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SLS Project Coming Up $400 Million Short
schwit1 writes: A GAO report finds that the Space Launch System is over budget and NASA will need an additional $400 million to complete its first orbital launch in 2017. From the article: "NASA isn't meeting its own requirements for matching cost and schedule resources with the congressional requirement to launch the first SLS in December 2017. NASA usually uses a calculation it calls the 'joint cost and schedule confidence level' to decide the odds a program will come in on time and on budget. 'NASA policy usually requires a 70 percent confidence level for a program to proceed with final design and fabrication,' the GAO report says, and the SLS is not at that level. The report adds that government programs that can't match requirements to resources 'are at increased risk of cost and schedule growth.'
In other words, the GAO says SLS is at risk of costing more than the current estimate of $12 billion to reach the first launch or taking longer to get there. Similar cost and schedule problems – although of a larger magnitude – led President Obama to cancel SLS's predecessor rocket system called Constellation shortly after taking office." The current $12 billion estimate is for the program's cost to achieve one unmanned launch. That's four times what it is costing NASA to get SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada to build their three spaceships, all scheduled for their first manned launches before 2017.
In other words, the GAO says SLS is at risk of costing more than the current estimate of $12 billion to reach the first launch or taking longer to get there. Similar cost and schedule problems – although of a larger magnitude – led President Obama to cancel SLS's predecessor rocket system called Constellation shortly after taking office." The current $12 billion estimate is for the program's cost to achieve one unmanned launch. That's four times what it is costing NASA to get SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada to build their three spaceships, all scheduled for their first manned launches before 2017.
They're short more money than SpaceX spent to develop the Falcon 9.
if the 400 million is really the only overrun that's an astonishing record for the federal goverment
Ah, I see the problem!
Personnel are too costly. We need to get rid of them.
You can not compare spacex vehicles with the damn SLS. The SLS is a deep space vehicle. When spacex is building a vehicle to send to mars or beyond, then yes, they can compare the SLS to spacex A manned launch into low earth orbit is not even close to deep space. Not bashing SpaceX, but apples and oranges here...
The immediately previous story was about new SSL server rules. I read that, and then reloaded and saw this new story. My first reaction was "why on earth does the 'SSL Project' need anywhere near $400 million dollars?!"
#DeleteChrome
sure, the project is expensive but people need to understand there are immense differences between NASA's vehicle and the others. Not to mention all three companies are standing on the shoulders of a giant, NASA, and their projects are all dwarfed by what nasa is attempting to create.
SpaceX: hopefully delivering the CST-100 version 2, but honestly hasnt contributed a whole lot other than a sexy brand to the effort. CST100 was delivered by Boeing.
Boeing: not sexy, just practical. a design ripoff of many other NASA firsts, it is restricted to suborbital and cannot carry cargo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sierra Nevada: building what nasa did 30 years ago, this is designed for cargo and people. it is strictly suborbital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
NASA SLS: cargo, crew, suborbital, and interplanetary transport system. SLS is to be capable of lifting astronauts and hardware to near-Earth destinations such as asteroids, the Moon, Mars, and most of the Earth's Lagrangian points. SLS may also support trips to the International Space Station, if necessary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can understand R&D overruns and what not. But Jesus Christ, everytime I looke, there are ALWAYS some sort of government overruns.
Why can't Congress pass a law that states that government bids are binding?
Ahahahahahahahahaha! Oh God! I kill myself sometimes!
Wait! I have more! Let's penalize Congresssmen who make deals to get work to their districts even enough it makes NO financial sense!
Oh, fuck! I just shit my pants!
Flush it down the drain.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
http://www.thespacereview.com/...
Doesn't the old saying go "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" ?
What is it when it is fool me endlessly ? NASA does not bring down the cost of space access period. The shuttle didn't none of their boosters ever have. If we get really lucky we get commercial enterprises able to do end runs around them to actually make a little progress.
Really we should have NASA do what it is good at, robotic exploration and high risk high payoff research. Let commercial companies do what they are good at mass production and perfecting technologies.
The rules are designed to try to prevent embezzlement
So...the rules designed to prevent spending more money than necessary that would end up in the pockets of people who'd have no business getting their hands on it in a sane world...cause more money than necessary being spent and ending in the pockets of other people who'd have no business getting their hands on it in a sane world? *double facepalm*
Ezekiel 23:20
It's more, then that.
FTFY and I see what you did there.
My problem with NASA isn't the projects as SLS is a decent one. It's how they work, planning is always way off, spending is always high and final products are always late. They really need to figure out a solution to these problems, everytime things like this are released it makes them look bad. 400 mil isn't that much for this project but still could people of such high intelligence not see it coming or find a better way to plan? You know they are going to need more before it even launches. I'm sure it's not all them but what they do to get approved.... still you can always improve in planning, spending and efficiency.
When it's taxpayer money it always seems like people think it's unlimited.
So...the rules designed to prevent spending more money than necessary that would end up in the pockets of people who'd have no business getting their hands on it in a sane world...cause more money than necessary being spent and ending in the pockets of other people who'd have no business getting their hands on it in a sane world?
Yes, thats why big government is bad. Bigger government means bigger amounts of money does this.
"His name was James Damore."
For how many billions (trillions?) that the F22 has gone over budget, underperformed, and doesn't really have any particular need except politically, 400 million is a drop in the bucket. Give NASA the F22 budget and prepare to be amazed.
Fuck feeding, sheltering, clothing and educating people.
> "NASA policy usually requires a 70 percent confidence level"
Statistics show a 70% confidence level for a government program has only a 3% confidence level.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
5 Billion pays for a Mars Sample Return mission 5 Billion pays for two Europa Clipper missions Manned spaceflight is such a scam but NASA is hopelessly in the bag for manned pork. All the top management are ex-flyboys. Ugh. Hopeless
Much more lucrative than the less organized organized-crime.
Ho-hum; it's apples and oranges though; when you control the game, you're quids-in.
Requiem for the American Dream
And people get mad when I say NASA has devolved into a collection of risk adverse mid-managers loosely connected to a rusting theme park endlessly replaying clips of their glory days. Their best days are behind them and it's time to think about reorganizing the entire agency.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If we get really lucky we get commercial enterprises able to do end runs around them to actually make a little progress.
Then I guess we've been extremely lucky, because SpaceX has actually made a lot of progress.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I'm one of the biggest spaceflight enthusiasts you'll find, and I've been saying for years: kill SLS. We'll get more results by using 20% of the money to expand SpaceX contracts, and applying the other 80% toward deficit reduction.
Musk isn't in it for the money; he enjoys the engineering challenges, and bringing launch costs down by one or more orders of magnitude is one of those challenges. (Yes I realize the irony; despite not being in it for the money, he has become quite wealthy.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The SLS plan was announced in August of 2011, and almost 3 years later, it finally goes over budget. I am amazed it did not happen sooner. I guess sticking with 8.4 meter tanks, SSMEs, and segmented boosters really pays off.
Isn't the big NASA rocket factory in New Orleans? It built a stage for the Saturn V.
The National Research Council recently gave a stinging rebuke and refutation of NASA's Manned Space Flight Program. In essence the NRC argued that the people to "man" such a voyage will not be born for another 50 years. More importantly, the engineers and scientists who would build such an enterprise have not been born and the institutions to educate and train them will not exist for another 25 years at least. So anything other than a failed desperate 1-way suicide mission will not happen for another 100 years.
So kill NASA now and wait 100 years until the right people and institutions and knowledge and expertise exists.
Yes, the rules designed to keep money from being wasted do cause money to be wasted.
It's like when the military needs to get a hammer. In a sane world, they would just walk over to the local hardware store and buy a hammer, or place an order for hammers with some large company like Home Depot or Amazon. Instead, the military procurement regulations add so much red tape to the process that most companies don't even want to sell anything to the military; but a few companies specialize in military procurement and have full-time staff who know how to successfully navigate the paperwork. So that hammer can only come from one or two companies, and those companies have lots of overhead (need to pay the lawyers who navigate the red tape paperwork maze), and anyway those companies know that they are the only game in town and are not motivated to charge a low price.
http://www.aei.org/outlook/foreign-and-defense-policy/defense/five-factors-plaguing-pentagon-procurement/
Its not a rocket. Its racket.
Linux forever
I've been on both sides of this transaction: working for a vendor selling to the government and working for the government buying stuff.
The government CAN go out to bid on a fixed price (binding) basis as you propose. The problem is that any sensible contractor will raise the price above their expected costs to cover the inevitable risks that something goes wrong, or their estimates were wrong. This is particularly so when doing something that has literally never been done before.
So the government buyer has a choice: high fixed price or lower cost based price. With cost based contracts, the contractor gets a fixed fee (cost plus percentage of cost government contracts are illegal). As the cost goes up, the contractor's percentage profit drops, but at least they're not losing money if something goes wrong. The government almost always has the right to cancel at their convenience, too, if things are really going bad rapidly. On pretty much every job, there's a continual computation and reporting (in both directions) of the "termination liability", or what it costs to stop work today, pack everything up, and move on. (Such computations became VERY important during the government shutdown fiasco last fall).
Since the folks in government want to get the best bang for the buck, they tend to like "cost plus award" contracts.. odds are, it will come in lower than they would have paid for fixed price, because government contracting (for technology) has a fairly hefty risk premium. Yeah, if you're buying case lots of toilet paper, or carloads of gravel, fixed price is probably a better strategy on both sides. The contract negotiator on the govt side isn't going to allow profit on a fixed price contract that is more than 10%. (Yes, indeed, even with fixed price, you can't just charge any old price.. you have to justify it after the bid is accepted, and they can and do negotiate, if only because there are inevitably differences between exactly what you proposed to do and what the government wants)
Note well, too, that you probably don't know how much SpaceX thought they were going to spend to develop Falcons and what they actually spent. They're not publically traded, nor do they publish that level of detail. For all you know, SpaceX thought $100M and spent $300M, and Elon's coming up with the difference out of his pocket (or out of payments against future operations).
The folks working for the likes of Lockheed, even in management, aren't getting rich (not compared to bankers, etc.). It's more about wages for relatively high paying jobs (compared to fast food and service industry) for lots of voters in areas where there's not much more work. The representative from the great state of Utah, or Alabama, or Mississippi thinks that employing 10,000 machinists receiving high pay and the like to crank our giant solid rocket motors is a net good to their state.
Government contractors lobbying Congress isn't about personal enrichment as much as providing jobs programs. The companies involved aren't making huge percentage profits (10-15% would be really good) but they do large dollar volumes, so the actual dollar revenue is high, but it is spread pretty thinly. Managers at those companies do well ($200k/yr kind of salaries) but not "investment banker" well.
NASA to Congress: We want to build a launch system that will be the single most important component in the US presence in space for the nest several generations. We need $20B for it from planning to first launch.
Congress to NASA: Screw that, you get $12B.
NASA to Congress: We can almost do it with $12B, we need an additional $400M
Congress to NASA: Justify the additional $$
Military to Congress: We need $10B to build a new strike fighter that no-one really wants.
Congress to Military: Here ya go
Military to Congress: Oops. We've crashed a bunch of prototypes, and still have major design flaws and systems failures. Another $10B should get us on track.
Congress to Military: Here ya go
Military to Congress: Supplier problems, we need another $10B
Congress to Military: Here ya go
Why are we so damned willing to spend money to kill people more efficiently and not to do science that positively impacts all our lives every day?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Would NASA be better off discussing launch requirements to SpaceX?
"SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada to build their three spaceships, all scheduled for their first manned launches before 2017."
And surprise, surprise. There are serious attempts to pillage that program (CCDev), which is on time, on budget, and (comparatively) insanely cheap, for funds to prop up SLS.
http://arstechnica.com/science...
that $400 million won't be the final amount of the shortfall. Take that number and multiply that by 3x - 5x and maybe, MAYBE you're in the right ballpark.
I love NASA and all, but budget accuracy isn't their strong suit. In the eternal triangle of:
Price
Performance
Service
(Pick any two). NASA has typically, from what I know, optimized for the last 2. So it's their cost picture that suffers (although one could still challenge the fact that they cannot produce budgetary estimates that hold up over time). Note that I'm counting program extensions as budget overruns, which I'd bet every NASA administrator ever would argue isn't fair. And while they are entitled to their opinion, I'm entitled to mine as well.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the federal government allowed the biggest defense contractors to "consolidate" by going on a feeding-frenzy gobbling-up smaller defense contractors. Now, we essentially have [1] Boeing, [2] Lockheed-Martin, and [3] Northrop-Grumman (there are many little subcontractors and vendors on small niche items, but for any significant weapons system we have just those 3 vendors. As a further wrinkle, those three vendors (for whatever reason, I have my suspicions but I cannot read minds) seem to carefully avoid competing. Boeing does the helicopters and big transport planes, Lockheed does the fighters (Boeing's fighters are the left-over and dwindling production of McDonnell's, which Boeing gobbled-up) and so on.
Back when we had Northrop, Lockhheed, North American, Boeing, Convair, Grumman, Boeing, Bell, Sikorski, Douglas, Vultee, Hiller, Martin, etc (all as stand-alone vendors) there was genuine competition in which several vendors had a good chance of being the winner. Grumman built the amazing successful Lunar Lander precisely because they had to genuinely compete for the contract against other companies who came very close to getting the contract. I personally doubt that the modern Northrop-Grumman could build a working lunar module today in twice the time for ten times the money.
In this environment, with each thing available from essentially one vendor and thousands of jobs on the line, politicians will protect any contract to any of these vendors in his/her district no matter how poorly the contractor performs and no matter how much it inflates its prices. The actual program deos not matter. It does not matter if it is President Bush's "Constellation" program, or the current "Space Launch System" - they are both essentially the same rocket (there were many versions of Ares V on the drawing board and SLS is almost the same as several of them) from the same vendor who never feels any need to control costs or even compete. If we as a nation were to kill-off the SLS (thereby setting-back NASA even further) and pick another program, the congress would still demand (in bi-partisan manner) that the contracts go to the same crony companies who would then still underperform and over-charge.
SLS is essentially a stretched Shuttle external tank, two stretched shuttle SRBs (5 segments each instead of 4) and a new engine structure with shuttle engines. The cost of an SLS flight should be about the same as a shuttle flight given that [1] we've had 30 years to improve manufacturing processes and materials, [2] shuttle opponents insisted for many years that new engines on each flight would be cheaper than the maintenance of SSMEs between flights and [3] so much automation has been introduced that launching SLS will require only a fraction of the ground personnel that shuttle required. There is, therefore, no reason why we should not be able to fly an SLS 6 times per year for about the same price that we used to be able to fly 6 shuttles per year (budgetary argument, excluding weather, payload delays, etc). NASA and it's bloated, lazy, always-behind-schedule and always-over-budget vendors (who always produce systems that don't initially work right and need many "cost-plus" "upgrades" to achieve a portion of the promised performance), however, are claiming they will only be able to fly it once every two years.
Investigations and prosecutions should be being scheduled.
If you kill-off SLS and all those crony contracts, then lots of members of congress will feel no need to keep "spending money in space" (the money is actually spent on Earth in congressional districts) and NASA might well end up out of the manned spaceflight business. With NASA out of that business, all the so-called "commercial spacelight" companies go away (since there are NO actual non-NASA customers). We are currently at a point in spaceflight where there is no destination for "commercial customers" and the cost of going far exceeds the economic returns for anything other than unmanned telecom and imaging satellites. A few billionaire tourists (none of whom have actually proven they are willing to risk their lives on a super-expensive flight) is not a business plan, it's currently a fantasy.
What's currently happening is that Obama, who tried to kill NASA and redirect those billions to education, then decided to pretend to support it by spending a few million dollars as "seed money" for manned commercial flight - and the congress with thousands of jobs in their districts and vendors getting billions in their districts wanted to protect those interests .... so we have a tug-of-war. Congress wants to spend billions on SLS and missions to the moon and mars, while Obama wants to shift some of that money to "commercial" (enough money to cripple SLS but never enough to make "commercial" actually succeed. BOTH SIDES are playing political games to appeal to certain sets of supprters. The Solution is easy: Fully-fund SLS and properly fund commercial. NEITHER side proposes this for political reasons ("old space" does not want 7-person capsule competition that might force them to explain why the Orion capsule only holds 4 people and costs many BILLIONS, and Obama does not want a massive moonrocket with lots of "rah-rah, USA USA" flag-waving and money flowing into certiain congressional districts with Republican representatives) but the increased cost would be a "rounding error" on the books. This would cost a few hundred million dollars, at a time when Obama has DOUBLED the food stamp program (increasing it by $40 BILLION per year) without any real increase in people needing foodstamps (unless all those illegals he is importing are getting foodstamps...)
only if you do not mind your pilots passing-out and dying (or just getting sick) because of faulty cockpit oxygen systems, and only if you do not mind having the thing never get completed and become fully-capable.
The big problem is that its the same bloated over-priced under-performing vendors. Orion space capsule and F-35 and F-22 are Lockheed-Martin. SLS and the cancelled Ares V launcher and the prices-always-rising Delta IV and super-expensive V-22 Osprey and expensive-but-underperforming P-8 Poseidon are Boeing. etc.
EVERY program you give to these vendors is likely to go over-budget, and under-perform while being delivered late and incapble of meeting promised performance specs. When big government and big business get into bed together, the LAST things to be expected are efficiency and economy. It's simply not in the interest of anybody involved to improve things. The contractors get "cost-plus" contracts where they get a profit no matter what (and because we're talking percentages, the profit actually goes up, in dollars, as the project bloats and delays) and the bureaucrats get more money and staff and authority when there are more problems to "manage", whereas if the program completes on-time and on-budget, it needs no further oversight and management.
You would never know it from the summary above.
http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/664970.pdf
I'll go through this with you one step at a time.
For the same price, NASA could have SpaceX build and launch ten rockets.
That would be ten times as many scientific experiments launched or whatever good thing the rocket is doing.
Alternatively, they could spend the same money to have SpaceX build ten rockets, then throw nine away and launch one.
That's virtually exactly the same as what they're doing - taking billions of dollars from taxpayers and ending up with one rocket.
It ends up exactly the same as throwing away nine rockets, removing from the economy whatever value those nine rockets have.
They could also spend the same amount of money having SpaceX build one rocket, then spending a few billion dollars sending kids to college. So, for the same price you can have either a) one rocket built by NASA or b) one rocket built by SpaceX plus provide a college education for a thousand people.
So what's the difference between those two? Both add a rocket to the economy. The difference is whether people get a college education or not. Which do you think is better for the economy, college graduates earning good money, or those same people flipping burgers? Waste REMOVES value from the economy.
For the same price, NASA could have SpaceX build and launch ten rockets.
Alternatively, they could spend the same money to have SpaceX build ten rockets, then throw nine away and launch one.
That's what they've done, spent resources that can build ten rockets and ending up with one. That's PRECISELY equal to building ten rockets, then destroying nine of them.
Alternatively, they could have paid SpaceX to build the one rocket, then burned a few billion dollars in cash. They'd end up in the exact same position - billions of dollars gone, and one new rocket. It ends up precisely the same as just burning the cash.
Stop funding the global warming cargo cultists. Use that money for SLS.
That's great Best ever Movie
I suspect grandparent has ideological reasons for wanting to give money to a private contractor rather than a government agency. 80% of NASA's yearly budget will barely slow the deficit's rise, and it's a suspiciously /round/ number.
The private contractor has a track record of delivering far more bang for the buck than the government agency. Yes, I do have an ideology -- because I have observed time and time again that private enterprises operate far more efficiently than the government -- but it is a true ideology with a foundation of factual, objective observations. What is the foundation of your ideology?
Sorry for using a round number. I don't know why you'd be happier if I had said "apply the other 78.57% toward deficit reduction." Nobody has done a rigorous analysis of what the optimal percentage should be, so why pretend they have?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Yes, pork-barrel spending is a huge problem; see http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
But you can't say that money spent on SpaceX contracts won't go to SpaceX. By definition, it does.
they have so-far demonstrated no ability to either reliably launch on-schedule, or leaunch at any sustained rate
The amazing thing about SpaceX is that even while their costs are at least an order of magnitude lower than ULA's, their development cycle is far more rapid and the capabilities they are adding are far more advanced. Fixing the things you are complaining about, if indeed they are a genuine problem, seems trivial compared to what they've already accomplished.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.