Space Launch System, Over Priced and Problematic There are many things which I do not understand. There is what is the universe all about, who built some of the ruins we find and even who is piloting some of the UFOs we see in the sky. Then there is the question of why we are dealing with an aerospace company which seems not to be able to do things right. Take the Orion Capsule built by Lockheed Martin. This is the capsule which will contain the astronauts that are supposed to go to the moon in 2024. It will be mounted on what is probably the most expensive rocket named the SLS built mostly by Boeing. Watching SpaceX launches we would have to be blind not to see how successful they are. When there is a problem, it gets solved in a short period of time. There is a problem with the Orion Capsule, one of the power modules is not functioning correctly. Its backup system stopped working. This is a module which supplies power to the ship. You would think they could just replace it, but that is not the case. You can’t get to the module in any reasonable way. Who would build a capsule where you can’t get to important parts? The answer is Lockheed. They may have to disassemble the capsule from the rocket. So, do it you say! I would too, except that takes about one year. Another idea which engineers are thinking about is cutting their way to it through panels which were never designed to be removed. That might take about four months. On top of all this the SLS, the Space Launch System is still facing many tests and who is to say there won’t be many other problems? The SLS is far behind schedule and way over budget, but this never seems to bother the people picking the contractors. Even the Office of Management and Budget criticized it. It is said when all is said and done, If ever, the rocket will be the most powerful in the world and will be capable of launching 200,000 pounds of material into low earth orbit, yet the Saturn V rocket was capable of lifting 130 tons into orbit which is 260,000 pounds. Is this really progress? People have asked why not build more Saturn V rockets, after all they were tested and worked perfectly. The incredible answer was the plans were lost, or it would have been too hard to restart the machinery to build it. In other words, the contracts are bigger this way and the project can have delays and then overruns as seems to mostly be the case on big projects. When we look at SpaceX, we see a company which is building its own giant rocket without a government contract and doesn’t seem to have many of the problems Boeing and Lockheed Martin are having. Why is that, could it be because there is no incentive for SpaceX to delay? I could be wrong but I find it hard to believe they would ever build a space system which you would have to take a year to disassemble to fix. These contracts were awarded many years ago and it was business as usual keeping those new upstart space companies at bay. Elon Musk had to scratch and claw his way into a NASA contract. NASA didn’t have much choice; people were beginning to see all the successes SpaceX was having and started to ask questions about why NASA wasn’t taking advantage of their successes. NASA has a history of bad decisions. All one had to do is look at the Space Shuttle Program. Some will say it was a great success, I say it was flawed from the beginning. Originally the space shuttle was supposed to be much smaller and mounted on the nose of a rocket. The military demanded it be so large it would need auxiliary rockets strapped to the rocket just to get off the ground. This in itself made it very dangerous since there were parts like O rings which were very temperamental and susceptible to changes in temperature and maybe weather. NASA should have insisted this was a very bad idea, but they accepted it. Even if they had no choice, they did have a choice on if to launch or not. They did not put human life above all other things. When the Challenger was going to be launched an engineer from Thiokol named Roger Mark Boisjoly told NASA it was too cold and the seals, which were the O ring gaskets could fail, but was told they were launching and he was given a sarcastic reply to his pleas. I personally don’t know how the bureaucrat who was so sarcastic and insisted on launching could live with himself after the shuttle blew up because he wouldn’t listen to reason. Another problem was the shuttle was supposed to make launches cheaper because it was reusable. Instead it cost far more to put cargo on the shuttle than on a rocket. We were told at the time we were going to save billions of dollars over rockets and just the opposite happened. The only positive point was the military probably got all their secret satellites launched without anyone knowing what they were. Getting back to the Saturn V. It is said there are three left today so we probably never needed the plans. It is known for sure at least one of them has all flight capable parts. This could have been used as a blueprint for future Saturn V rockets and we could have even improved on the original design since the electronic components have advanced so much. I just can’t buy the idea we couldn’t build more Saturn V rockets. Sure, there will be plenty of excuses why we can’t because the powers that be don’t want to, but I bet if a foreign nation got hold of a Saturn V, they would copy it just as the Chinese copied some of our planes for many years. They didn’t have special machines just to manufacture Saturn V parts, they improvised. I would be hard pressed to believe we could copy our own rocket. There is a lot going on with the newer space companies and most of us don’t hear about it. They are starting to come into their own and if I was the chairman of Boeing or Lockheed Martin, I would start to get worried. There is something called death by a thousand cuts and this is what eventually could cut into their business as the smaller companies each take tiny parts of the business away from them because they are cheaper.
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