Space and Science BS Thread

The process you are describing is for a product that has already been developed into near perfection and is being mass produced, the 747 for example. For low number runs and prototyping that kind of bureaucracy kills R&D and extends their development time, in terms of space that often leads to delays over a decade. For prototyping the best bet is to create a bare minimum design, find your hiccups and bottle necks in creating it, optimize the design, and then work towards finalizing production. The departments should also have more direct contact so that changes can be confirmed and made at a faster pace. This is why Spacex is moving so fast, and why others who try to plan out every single nut, bolt, and washer before they ever start building take so long.

From what I've seen, Blue Origin is following the Boeing way of doing things as well. Research is slow, methodical, and alterations take months of sending emails back and forth to the engineer sitting in the next cubical over.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLUidiYm0w

 

https://twitter.com/spacex360/status/1426826759232757761?s=21

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1426824562600300544?s=21

 

I would agree with everything you said here. X's work orders do not include 1200 steps about how a fastener should be assembled and they don't go through Nasa review, as Boeings and Jacobs and others do.

 

I'm pretty sure NASA has some oversight for their contracted launches

 

SpaceX doesn't get NASA involved until everything is flight ready. THEN they give all the specs to NASA and make changes where required. Before that they're making changes every other day.

Others like Boeing design every single fastener first, submit their plans, and then don't change anything until it fails getting to orbit or they have 17 sticky valves. Then they start the process of getting approvals for the required changes, and that's usually starting email chains that would make most pyramid schemes jealous.

 

One of the most spectacular launch sites on the planet:

https://twitter.com/rocketlab/status/1427014920760004609?s=21

 

Reading about SpaceX versus Boeing only convinces me more that NASA needs to go. Let private enterprise take over space exploration/exploitation.

 

Sounds to me like a corporate Logan's Run

I dunno

 

Logan’s run is a fantasy from a writer’s mind. It’s connection to reality past and present is non existent.

Private enterprise, which yes is driven by greed, has always been the best way to advance technology.

Ford, Edison, Franklin, every great inventor has only been hampered by governmental interference.

 

I wouldn't say go, just reduced down. There are numerous inventions derived from government research. The only difference is that once that research is done the findings are usually released for their citizens to evolve and refine. That didn't happen with space because rockets are technically ICBMS and our ability to track rockets is not as reliable as all the scifi movies want you to think it is. I mean we still lose airplanes carrying hundreds and look how refined that whole sector has become.

 

No NASA = No SpaceX and no CCP.

There needs to be some sort of bureaucracy to manage billions of $$ in contracts.

 

Or even ship registration and flight control.

 

https://twitter.com/nasakennedy/status/1427261751284883458?s=21

 

Bureaucracy is what caused us to essentially stop after a few moon landings.

Space lost its appeal to the masses. Without the massive government spending the aerospace industry shriveled on the vine.

It’s time to get bureaucrats out of any control of what happens. Let the things that created planes, trains and automobiles flourish.

In those three arenas government involvement had let to things like Amtrak.

 

Planes, trains and automobiles are highly regulated at the Federal level.

I see NASA currently in a transition to allow what you’re proposing to happen. Once Starship is successful, it’ll be very hard if not impossible to support SLS going forward as well as attempting to have another one of their own crewed vehicle.

Think of Elon as the Henry Ford of rockets..

 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/16/22623022/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-sue-nasa-lawsuit-hls-lunar-lander


Dick.


But then again, if there is another delay to HLS, SpaceX will have the time to get Starship orbital while BO continues to make erroneous and laughable poster boards.

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1427287281371697152?s=21

 

And filed it under a protection order so we can't see what's going on. That just means he knows he's going to lose this lawsuit as well. All he's doing is trying to delay SpaceX enough so they look like Boeing.

 

They are now and look what we have. More regulations than you can shake a stick at. But in the formative years there was very little government intervention and these things flourished.

After the government got heavily involved things got worse not better.

Heck, these are the same people that can’t reliably deliver the mail these days. And you want them involved with a multi billion dollar enterprise.

 

Nasa should just be another customer to anything that can be commercialized.

 

That'll all go to hell eventually too. I mean NASA will just be another contracting government agency. It'll look awesome for pricing until the oligopoly settles, and then NASA will get it's own cost saving F35 project lol.