachers buy their own pencils. I'm sure a school can provide them, but a teacher probably doesn't want to deal with the headaches!
>For the ML-2 project’s first 5 years, NASA lacked a reliable cost and schedule estimate, making it difficult for the Agency to accurately identify ML-2 budget requirements, be accountable to Congress and other stakeholders, and accurately measure project and contractor performance.
Absolute dereliction of duty and complete incompetence. Bechtel has literally no _true_ incentive to deliver on time: the "awards" are folly and they've been awarded some of them even despite this abysmal performance. Instead, you can inflate the "cost" part of "cost plus" and just continue to suck on the teat of the taxpayer, while blaming supply chain and other challenges, all to not build what amounts to a several hundred foot tall elevator. (Obviously a gross simplification; I understand there are interconnected data, electrical, hydraulic, fluid, and other systems, along with being immediately adjacent an extremely high-thrust launch, but _still_.)
Do you think this is unique to NASA? The military itself has many such expenditures. If anything, this is a result of Senators and Reps putting their fingers in to extract taxpayer money at best "for their district," but more likely for their cronies/lobbyists.
I do it all the time without making actuarial tables, as do insurance companies.
> NASA officials informed us they do not intend to request a fixed-price proposal from Bechtel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
Edit: Here is the NASA report.
https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspector-general-oig/audit-r...
Only because they're billing for a ridiculous amount of time. Estimated completion time of 2027!? Wat?
SpaceX has already built three and is planning more. By the time Bechtel completes their single tower, SpaceX will have half a dozen and a Moon colony.
The contract should be torn up and the people that signed it barred from holding executive positions for life.
NASA's project is still expensive, but not quite twice as expensive as Burj Khalifa (unless the budget overruns again).
ML-1 and ML-2 have been percolating along for over a decade. ML-1 is going to see just a few launches (3-4?). ML-2 is just 7 feet taller. Total between the two maybe $3.5 billion range?
This is just for the SLS tower. Actual SLS / Orion / sustainment costs at the NASA centers are absolutely mind boggling.
Then you compare that to what NASA gets with their contracts with SpaceX and the mind boggles.
These are mobile while Starship’s towers are fixed. That alone massively increases the MLs’ complexity.
Why are they mobile? I genuinely can’t tell beyond that’s how Apollo did it. A fixed tower with a moveable (or even temporary) structure built around it would have been simpler.
The only alternative to Orion is to use a capsule to LEO, transfer crew to a second fully fueled Starship, dock with HLS in NRHO, do the landing and come back, dock with the crew Starship and then do a deceleration burn, dock in LEO with the capsule and then return to earth.
Why? Because the lunar Starship doesn't have enough delta V to return LEO and landing crew on earth via aerobraking is too risky at lunar return velocities. If you want to do aerobraking, you're back to Orion.
Fundamentally speaking, the problem is that SpaceX hasn't built a moon optimized upper stage. Someone needs to build a crew transporter that is optimized for LEO -> NRHO -> LEO, like the cislunar transporter, but that one only carries fuel to NRHO.
Because I'm not a rocket scientist & if I knew how this stuff worked I wouldn't have to ask!
They know besides the unrealistic high price they’d get shoved in their face by Bechtel, it would seriously jeopardize their chances of “retiring” at Bechtel with a comfortable salary later on.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41370982
Mission accomplished.