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NASA Approves Production of Most Powerful Rocket Ever
As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, NASA has given a green light to the production of a new motor, dubbed the Space Launch System, intended to enable deep space exploration. Boeing, prime contractor on the rocket, announced on Wednesday that it had completed a critical design review and finalized a $US2.8-billion contract with NASA. The last time the space agency made such an assessment of a deep-space rocket was the mighty Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon. ... Space Launch System's design called for the integration of existing hardware, spurring criticism that it's a "Frankenstein rocket," with much of it assembled from already developed technology. For instance, its two rocket boosters are advanced versions of the Space Shuttle boosters, and a cryogenic propulsion stage is based on the motor of a rocket often used by the Air Force. The Space Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group and frequent NASA critic, said Space Launch System was "built from rotting remnants of left over congressional pork. And its budgetary footprints will stamp out all the missions it is supposed to carry, kill our astronaut program and destroy science and technology projects throughout NASA."
. Space Launch System's design called for the integration of existing hardware, spurring criticism that it's a "Frankenstein rocket," with much of it assembled from already developed technology.
I would much rather them use existing tried tech and incrementally advance them rather than try a radical new design. A new design would take extra years of testing before it is ready for use but if we can tweak existing tech, and make it useful for deep space why not??
Based on the next sentence it tells me that they are more concerned with bringing home the bacon than making progress in space.
It's the standard problem when you're a tech. The client likes to give you a solution and ask you to build it, rather than give you a problem and ask you to solve it.
If their goal is to save money, then state that in the requirements. If you want it to work with existing tech, then state that. By instead putting what you think the solution is directly into the requirements you're not only limiting your techs ability to solve the problem, you're also hiding your true goals from them. That tech probably has far better solutions for that problem than you could possibly think of so let them work on it.
Better requirements would be:
We want to go to mars for less than $20 billion.
Short, simple, Let the technical experts run with that.