New NASA Launch Control Software Late, Millions Over Budget (go.com)

schwit1 writes: The launch control software NASA is writing from scratch for its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is way behind schedule and way over budget. According to ABC News, "Development of this new launch control software is now projected to exceed $207 million, 77 percent above 2012 projections. The software won't be ready until fall 2017, instead of this summer as planned, and important capabilities like automatic failure detection, are being deferred, the audit noted. The system is vital, needed to control pumps, motors, valves and other ground equipment during countdowns and launches, and to monitor data before and during liftoff. NASA decided to write its own computer code to "glue together" existing software products a decade ago -- while space shuttles still were flying and commercial shippers had yet to service the space station. Both delivery companies, SpaceX and Orbital ATK, rely on commercial software, the audit noted."

In other words, even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own. And that decision really didn't come before the arrival of these commercial companies, because when it was made a decade ago that was exactly the time that SpaceX was beginning to build its rocket. This is simply more proof that SLS is nothing more than a pork-laden waste of money designed not to explore space but to generate non-productive jobs in congressional districts.

Comments

wtf kind of post is this?

[andreas.hummelbrunne]

That last few sentences were really inacceptable. Could someone edit this?

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Archtech]

That last few sentences were really inacceptable.
Could someone edit this?

OK.

"Those last few sentences were really unacceptable".

FTFY. There will be no charge.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own.

Yeah, as if private enterprises have never made the same mistake...

This is simply more proof that SLS is nothing more than a pork-laden waste of money designed not to explore space but to generate non-productive jobs in congressional districts.

I'm no fan of government-run anything, but this is hardly "proof". The submitter's editorializing is, indeed, offensive — as if someone wanted to make an anti-Libertarian strawman for Statists to attack.

Yes, NASA ought to be privatized as a few companies — for- and non-profit alike. The folks, who wish to see "pure research" continue, can make donations to the non-profit without forcing others (via the IRS' implicit gunpoint) to do the same.

But this SLS-whatever is has little to do with the idea...

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

That last few sentences were really inacceptable.
Could someone edit this?

OK.

"Those last few sentences were really unacceptable".

FTFY. There will be no charge.

That's not bad. Got any nigger jokes?

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last few sentences are spot-on.

The SLS is a massive pork barrel for make-work projects in polically-powerful congressional districts.

The real science is the robotic missions; SLS and other manned missions are pure pork with almost no scientific return.

The problem is that NASA is forever robbing funds from its robotic missions to fuel the pork. They have put off the Europa mission for decades. For years it was funded at around 5 mill a year at the same time NASA spent 35 million on a new space toilet for the ISS.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Columcille]

Indeed. I call bullshit on the summary's FUD. Criticizing NASA for not using the software of fledgling, unproven companies? Criticizing NASA for using custom software for their completely unique launch system? There are good reasons to criticize some of NASA's recent decisions, but this article is not among them.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it was a really schwit post.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is currently in office

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like an interesting, useful, marginally informative post with an over the top conclusion.

Let's look at that closer,

SENTENCE N-2 :
"In other words, even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own." That's pretty much what the news article said, but at /. I would have hoped for a bit more details on how the actual 2 projects were done and how they turned out. Probably would have made NASA look worse, but still the details seem right here.

SENTENCE N-1:
" And that decision really didn't come before the arrival of these commercial companies, because when it was made a decade ago that was exactly the time that SpaceX was beginning to build its rocket." Maybe change exactly to roughly, but probably correct.

SENTENCE N:
" This is simply more proof that SLS is nothing more than a pork-laden waste of money designed not to explore space but to generate non-productive jobs in congressional districts." This one is pretty much over the top. Sometimes it feels like it is true, but it is inflamatory, not supported by the article, and really not helpful for understanding what is going on in this situation.

Perhaps an alternative sentence N might be.
"This situation appears an interesting horse race between the NASA old guard and current commercial practices. Hopefully both sides will use it as an opportunity to learn."

As for adjusting the /. posting, there is a fine line between editorial comment and starting a PC police here, so the article should stand unless the poster wishes to adjust it. Either way seems fine. (I think maybe the cat was already out of the bag that this group likes X better than N.;-)

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[LifesABeach]

I'm thinking yesterday a DA orgasms over a company that m$ purchased. Today, it's this post. WTH going on at the editors desk?

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[burtosis]

That last few sentences were really inacceptable. Could someone edit this?

OK.

"Those last few sentences were really unacceptable".

FTFY. There will be no charge.

You, sir, have been banned for life as a slashdot editor. That's not the kind of quality we have come to expect nor the kind that has made slashdot famous.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inacceptable? That's unpossible!

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Ol Olsoc]

Indeed. I call bullshit on the summary's FUD. Criticizing NASA for not using the software of fledgling, unproven companies? Criticizing NASA for using custom software for their completely unique launch system? There are good reasons to criticize some of NASA's recent decisions, but this article is not among them.

Private industry always does better, that's why they don't have anything to do with NASA. That's why they have all their own launch facilities, tracking and all aspects of operations.

All the proof we need.

Oh....... wait.....

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[LifesABeach]

I just read your post. How cute. Head of the class in your no child's left behind special needs introduction to windows class?

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Immerman]

> The folks, who wish to see "pure research" continue, can make donations to the non-profit without forcing others (via the IRS' implicit gunpoint) to do the same.

An *excellent* idea. Lets do that right after we fund the military that way. And all the subsidies for agricultural and oil mega-corporations. NASA is such a tiny drop in the federal budget that it's barely worth mentioning. It's far more noteworthy for the visibility of its accomplishments (and failures) than the size of it's budget. And frankly, even at the same price I'd much rather involuntarily fund blue sky research than genocide and empire building.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

That last sentence stands alone in my personal history of worst ...so far.
Could somebody EXPLAIN IT?

This is not a bill in congress where you can slip a non sequitur amendment in to a report about software management.

If you don't want to be part of the country building the worlds biggest rocket, leave.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Ol Olsoc]

As for adjusting the /. posting, there is a fine line between editorial comment and starting a PC police here, so the article should stand unless the poster wishes to adjust it. Either way seems fine. (I think maybe the cat was already out of the bag that this group likes X better than N.;-)

I'm not so certain the line is all that fine. Let us take an example

Suppose someone wants to post an article using one of the last gasps of denialism, the discrepancies between satellite and radiosonde data. Maybe with links to one of the denialist blogs. People such as myself will squawk long and loud to note the data is outdated, and the discrepancies have long since been correlated.

So in fact, I like the postings of the useful idiots - they are also useful to me.

If some useful idiot like schwit1, with an obvious agenda wants to post trollish articles, with ill formed opinions, and whack-a-doodle conclusions - no problem.

At first. But the actual fine line gets crossed when Slashdot starts to look like a libertarian or denialist home front. Till then, we'll raise hell and have fun.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

An *excellent* idea.

Yes, I know, I can't help it.

Lets do that right after we fund the military that way.

So long as the government retains the monopoly on violence, I'm with you. And we are already doing it that way — makers of the military hardware and supplies are all private (and competing with each other). Can't go much beyond this, because maintaining the military is one of the (very few) roles of the government according to our Constitution.

NASA is such a tiny drop in the federal budget that it's barely worth mentioning.

Well, you and I have already mentioned it, so let's not not continue on this "too small" argument. Oh, you don't have any other?.. I see...

It's far more noteworthy for the visibility of its accomplishments (and failures) than the size of it's budget.

And this relates to the proposal to privatize it how?

genocide and empire building

-1 Flamebait.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Immerman]

>And we are already doing it that way
I thought we were talking about FUNDING, not production. Why should my tax dollars be available to the military to spend? Let them ask for donations to create warships and pay soldiers.

And I don't see you mentioning the tiny size of NASA anywhere. And yes, that is the core of argument I made (no, not the only one I have) - there is far FAR more waste concentrated far more destructively in many other places in the federal budget. The only reason anyone picks on NASA is because they're far more visible than most government backwaters of comparable size.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

Why should my tax dollars be available to the military to spend?

How about "Because the Constitution says so"? Not good enough? Ok, here is another. A country needs military to continue to exist as a sovereign state — hopefully, you agree... Further, that military must be firmly under command of the country's government — expecting no disagreement here either. This means, the military must be run by government — because private enterprises in a reasonably free country are not (and should not be!) government-controlled.

So, we must have some kind of government-run military. We can argue (or agree) on the quantity of military spending or the size of the military necessary to protect us, but it is indisputable, that we need an army and that it must be government-run. It sucks, but it is unavoidable...

On the other hand, NASA's (civilian) projects are not required for our country to exist. Ergo, forcing taxpayers to pay for them is wrong and unjust.

And I don't see you mentioning the tiny size of NASA anywhere.

Ok, fine, but you did mention it. Twice now.

there is far FAR more waste

Waste?! What "waste"? I was not talking about "waste" — only that people, who do not wish to pay for NASA, should not have to. That is true even if NASA were a marvel of management efficiency...

no, not the only one I have

You've now missed a second chance to put forth anything else...

The only reason anyone picks on NASA is because [...]

Even if that were true, it would not make the picking itself invalid. Injustice anywhere, as we all know, is a threat to justice everywhere.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

ah, thanks. glad to see you're posting again. i don't know what i'd do without your blind authoritarianism.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Constitution says so

The Constitution says "but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years" but that's ok, we just have a whole new army voted into place every couple of years.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[obsess5]

And we are already doing it that way - makers of the military hardware and supplies are all private (and competing with each other).

And NASA doesn't already do this? Since I went to work for General Electric's Space Division in 1982, the NASA projects I worked on were bid on by and awarded to private contractors. For the most part, NASA provided contract oversight, not hardware or software expertise. (In the case of GE, 3 or 4 years after I started, the defense side of the Space Division was caught doing "creative" bookkeeping. The Space Division was prohibited from bidding on government contracts and our NASA branch finished up a commercial system and closed up shop. A similar case happened in the 1980s when Rockwell or someone went overbudget on their defense contracts and started charging the overages to their Shuttle contracts. Oh, those wonderful private defense contractors ... let's privatize everything!)

Furthermore, NASA makes their technology available to private companies at no or little cost. In the case of the GE commercial system I worked on, we reused the entire image processing ground system software we had developed for NASA. (It was a very large system with an incredible amount of intellectual property in the image processing software alone--and NASA gave it away.) At a later company I worked for, we built our company's flagship product (used both on military and commerical projects) on satellite control center software we had previously developed for NASA. (And other companies made use of the original software as well. It's funny how companies aren't strict ideologues about "We Built That!" when it comes to getting something for free.) Do private military contractors offer such a return on investment to the private sector?

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[budgenator]

Besides, we have to keep all of those ADA programmers employed!

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nasa is a service for the military, it always has been...it just also happens to do non-military stuff for other branches of government and various private concerns. Rather than letting the Air Force run it all and limiting the scope, we created NASA.

If we had to depend on the Air Force for 100% of our access to space, then the benefit to us all would be limited.

As for the Constitutionality, check the part about promoting the useful arts and sciences. It has just as much tax-payer justification as a bloated military budget.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

As for the Constitutionality, check the part about promoting the useful arts and sciences

Under that interpretation, we don't have any limits on the government...

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

And NASA doesn't already do this?

Obviously, NASA should go further by outsourcing its software development — that's what the submitter's flamebaiting quip was all about. But my point was, the entire organization should be privatized (unlike the military, which, unfortunately, can not be).

Then, the arguing over how to best run it can be left to the willing shareholders, rather than the captive taxpayers.

NASA makes their technology available to private companies at no or little cost [...] Do private military contractors offer such a return on investment to the private sector?

Irrelevant.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

A country needs military to continue to exist as a sovereign state...

Yeah, why don't I think that your level of spending is because if you just reduced it a tiny bit, the very existence of the US would be threatened...

Why, if you spent just a billion less on defence, the Canadian hordes would be pouring over the borders within the year.

If its the continued existence of the US against military threat that is the issue, you could probably secure that much cheaper than you currently do. Much cheaper...

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

If its the continued existence of the US against military threat that is the issue, you could probably secure that much cheaper than you currently do. Much cheaper...

Yes, you are very probably right. But this is irrelevant — the point was, military (of whatever size) must, unfortunately, be government-run.

Civilian space-exploration programs do not have that requirement and therefor must not.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

What rank stupidity.
Private enterprise is extremely risk averse.
It would be nice if Elon Musk was the rule rather than the exception, but he's not.
If we had left it up to private enterprise nothing would have happened.
It often takes a first push from government before private enterprise becomes interested.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[mi]

What rank stupidity.

Haters gonna hate. And downmod only to then post as cowards.

Private enterprise is extremely risk averse.

You mean, the private enterprise, that introduced:

• Commercial air-travel
• Telephones
• Personal automobile
• Cellular phones

Those "risk averse" enterprises?

It often takes a first push from government

The government has no money of its own — it forces citizens to pay for things. Forces as in "gunpoint". To spent the thus-collected monies on things not necessary for the continuing existence of the state is tyranny. Plain and simple.

What you are trying to say, is that "a little bit of tyranny may be good sometimes"... Statists gonna state.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Commercial Air Travel was first created as an adjunct to the US Post Office, which is a government organization.
Telephones were spurned on by the government mandated monopoly that ended up being called AT&T.
Personal Automobiles were given their lease on life in the form of a road network that was er um, paid for by government.
Cellular Phones were built on technologies that came out of government research programs, some military, some civilian.

Since Nixon closed the gold window in the early 70's, money has literally been a figment of ones imagination, and while the situation today may not be ideal, the idea that the government doesn't have money is nothing but an outdated concept.

You need to get your libertarian thoughts out of your head and come into the real world

By the way, have you recently flown on an airliner? because if you have, you have benefited from government investment, in that entity called NASA that you obviously do not like.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The outer space treaty requires government oversight and ultimate control (the RSO is always an Air Force officer as an example).

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

if one were to take the constitution literally, the United States Air Force would be unconstitutional, as the constitution only factors in an army (which could not be a standing army) and the Navy (which is where the appropriations parts come into play).

There is a reason why originally, the US Air Force was the US Army Air Force.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA does very little in house software development. More than likely the software is being developed by "Lockheed Martin Systems Integration – Owego", which used to be IBM Federal Systems, the company that wrote the system software for the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs.

Re: wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the framers knew exactly what the country would need forever, so they wrote the constitution to specify exactly how everything should be done, forever. So we better get rid of the Air Force.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[david_thornley]

There's pretty much no limit on what the Federal Government can spend on, according to the Constitution.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Coren22]

So, since you want to get rid of the military, have you called the constitutional convention needed and written up the constitutional amendment?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/co...

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Last I checked, NASA wasn't MANDATED by the constitution.

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

STATIST!
DRINK!

Re:wtf kind of post is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, since you want to get rid of the military, have you called the constitutional convention needed and written up the constitutional amendment?

Sorry, but there's no individual way to do that, and the state legislatures and US Congress are passing the buck.

But I keep proposing it!

Last I checked, NASA wasn't MANDATED by the constitution.

Neither is the method of military financing, other than the Army being limited to a year or two at a time.

It's entirely legal to make the military a non-profit donation.

Entirely legal.

Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a frequent refrain that government agencies are overspending and missing deadlines. This is yet more evidence that we should eliminate NASA. Sure, the Mars rovers were cool and we might actually send people to Mars. But taking a bunch of close-up pictures of Pluto doesn't solve any of our problems here on Earth. Besides, NASA spends a ridiculous amount of money on climate change research, something that's far better done by the climatologists at NOAA. NASA is mostly a redundant agency, and the parts that aren't redundant aren't very useful. If NASA can't stay within budget and can't get things done on time, it's time to eliminate NASA and privatize space flight.

Re:Money not well spent

[Rei]

Yes, I'm sure you're going hungry because an average of $0.20 per year over ten years was sent on learning about a whole new class of planet that may represent the dominant form of equilibrium celestial body in the universe.

Things like NH are exactly what NASA should be doing.

Don't get me wrong, I strongly oppose SLS. But you know, it's perfectly understandable that they keep ending up going down these roads. They have too much infrastructure and too much personnel focused on building large rockets. The infrastructure especially, as you can't just "lay off" (or phase out) it like you do with people, and it costs you money to maintain. And the people making the decisions - congressional representatives - aren't experts, they're just ordinary people, and thus easily swayed by arguments made by advocates of these jobs (direct and indirect) in their districts.

It's understandable. But it needs to be fixed.

There's long been resistance to the privatization of rocketry. We remember the first privatization battles back in the Shuttle era, and how much resistance there was to letting Atlas and Delta go private rather than just disappear altogether. Indeed, the new battle in much of the launch market isn't so much over privatization as it is over "old school" vs. "new school" private companies, with the former offering evolved expendable launch vehicles with generally good track records but high price tags, and the latter offering ground-up vehicles with short launch histories but very low price tags.

Regardless of how this battle goes, there really isn't a place for NASA in it, any more than there would be a place for a government car maker to compete with giants like GM, Ford, etc and upstarts like Tesla in terms of making passenger cars. There certainly could be grounds for a government agency to conduct basic research that can advance automotive technology, things that private companies wouldn't pay for because it doesn't provide a short-term fiscal payoff or would help their competitors as much as it would help them - public health and safety, advanced concepts for the future, etc. But they shouldn't be making cars.

The same applies to NASA, only moreso. There's a *lot* of basic research in the aerospace industry that's either too expensive for its risk level or only associated with long-term payoff for them to conduct. And this is where NASA should be: planetary science and advanced concepts. But getting there is difficult, as it means having both an administration and congress who recognize the need to reorient NASA and are willing to accept the economic pain involved in doing so. It doesn't necessarily mean budget cuts - but it means closing facilities, selling off hardware for well less than you paid for it, and jobs leaving certain areas, even while new facilities open, new people are hired elsewhere, etc.

SpaceX wants to take over the private launch industry and use the money to go to Mars? The reaction shouldn't be "Oh noes! That's our goal, back off!", it should be "Awesome, that will save us a ton of money! How can we help?" And then let them spend their money on the glamorous stuff while NASA works on the less glamorous stuff behind the scenes. "That's a nice looking gigantic methane-fueled engine you've got there - we could hear it for miles when it fired up! So anyway, what do you think of this long-lifespan dirt scoop we made to dig up mucky ice for the habitat? And this water nanofiltration system to maintain electrolyte concentrations in the necessary levels in the electrolysis unit - want to see it? Oh, you're too busy playing with engines? Oh okay..."

Re: Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good except governments need space level military infrastructure... with the likes of awesome space spy stations tank on the moon theres some stiff competition.

Re:Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

'...it's time to eliminate NASA and privatize space flight.'

f'ing-A right ! Let's get our minimum wage astronauts on top of the rocket built by the lowest bidder right way, and save ourselves bushels of money.

You're not secretly the donald, are you?

Re: Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuck? Did you really just argue that exploring Pluto cost $2.00?

You stupid mothetfucker.

Re:Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

using the same argument, we should certainly be privatizing the military.

Re: Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant $2.00 per taxpayer. I have no idea if that is accurate or not but on the wild assumption that two thirds of your population are tax payers then that's about $400,000,000 and the given cost is $700,000,000. So actually more like $3.50 per tax payer (if my wild guess of 200,000,000 tax payers is close).

Also, you can't spell motherfucker, stupid.

Re: Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was talking about your personal contribution to it, not the overall cost.

Re: Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're the only taxpayer in the US, no he didn't say that. He's saying you paid $2 towards it.

Re: Money not well spent

[Beezlebub33]

Ahem....no. That's the per capita cost. Total cost for the mission is about $720 million, or about $2 per person.

Comparatively, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program cost is $1.3 trillion, the Boston Big Dig cost $24 billion ($7 billion was federal money), the new Vikings stadium is expect to cost just over $1 billion (and will probably run way over). New Horizons was a bargain and exactly what NASA should be doing, not SLS.

Re:Money not well spent

[vtcodger]

> It's a frequent refrain that government agencies are overspending and missing deadlines.

The implication being that private companies don't ever have budget and schedule problems. Which is -- of course -- quite untrue. They have the same problems as the government. All the time. Read up on the Trans Alaska oil pipeline some time.

I'd suggest the big projects will always tend to have problems. The reason is simple. Scheduling is done using the most probable time for each task. But some tasks take more time than projected and some take less. The distribution is skewed. Sometimes a "one month" task only takes two weeks. But perhaps equally often it takes two months. String together a dozen or so complex tasks and you can bet on usually taking longer than you expect and spending more than you budgeted.

And that's when you do the planning well ...

Re: Money not well spent

[WindBourne]

Spot on rei.

Re: Money not well spent

[WindBourne]

We did. That is why we had issues in a number of these nations

Re:Money not well spent

[Ol Olsoc]

I'd suggest the big projects will always tend to have problems. The reason is simple.

Really simple. The big projects aren't easy, and often have never been done before. And that's not how private industry works. Their idea of a big risk is New Coke or Pepsi free. Maybe an app for our smartphones. Going to the moon, or Going to Mars, or a freaky awesome new jet fighter isn't even on their radar, unless they can mitigate the risk.

Or a nuclear power generation plant either. I wonder, have there been any built without Government help?

Re:Money not well spent

[Immerman]

> There certainly could be grounds for a government agency to conduct basic research...
I would say basic research, AND tactical purchasing contracts to motivate hardware manufacturers to develop to broadly useful standards and capabilities.

For example, they could order the first batch of "orbital tugboats" designed for permanent orbital service, including maintenance and refueling. Vehicles which could be broadly useful platforms for a wide variety of services, but would involve some very different design compromises than existing vehicles. Once NASA has absorbed the initial development costs, the same basic vehicle can then be sold to everyone else at much closer to production cost. Include in the specifications a need for specific royalty-free docking hattches and external mounting points and you've also just created a de-facto standard for all other manufacturers to build to.

Re:Money not well spent

[Rei]

Indeed. I'm a fan of COTS-style programs as well. NASA can ensure a market for something in the beginning while giving the actual market time to develop.

What I wrote isn't to mean that NASA should "get out of rocketry" entirely. The key issue is, if they're doing rocketry, it should be to innovate - as mentioned, advanced concepts. To develop fully functional technology demonstrators rather than workhorse deliverables. To build on as small of a scale as possible for a given new technology, with full acceptance that project failure might occur. Airbreathers, metastable fuels, ballistic launch, active suspended launch structures, composite cryogenic tanks, inflatable reentry, you name it... any untested technology that claims significant benefits but is too risky/expensive for private enterprise to develop from scratch, that should be NASA's domain. But it shouldn't be approached with the intent to make a workhorse. We wouldn't accept the NHTSA making and selling cars and trucks, the FAA making and selling passenger jets, or the DOE making commercial power plants - and nor should we accept NASA doing the same with rockets.

Re:Money not well spent

[Teancum]

The big difference between private companies and government is that a private company who screws up with budget and schedule problems (like Rocketplane Kistler.... a private space launch company started well before even SpaceX and even won a similar COTS launch award to bring cargo to the ISS like SpaceX), they simply go bankrupt and go out of existence providing a niche for a new company to take its place. Managers and employees in that old company going bankrupt don't hold the same positions in any new companies, so they need to prove themselves all over again and more importantly can't make the same mistakes.

Governments on the other hand also have budget and schedule problems, but making bad governments go away is sort of a tough thing to do. Government agencies or even sections can almost never disappear. Entire governments almost never go away... or when they do they usually cause a whole lot of bloodshed and other civil strife that accompanies that sort of event. There are often counter-productive things that happen in government agencies too simply because the purpose of that government is not necessarily to provide a particular product or service, but instead has other significant goals well outside of the core principles. A good example of this is the Muslim outreach that Administrator Charles Bolden did with NASA... something that has absolutely nothing to do with aircraft R&D or sending vehicles to Mars.

There is nothing specifically wrong with governments doing things, and sometimes they get done well with government agencies too. It is how to deal with them when the organization falls apart is the problem.

Re: Money not well spent

[budgenator]

The real number is between 52 and 53% are taxpayers so it's more like 162 million tax payers.

Re: Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Alan Stern called the four years he spent leading the development of New Horizons a blur. That was half the length of the typical development cycle for comparable probe/satellite projects, and put an enormous personal and professional strain on all the people working on it. It is not reasonable to expect people to perpetually work at that pace. The New Horizons program was a bargain largely because it put undue and unsustainable strain on the employees and contractors involved. Yes, it was a well-managed program and is a good example of cutting a lot of red tape to get a project done, but you should expect a comparable program to cost half again that much if you're not overworking your employees. The only reason the project had such a short timeline in the first place, IIRC, was because the calculated launch windows were so rare.

Re:Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, NASA should, quietly, do all of the hard stuff, and then let the private sector take all of the credit and reap all of the rewards.

Wow; I cannot imagine why they're not falling all over themselves to worship your brilliance.

Re:Money not well spent

[Rei]

Right, because the whole point is showy things for the camera, rather than silly distractions like advancing the human species.

Re:Money not well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

That is precisely what happened in the Aeronautical side of things, NACA did all the basic research, and the private sector built the planes. (The public sector also reaps the rewards through a dynamic and tax paying industry and their employee's).

It's not a far fetched statement.

Re: Money not well spent

[david_thornley]

Which taxes are you counting here?

Re: Money not well spent

[budgenator]

Federal income taxes, I just did a bit of googling and found I was off a smidgen, in 2013 the 50th percentile paid 2.8% of the Federal Income taxes and 45% are estimated to pay no income taxes, therefore 55% are tax payers.

Re: Money not well spent

[david_thornley]

There's more taxes than Federal income taxes.

Bad management.

[Qbertino]

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.
Start a Softwareproject like that without having it properly planned or the right people involved and your project will go over budget manifold inmediately.
No surprise here.

Re:Bad management.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

and your project will go over budget manifold

I am familiar with fuel manifolds and oxidizer manifolds, but where exactly is the budget manifold in a rocket?

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are online dictionaries. I'd figure a Slashdot person would know how to use a search engine. Maybe not. Perhaps you could ask for a syllable limit?

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

From Mirriam Webster

Full Definition of manifold
1 a : marked by diversity or variety
      b : many
2: comprehending or uniting various features : multifarious
3: rightfully so-called for many reasons
4: consisting of or operating many of one kind combined

The poster's mistake was to use an adjective rather than the adverb "manifoldly" or an adverbial phrase such as "in manifold ways."

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's at the rear end of the rocket, that's where the money is burned.

Re:Bad management.

[MrKaos]

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.

You write software to fit the need. Nasa invented the "Agile" approach with Gemini and Mercury, but I doubt any of those guys would have to argue with their management about the need for descope in the middle of an iteration. Software is a malleable form of engineering and a number of approaches can be bought to bare to make it fit for purpose. Your appetite for risk and the impact of that risk is part of the process that decides what that is. After all how many software projects even have risk and issue logs even before we start to talk about formalized processes that double the amount of skilled people you require.

Software for military sub's reactor and civillian avionics are at least two places I can think of that require a high degree of scrutiny, there are certainly a lot more lives at stake. NASA have their own goals and objectives and this is how their processes are implemented.

Start a Softwareproject like that without having it properly planned or the right people involved and your project will go over budget

Well, that's true but it also comes down to application. If you can't afford to get it wrong because people will die, then you engineer it to a high degree of accuracy. If you can't afford to get it right because you need to launch a business then that is a risk you take.

If you are producing a lot of documentation and operational contracts then your project management will have enough milestones and checkpoints to understand *how long it will take* before you are over budget and if you are performing your objectives within budget because coming in under-budget might also mean you didn't plan well enough. Sometimes it's better to ask for extra budget, but only once - and you better deliver.

It was a great article, and it's premise that writing software well is an education that seems to take for ever to permeate makes a lot of sense but fortunately the other great thing about it is it can also be about the people you meet and the things you create. You can use modern software development techniques to produce good quality software that is fit for purpose, like a game for example, that doesn't have to be engineered to a high degree of accuracy. It that case it's better to engineer the process to be fun so people will be more productive because writing software isn't easy.

There was no indication in the article how much accuracy was a requirement for the launch control software.

Re:Bad management.

[vtcodger]

"There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft"

There's at least one. Software for US nuclear weapons systems. I once watched a USAF nuclear safety audit over the course of a few years. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the work. (Not that I thought that particular nuclear weapons system made a damn bit of tactical sense. Thankfully, it's long gone).

BTW, I think that any software involving digital communications deserves a lot more scrutiny than it's getting. My guess is that we will end up being very sorry that we've implemented what will turn out to be critical systems with a "ship it now and we'll fix any problems later" mindset.

Re:Bad management.

[jfdavis668]

He says at the bottom that he is a native German speaker, and please excuse his English.

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he did use the word almost correctly. Merriam (not Mirriam) Webster may not have a definition that applies, but I always find that the absolute best source for finding obscure definitions is Oxford English Dictionary (unfortunately, it's not free for most people). I've copied the relevant definition below, but in the context he used it it basically means "many fold" or "many times over"....he was saying "your project will go over budged many times over". The only mistake he made was that instead of "budged manifold" he should have put in/on/by in the middle ("on" doesn't sound right to me, but the definition says it's acceptable, though rare...I'm not versed enough in this sort of stuff to know if there's certain contexts where "on" would or wouldn't be appropriate).

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/113502?rskey=C7kL17&result=2#eid

B. n.1

1. by (also in, rarely on) manifold: many times over; in the proportion of many to one. Obs.

c1275 (?a1216) Owl & Nightingale (Calig.) 72 (MED), u art lodlich to biholde, & u art lo in monie volde.
a1393 Gower Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) v. 1778 Wherof the man..Stant more worth..Than he stod erst, be manyfold.
a1400 (c1303) R. Mannyng Handlyng Synne (Harl.) 6900 He bye yn almes on manyfolde.
1415 T. Hoccleve Addr. to Sir John Oldcastle 58 in Minor Poems (1892) i. 10 (MED), Thoffense..Was nat so greet as thyn by many fold.
a1425 (?c1350) Ywain & Gawain (1964) 607 More Curtaysi Fand he..mar conforth, by mony falde, Than Colgrevance had him of talde.
a1425 (c1385) Chaucer Troilus & Criseyde (1987) ii. 697 What to doone best were, and what eschue, That plited she ful ofte in many fold.
a1450 (c1410) H. Lovelich Hist. Holy Grail xiii. 944 (MED), Tholome gan beholde That he hadde the bettere be manifolde.
c1500 (?a1437) Kingis Quair (1939) cxxxi, The werk that first is foundit sure..langere sall endure Be monyfald.
1567 Compend. Bk. Godly Songs (1897) 191 The theif Judas did greit trespas, That Christ for siluer sauld: Bot Preistis wil tak, and his price mak, For les be mony fauld.
1596 W. Raleigh Discov. Guiana sig. Aiv, The countrey hath more quantity of Gold by manifolde, then the best partes of the Indies.

Re: Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a new part on the SLS. There's a hopper on the side to tip money into, and eventually it might take off.

Re:Bad management.

[invid]

Let's do the math, given a budget manifold of a hundred square meters, how fast would the velocity of cash have to be to equal the US yearly defense budget in real time, and what type of material would have to be used to withstand the heat of friction, given the cash is in one dollar bills?

Re:Bad management.

[Lumpy]

Yet during the shuttle years the mostly used software was a linux PC that translated all the older systems data streams into something easier to parse by the staff.

Not everything is heavily tested before deployment. They even allow Microsoft OS up there for the mission report laptops and the experimentation control laptops that have to run labview.

I wonder if the ISS laptops running windows 7 are bugging them to upgrade to 10?

Re:Bad management.

[hey!]

I am familiar with fuel manifolds and oxidizer manifolds, but where exactly is the budget manifold in a rocket?

It starts at the House Appropriations Committee offices, runs in a zigzag path to 330 E Street SW (NASA headquarters). From there it branches out to myriad contractors strategically scattered across a majority of Congressional districts.

Re:Bad management.

[Geoffrey.landis]

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft

There's at least one. Software for US nuclear weapons systems. I once watched a USAF nuclear safety audit over the course of a few years. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the work.

...and then, as an added assurance to make sure that nothing would slow down the ability to launch missiles, the code to launch missiles was set to all zeros, and never changed.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/...

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in congress.

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.

As someone testing and writing software for spacecraft*, I hope that's not true. I really hope that the software of a plane is better tested than the one that I do test, when I take the plane. Same goes for the nuclear power plant close to my hometown. Yes, we did find bugs after launch on several satellites that I worked on. (always feeling bad to not catch them, but most of the time it's interesting to try to understand them based on limited data available)

And the original article is not even speaking about on-board software for the SLS, "only" the ground control software. I would expect that most, if not all, safety-critical part of the software to be embedded. (to avoid any safety measure not to happen in case of communication breakdown. The only safety functions that could be done from ground are the one where the safety problems is in the long term, when you don't have to act quickly.

Just one last comment... space software, late and over budget? That's nominal, right?

* Definition of spacecraft may vary. I have only worked on unmanned satellites, which are part of the Spacecraft definition of wikipedia. If we restrict "spacecraft" to "manned spacecraft" (including launcher qualified for manned space, space station, space shuttle, for example) this may be true.

Re:Bad management.

[argStyopa]

Typical engineer. Should have spent at least some of that college time in Liberal Arts classes, then you'd know that "Manifold" can mean 'many or multiple' as well.

It's short for many-fold, ie multiple.

Re:Bad management.

[eth1]

and your project will go over budget manifold

I am familiar with fuel manifolds and oxidizer manifolds, but where exactly is the budget manifold in a rocket?

It's usually referred to as "accounts payable." It's an adapter that allows numerous tubes going to government contractors to connect to a single government teat.

Re:Bad management.

[budgenator]

Manifold:
A manifold is a topological space that is locally Euclidean (i.e., around every point, there is a neighborhood that is topologically the same as the open unit ball in R^n). To illustrate this idea, consider the ancient belief that the Earth was flat as contrasted with the modern evidence that it is round. The discrepancy arises essentially from the fact that on the small scales that we see, the Earth does indeed look flat. In general, any object that is nearly "flat" on small scales is a manifold, and so manifolds constitute a generalization of objects we could live on in which we would encounter the round/flat Earth problem, as first codified by Poincaré.

If the breadth of each software module is the x axis and the number of assigned personnel is the y axis and the module over-budgetness is the z axis then the project then like the Earth the whole project appears to be an manifold or Euclidean a topological space because if those other assholes are going to be over-budget and get more money, everybody else is going to slack off and get their share as well and therby maintaining the flatness!

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Gemini and Mercury were the programs that taught NASA that they needed a requirements based approach instead of agile. We learned from killing a few people and blowing up a bunch of rockets that we needed a better design approach.

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

The code was a post-hoc white-house mandated change, which provided no added security. Therefore, the DoD complied with civilian directives without damaging national security. For the record, the guardian's assertion that that was "the only safeguard" is in, every way, a bald lie.

Re:Bad management.

[HornWumpus]

See also 'Flight Manifold'. Multiple curves.

Damn CPAs trying to glamorize their jobs. Projects have max burn, planned burn and min burn curves. Not entirely unlike a plane has max speed, best cruise speed, best climb speed and stall speed curves.

Re:Bad management.

[HornWumpus]

Envelope damnit, duh.

Manifold is also a mathematical surface.

Re:Bad management.

[Geoffrey.landis]

The code was a post-hoc white-house mandated change, which provided no added security.

That's right-- if you set the code to all-zero's, and then prominently post instructions saying "the code is all zeros, do not change", it provides no added security.

Yep.

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

It that part of the budget that is locally Euclidean. That means that any two, nearby rocket components have no budgetary collisions in the rocket.

Re:Bad management.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as an engineer who got a perfect score on the verbal section of the GRE and near perfect on the SAT, that usage of "manifold" doesn't look right to me. "Manifold" is either an adjective or a noun; in either case it doesn't look correctly used in the original post. You can kind of see the intended meaning but that is not standard English usage.

Re:Bad management.

[MrKaos]

No, Gemini and Mercury were the programs that taught NASA that they needed a requirements based approach instead of agile.

Yes it was, in conjunction with IBM under Bill Tindall according to NASA history Howard W. "Bill" Tindall started with Mercury and Gemini ground software and later made a significant contribution to the quality of the Apollo on-board software. It wasn't called "Agile" back then however the contribution of quality were Agile components like iterations and time boxes. That's why I referred to "Agile" with it's collective name - capital "A" instead of "agile".

We learned from killing a few people and blowing up a bunch of rockets that we needed a better design approach.

So point to the specific incidents where a software problem killed people in NASA's space programs.

Re:Bad management.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That was actually a joke. I happen to have spent a better part of a decade by translating technical English for a living.

Where are the technical details?

[schini]

What kind of summary/ story is this? This was only the executive summary. We want to know what systems the stuff runs on, what programming languages are used; you know, the geek stuff!

Re:Where are the technical details?

[Dutch Gun]

The summary is happy to draw a conclusion for us though, it seems. No need to think for ourselves.

Re:Where are the technical details?

[Captain Hook]

Yeah, missing information about the technical side of the project but also missing any details about why the project is so delayed. Is it a specific system integration causing the problem, or quality issues showing up in testing or feature creep.

No useful information included in the summary or the original article.

Re:Where are the technical details?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the technical details are 'need to know', so the Chinese are probably better informed than whoever is writing http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html.

Re:Where are the technical details?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-015.pdf

Note that NASA is _not_ reinventing the wheel, and they _are_ using COTS, but since Commercial Software just simply isn't up to snuff off the shelf, they have to write "Glueware". Would _anybody_ trust Microsoft with this task?
Also note that references to cost overruns includes all the work that NASA put into the Constellation Program... which was cancelled, (Well, no longer funded, after 2011.)

Re:Where are the technical details?

[invid]

I'm wondering where you buy commercial software to control the hardware support systems for a space launch system that doesn't even exist yet.

Re:Where are the technical details?

[tsqr]

I'm wondering where you buy commercial software to control the hardware support systems for a space launch system that doesn't even exist yet.

Same here. A search on the Google Play store came up empty.

Re:Where are the technical details?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering where you buy commercial software to control the hardware support systems for a space launch system that doesn't even exist yet.

Same here. A search on the Google Play store came up empty.

What, you cadets never heard of preordering? Go stand in line like the rest of us!

Re:Where are the technical details?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. It's just Lunar Lander with a custom configuration file.
Of course the configuration is a 1.21 Gb XML...

STOP H-1BS FROM INFILTRATING OUR SYSTEMS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And this would not happen.

VOTE TRUMP 2016

Re:STOP H-1BS FROM INFILTRATING OUR SYSTEMS!!

[SocietyoftheFist]

And this would not happen.

VOTE TRUMP 2016

He loves using them, why would you want to take them away?

Re:STOP H-1BS FROM INFILTRATING OUR SYSTEMS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Send them all home! Stop being stupid! Demand Trump!

if it ain't broke...

[Gravis Zero]

even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own.

NASA decided to use existing software that was known to work and was fully understood rather than rely on commercial software which could be total shit. besides, they wouldn't be purchasing the software, they would be licensing it which means they would likely have to pay $X for Y computers for Z years. also, what happens when they want to add feature XYZ and they are unable to? freedom isn't free... it's 207 million dollars.

Re:if it ain't broke...

[johannesg]

Freedom _would_ be free if there were a GNU/Launch. Let's show them how it's done! Who is with me?

Re:if it ain't broke...

[hackertourist]

Commercial software is available now. Not so much 10 years ago.

From the report:

NASA made its decision regarding the architecture of the SCCS software nearly a decade ago and has continued on that path. In our view, this may no longer be the most prudent course of action given the significant advances in commercial command and control software over the last 10 years. Specifically, command and control software technology has matured to the point where COTS products may provide much of the functionality needed to launch the SLS and Orion with relatively little modification. Indeed, the two companies under contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station - Orbital Sciences Corporation and Space Exploration Technologies - both use COTS products to accomplish their missions.

Re:if it ain't broke...

[phayes]

Launch control software is NOT commercially available for STS! Each launcher has it's own LCS because even more so that with PCs the software needs to be adapted to the launch Hardware. Ponder the hardware differences between homogeneous Falcon-9 and STS's heterogeneous mix of solid boosters and cryogenic engines. Yes, one could adapt one LCS from one launcher to another but the undertaking is more a general rewrite due to differing hardware than it is a simple recompile.

I'm not even sure that if Nasa were to ask Space-X if they could purchase a copy of their LCS that Space-X would agree. Space-X is selling a launch service to orbit, not Joe's Space junkyard and spare parts.

Re:if it ain't broke...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because no software ever came packaged with extensibility and reconfigurability-across-hardware in mind?

I swear I've made this comment several times before, and even commented on the deja-vu of it once or twice.

Re:if it ain't broke...

[Lumpy]

"not Joe's Space junkyard and spare parts."

If that place existed, I would SO spend a lot of money there.....

"Yes I DO need a orbital insertion motor for a satellite... stop arguing and help me load it in the minivan."

Re:if it ain't broke...

[orledrat]

I'm with you, but only if you change the name to GNU/Pollo and let me paint a headless chicken on the front.

Re:if it ain't broke...

[Hognoxious]

Commercial software is available now. Not so much 10 years ago.

But according to TFA "even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own."

Are you suggesting that the submitter is confused, or perhaps being economical with the truth?

Re:if it ain't broke...

[phayes]

Extensible and re-configurable Launch Control Software for launchers as diverse as Falcon-9 and SLS does not exist no matter what any Anonymous Coward claims to think or say. Space-X / Boeing / ... will certainly have families of LCS for similar families of Launchers but the infrastructure to just grab a .deb and apt-get or configure/make/... to port components for launchers as dissimilar as STS & Falcon is nonexistent at present.

Re:if it ain't broke...

[johannesg]

I was thinking about "Space Launch System/d" ;-)

Re:if it ain't broke...

[orledrat]

That's not bad. Not bad at all.

Just need to make sure that those O-Poetterings can withstand the cold.

Re: if it ain't broke...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we had an LCS from some previous vehicle that combined liquid and solid fueled rockets...

Re:if it ain't broke...

[david_thornley]

There's plenty of software out there that's crappy just because it's so extensible and reconfigurable. There's tradeoffs involved.

They should have used Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, it's free, and it's from the world famous MICROSOFT !!

What else can go wrong?

Re:They should have used Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what happened here? I thought the /. answer for this sort of shit was "Rust"? I'm gone for a few days and this is what happens?

This is irrelevant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Trump is president we will be going back to the moon so we can build a wall there to keep the Mexicans out AND they'll be paying for it so it won't matter how over budget it is!

Re:This is irrelevant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic, I know.

So not only do you want a wall built but you want the people at the other side to pay for it... were I them I know what my answer would be.

So obviously coercion is required. Coerce them how? Military might is the obvious route but then there are probably a lot of people looking to create mayhem where the USA military is currently located once it leaves to focus on Mexico. Maybe economic sanctions? But if you want someone to pay for something then impoverishing them further doesn't help; you're back to physical force when they still can't pay. Get other countries to support your cause and join in punitive action? Doesn't work when the rest of the world thinks you're crazy.

No, if Trump's wall gets built then it's the people that voted for him that are going to be paying for it.

Re: This is irrelevant!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Trump says the Mexicans are going to pay for his wall he means he's going to tax Mexican goods when they come into the country. Of course this means the Americans buying the Mexican goods are the ones paying the tax.

Re: This is irrelevant!

[Anonymous Coward]

That'll just reduce the demand for Mexican goods and hence reduce the tax revenue they raise. If Mexico's other markets don't make up the shortfall of a vastly reduced market in the USA then the country will become even more impoverished thus increasing the number of people who desire to wish to live elsewhere. And there will be no wall to the north because duty on Mexican goods wont have raised enough money to pay for it after demand for them collapses.

Re:This is irrelevant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make a very big wall, with some stairs on top to the Moon.

Re:This is irrelevant!

[HornWumpus]

Last count Mexico gets $500 million/year in US foreign aid. Given how corrupt Mexico is, I'm confident that money is now 'the property' of someone important. He has likely made financial commitments...

It's not like there isn't a money stream to divert. The political will isn't there.

If they wanted the illegal immigration to stop they would enforce the laws in the workplace. They don't, hence it's approved. Everybody has noticed too, hence they are working just about all the construction jobs these days (which has crappified those jobs somewhat). 'Only crap jobs' is BS for old folks who think they know what's up, when it was 'only crap jobs' people wore onions on their belts.

This sounds all too familiar. . . .

[Salgak1]

. . . .and when the FBI started to develop its' own case manager, the "Virtual Case File", which was one of the more spectacular failures in Government IT Development.

When the post-mortem finally comes in, I'd be more than willing to bet that it was due to (1) lack of formalized baseline requirements to hang an initial design on, and the real program-killer, (2) constant requirements creep. Because contractors are unwilling to tell a Federal Customer "no" (because it usually results in decreases in funding in the next task order, or re-allocation of slots to another contractor. . .), there's a constant "just add this one little thing". Over and over again, until you have an unworkable mess and a design that looks nothing like the initial requirement.

The same kind of pressures destroyed the Navy A-12 "Avenger" attack jet in 1991: constant scope creep, until the aircraft was too heavy to fly off an aircraft carrier. The resulting legal fight lasted 13 years. . .

Re:This sounds all too familiar. . . .

[jittles]

. . . .and when the FBI started to develop its' own case manager, the "Virtual Case File", which was one of the more spectacular failures in Government IT Development.

When the post-mortem finally comes in, I'd be more than willing to bet that it was due to (1) lack of formalized baseline requirements to hang an initial design on, and the real program-killer, (2) constant requirements creep. Because contractors are unwilling to tell a Federal Customer "no" (because it usually results in decreases in funding in the next task order, or re-allocation of slots to another contractor. . .), there's a constant "just add this one little thing". Over and over again, until you have an unworkable mess and a design that looks nothing like the initial requirement.

The same kind of pressures destroyed the Navy A-12 "Avenger" attack jet in 1991: constant scope creep, until the aircraft was too heavy to fly off an aircraft carrier. The resulting legal fight lasted 13 years. . .

Then they aren't handling their customer properly. I used to do contracting with the Department of Defense. I also helped with business development (including some pretty huge dollar value contracts) by writing technical approaches to these RFPs. When we got these contracts I was the lead engineer and often handled some of the project management aspects as they related to the engineering efforts. I went to every meeting with the customer, from cradle to grave. And you're right, I never did tell the customer 'No - I can't do that.' Because the customer doesn't want to think you cannot do something, even if the reason you're declining the task is merely to prevent feature creep and schedule slip. Instead, you have to convince the customer that while what they want is technically feasible, it is not in their best interests to pursue whatever feature they're asking for. Once you get the customer on the boat with you, make it feel like it was their decision not to implement the feature, they will love you. They will do everything they can to make sure you get every single follow on contract possible. Sometimes they'll even subtly alter their future requirements in order to make it easier for your company to win a contract from GSA or whatever agency is handling procurement.

Re:This sounds all too familiar. . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Then they aren't handling their customer properly."

I accept your work history as stated. However it is a matter of fact, documented repeatedly by reputable, independent organizations like SEI, PMI, IEEE and ACM, that scope creep is a major cause of project failure. In fact it is such a common cause of problems that one has to believe that "not handling the customer properly" is a non-trivial exercise in politics, budgeting, organizational dynamics, the Peter Principle, and likely 30 other important factors besides.

Pithy statements like "just handle your customer properly" make it sound like this is an easy thing to do, PM 101 so to speak. The history of computing shows it to be otherwise.

Proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the standards of proof I require are greater than jumping to great conclusions on very limited insight.

A friend of mine worked on a project for a big telecom's provider, only a couple of years duration. After about a year, outside commercial offerings in the same space became available, they conducted a review, concluded the outside offerings were good enough and cost effective enough, so cancelled the remainder of the project.

Really I guess that's the story/question here, at what point does/did continuing the project become throwing good money after bad?

Calling H1B, calling H1B !!

[Anonymous Coward]

... If NASA can't stay within budget and can't get things done on time, it's time to eliminate NASA and privatize space flight ...

How about letting H1B slaves working on the project?

Better still, why don't we simply outsource the whole thing to India? Their space agency is capable of producing really really cheap rockets

Link to the report

[hackertourist]

28-page PDF

Clash Royale

[clashroyalewars]

Best Hog Freeze Deck Hi there! I have seen people looking for some good hog decks, so here i am posting one of the best hog freeze decks. More Visit CLASH ROYALE

"explore" space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Space is billions of light years in size, or 122,006,476,800,000,000,000,000 kilometers. What does going 400 kilometers up achieve?

We are "exploring" space by taking pictures and measurements from our computer chairs. We don't need to send people into the upper atmosphere either. Our machines keep getting better and better, people aren't.

If you think putting people in space has anything to do with exploring or science, you are mistaken.

Re:"explore" space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside of your mom's basement is a mere 20 meters, but what's the point, right?

Re:"explore" space?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still on the same planet, but that means a hostile barren vacuum is just the same, right?

How much of this planet have you explored? How many countries? How many different people have you met?

Yeah, didn't think so. You play video games and stay inside 99% of the time, not even looking at what's right here, all the while demanding we retrieve rusty dead rocks from Mars because SCIENCE!

Fuck off.

LORUM

[Anonymous Coward]

LIPSUM

non-productive jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the pork barrel spending giving money to everyone who suddenly became "disabled" after the housing bubble crashed? Or the millions of people on food stamps because they gave up looking for work?

Hint: government programs aren't designed to DO anything, they're designed to redistribute wealth and win dick-size contests with other countries for strategic reasons.

Re:non-productive jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

>redistribute wealth
wealth is for 99% being redistributed to the wealthiest individuals and the largest corporations.

More SLS yellow journalism by /.

[Anonymous Coward]

After 8 dreary years of the Obama space program; the broken promises, spectacular failures and cronyism of commercial space; tedious and trivial grind of the ISS mission; the side show spectacle of billionaires increasingly absurd attempts to recover rocket stages, you'd think people would finally be ready for the successor to Apollo. Give me SLS and a real goal, to return to the moon, any day.

Privatise Nasa

[Anonymous Coward]

Privatise Nasa... then take bids for whatever projects the US government wants to engage in. Problem solved. What's that I hear? The wailing and gnashing of teeth of socialists scorned?

Re:Privatise Nasa

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that dense? NASA _is_privatized, and as been since they took over control from the Air Force!
NASA does not build Rocket Boosters, companies like Morton Thiokol do. Nasa does not build the Computer systems involved here, companies like Harris do.
NASA does do the hard R&D work that corporations are too cheap and lazy to do these days, and then hands the designs over to them along with fat contracts.
How do I know this? I was a NASA, (And DOE, NSF, NIH, etc.), Contractor employee!

And do you know what these corporations do with the information and contracts? They keep them to themselves, so that JPL and Boeing have to resort to Industrial Espionage to find out what Aerospace Corp. is up to in Hardened Chip technology.
No, NASA needs to be _Nationalized_. All the Scientists and Engineers and Technicians need to work directly for NASA again, like in the Olden Days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

What's that I hear? The wailing and gnashing of teeth of crackpot, corrupt, free-marketeers scorned?
BTW, Fuck You, you ignorant parasitic twat.

Being over budget is good for NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Being over budget is good for NASA... NASA just ate $207 million of tax payer money... that is a win for them! This is why government agencies make wasteful decisions, because the waste is them!

Re:Being over budget is good for NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

> $207 million of tax payer money
that's not even the cost of 1 military jet.

Tell congress its for bombing children

[TheCarp]

That is the whole problem with NASA, they don't kill anyone. If they at least blew up some brown children now and again this would have gotten so much funding it would have been operational already.

Re:Tell congress its for bombing children

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the whole problem with NASA, they don't kill anyone. If they at least blew up some brown children now and again

They once blew up a high school teacher...isn't that close enough?

Re:Tell congress its for bombing children

[TheCarp]

If they had planted some drugs in her locker and claimed the whole thing was her fault because she was high; I guarantee you there would be men on their way to put footprints on mars right now.

Government waste? SHOCKING!

[prisoner-of-enigma]

A government program, years late and millions over budget and still isn't as good as what the private sector already had? SHOCKED! Shocked I am!

Clearly these same type of people need to be placed in charge of our healthcare!

Thank you President Reagan

[Overzeetop]

The "outsource everything" mantra of the 80s is still with us. It doesn't say in the article, but most of the work done by NASA is actually performed by outside contractors, and wI would bet a dollar that this is the work of USA (United Space Alliance - aka Lockheed and Martin Marietta) or one of the other giant government contractors like CSC or Booz. It may be NASAs project, but congress pretty much has gutted the real workforce so everything merely has project managers rather than actual engineers.

As for the submitter's (and, to some extent, the article writer's) take, I think they got it backwards. This project was started BEFORE there was any commercial launches of significance and so the code simply didn't exist for a robust launch control system as envisioned. The article does point out that there is more software available today, and that it could be an option. OTOH, we're talking about proprietary code from one of two competing firms with no outside review of the codebase. That's fine for putting up a couple of tons of food and electronics, but a private company has yet to successfully, reliably put humans into earth orbit. And that kind of responsibility is an order of magnitude higher than supplies.

Re:Thank you President Reagan

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA _still_ has some of the best Scientists and Engineers on the planet, and on occasion, off it as well. But it's all R now, and just a bit of D. And some pretty shoddy management.
I used to have a subscription to "NASA Tech Briefs", and they do amazing Research in all sorts of areas. I even had a couple of things written up. But Corporate America has decided that Government should best spend the money on the Research; the profits are to be made in Production after all. Thus the withering of Corporate Research Labs, (Bye-Bye Bell Labs...), and the rise of University and Government Labs.

I don't really believe that it's entirely the Reagan Administration's fault; after all, it was Nixon that killed Apollo 18,19, and 20, and the Apollo Applications Program, which planned on having a Manned Lunar Base by 1977.

So... there is no "Nixon Space Center" in California, and no "Ronald Wilson Reagan Center For High Energy Physics" in Texas... (I'm _not_ kidding about that last bit- We got a bunch of Surplus SSC Computers, and they didn't wipe the Disks, and Root still had the default "-apollo-" password. (Oh, the irony...) My Apollo DN680 had Architectural CAD on it, including layouts for the Administration buildings. It is entirely possible that the name was chosen, if not officially, quite deliberately, for still barren ground.)

Ooh! Ooh! I got to work on a Moon Rock! It wasn't very big, but we weren't allowed to damage it. So we gently bathed it with 136Xe at around the Coulomb Barrier looking for odd, very odd, Isotopes. Moon Rocks turned out to be boring; pretty much like Earth Rocks. But we had unprecedented precision; we were using Gammasphere.

People who work at NASA are IR

[Anonymous Coward]

Internally Retired.

Sun Microsystems assigned a consultant to me to roll out 100 servers in a data center at Moffat Field. The guy they assigned normally works on a NASA contract. He was installing (1) server a day. I flew out there to see what was going on and he explained the whole scam to me. "This is very fast compared to how I normally work."

The last paragraph of the post is spot on.

Re:People who work at NASA are IR

[Anonymous Coward]

Internally Retired.

Sun Microsystems assigned a consultant to me to roll out 100 servers in a data center at Moffat Field. The guy they assigned normally works on a NASA contract. He was installing (1) server a day. I flew out there to see what was going on and he explained the whole scam to me. "This is very fast compared to how I normally work."

The last paragraph of the post is spot on.

So a data point of one recounting how, servers were setup of all things, by an AC makes it all "toa-tall-ee trues dudz!" Nope, no sir, I do not like it.

Brought to you by Elon Musk

[tomhath]

SpaceX, solar power generation, battery technology, electric cars, anti-nuke, etc., etc. His shills are all over /.

Re: Brought to you by Elon Musk

[WindBourne]

Actually, musk and many of his followers are nuke fans. After all, they tend to be scientists, rather than simple GOP trolls.

Re: Brought to you by Elon Musk

[Coren22]

GOP is anti nuke? Since when?

I would say rabid environmentalists are anti-nuke, because they think the wind and solar power generation will totally produce enough power to decommission all the nuclear plants.

Re: Brought to you by Elon Musk

[WindBourne]

No, tomhath is the GOP troll.

And yes, a number of the rabid environmentalists along with dems ARE anti-nukes. But, I do not consider them to be scientists or logical about.
These ppl are not much different from the far right wing nut jobs that refuse to look logically at climate change.
And yeah, the idea of our converting to 100% AE, which is mostly wind and solar, has to be one of the stupidest things that I have heard.

BTW, I am hoping that with O being pro-nuke that during the lame-duck session, the GOP will work with him to create a REAL energy program. We need to restart development on nukes, but more on the gen IV, and skip the 1GW gen III from the commercial companies. Regardless, we need new nukes and soon.

Re: Brought to you by Elon Musk

[Coren22]

Agreed. The main risks from nuclear power are all the old plants that should have been decommed long ago. I wish someone would put more effort towards LFTR, as that seems to be the safest possible nuclear power solution.

Re: Brought to you by Elon Musk

[WindBourne]

The weird thing is, that money that was set aside to handle the 'waste', is ideal for the plants to grab, install new lftr reactors from trans atomic and flible, and then process the old waste. In doing that, they cut the waste down to 5% size and make it safe in 200 years. This is a win-win-win. And yet , CONgress does nothing.

software over budget?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the planning in the world doesn't guarantee meeting budget. Budgets are made to show that you tried to plan out your project, not that you planned 100% correctly. Plus there's no incentive to over-budget; no one will let your project even get started.

Re:software over budget?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the frightening regularity with which these large government contracts go far over budget (F-22, F-35, SLS, etc) perhaps there should be an incentive to (at least slightly) over-budget. Going over-budget once should be a major hit for your company, doing twice should ensure that you don't get another government contract for a decade, more than that and your company should be banned from any large scale government work for the better part of a century.

Wondering the language...

[Parker Lewis]

... as every popular language today states it's used by NASA!

Re:Wondering the language...

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX writes their launch control software using National Instruments LabVIEW as the primary development platform. They gave a talk at the LabVIEW developer's conference several years ago and it was impressive what they are doing. The process is highly automated from the time the bird leaves the hangar until launch with NI hardware and software. There is a mention of NI's work with SpaceX here in an interview of NI's founder in 'Fast Company':

http://www.fastcompany.com/1783494/doctor-very-dr-james-truchards-quest-endless-innovation

Way off the mark

[JunkYardDawg]

A couple of key points: 1) Software development at NASA is unlike anything 99.999% of the tech heads here would recognize. The scrutiny and the level of detail and failover protection in their code is unbelievable. Lives are at stake with their code or at worst millions of dollars of hardware crash into the surface of Mars and an entire mission is ruined. For most of us, if we have a bug in our code we patch and life moves on. If NASA has a bug in their code someone may die. 2) I have a friend that works for NASA. After SpaceX's first successful launch I said to him "big deal, NASA gave them blueprints, designs so this wasn't much of an accomplishment". His reply was "no, NASA did go to SpaceX early on and offered assistance in design but SpaceX turned them away. SpaceX is in business to make money and they cannot carry the burden of triple and quadruple redundancies that NASA has in their spacecraft. NASA's designs are too expensive." So if SpaceX is using off the shelf software you should recognize that SpaceX is willing to accept defects in order to ensure their profitability. NASA's needs are fundamentally different; they are to protect life and missions. SpaceX will take risks that NASA will not(and BTW, go ahead and sign up for that ride on a SpaceX rocket knowing this). This is why I am sure NASA did not choose off the shelf software and decided to write it themselves. This post is way off the mark to call this just a pork play.

Re:Way off the mark

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds good, but it ignores the idea that complexity is the enemy of reliability.

It may be that the NASA way is also not the most reliable way.
The only way to know it to eventually look at actual flight statistics for a large number of flights.
It may be that the emperor has no clothes.

Re:Way off the mark

[omnichad]

important capabilities like automatic failure detection, are being deferred, the audit noted

Re:Way off the mark

[Anonymous Coward]

They triple and quarduple security and then let the Columbia shuttle disintegrate on return because of political decision of high management. They turned a blind eye on warnings their engineers issued of damaged wing and didn't order inspection of the damaged area.
"Nobody BELIEVED that piece of foam can make such a big hole." WTF the science is that?
It seems that scientists are just lowly workforce in NASA. Politicians are those who make decisions.

Re:Way off the mark

[phayes]

Triple redundancies in all NASA launch processes? That has never existed.

Where were the triple redundancies that prevented Challenger or Columbia?

Sorry, but while there were some at NASA that did indeed approach Space-X telling them that their redundancy methodology MUST be implemented for Falcon-9 to become Man-Rated it wasn't to preserve a global culture of redundancy that some claim is present at NASA. No NASA launcher has ever had the level of redundancy they were attempting to require from Space-X. It isn't even present in SLS - an early O-Ring Burn through towards the main body or some other unthought of weakness (as Space-X experienced during CRS-7) is potentially inescapable.

No, the triple/quadruple redundancies were just an attempt to tie down Space-X's resources that were correctly recognized and refused. Falcon-9 at least has a 1 engine out capability that has already allowed it to maintain delivery of it's primary cargo (and would have delivered it's secondary cargo as well were it not for NASA strictures).

Re:Way off the mark

[Anonymous Coward]

"an early O-Ring Burn through towards the main body or some other unthought of weakness"

True enough there were(for STS)/are probably droves of unthought of weaknesses in any launch system, but the O-Ring burn through was a known issue that they simply chose to ignore. Engineers were telling NASA/Thiokol Execs that morning that the launch needed to be called off with at least one of them claiming they contemplated bringing a rifle to work to get the launch scrubbed.

Re:Way off the mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Where were the triple redundancies that prevented Challenger or Columbia?"

Sorry but this is a cheap shot. We are talking about flight computers and software here, not O-Rings. And yes, the Shuttle had triple redundant computers, all running software independently developed. Nor did that system work on a method of hot swaps or cascade failures. The triply redundant computers all had to agree on matters like launch approvals or the launch would be halted (they ran in parallel in other words).

Since you mentioned it, the O-Rings in the SRBs were dual redundant. IIRC after Columbia they were upgraded to triple redundant. In most of these systems the general goal is triple redundancy but the engineers and programs sometimes have to back off due to weight, cost, size or other concerns. Every time they do this there is a "cost" in that the risk of failure goes up. Engineers don't like that.

The real risk mitigation on the SRBs, the ideal you understand, would have been to eliminate the O-Rings and segments altogether. It's much safer that way. The issue with that was that (again, IIRC) the fuel would need to be poured and cast in a single operation and the engineers simply didn't think it could be done. Building the SRBs as a single segment was too logistically challenging.

There was a famous crash of an Air Alaska McDonnell Douglas MD-83, back in 2000. It crashed due to a horizontal stabilizer jackscrew seizing. Although the proximate cause was poor maintenance, a contributing cause was that there was no redundancy in this flight critical system.

Re:Way off the mark

[Anonymous Coward]

You may recall that the guy who said that was a manager, not an engineer. I seriously doubt that the engineers were all that surprised.

Re:Way off the mark

[Anonymous Coward]

The Space Shuttle had 5 computers, 4 of them operating in dual pairs, all using the same software (Written by IBM Federal Systems). The 5th computer was a stand alone computer that would be the last computer running, and used a bare bones software (written at Draper Labs).

The redundancy paradigm for most of the components of the Space Shuttle was 'fail-fail-safe' though the systems were never actually reliable enough to be operated in that capacity.

When discussing the O-Rings, sometimes one can close up potential failure points, but at the same time open others up. The SRB's were a case in point as making a single booster shell would have removed the problem with the O-Rings, but it would ALSO have opened up a risk with regards to the fuel mixture. The risk trade off was that the O-Rings were considered safer, because they were understood, and nobody had ever made a solid rocket core that was just under 150 feet in length.

career prospects

[ole_timer]

Let's see - NASA or Space-X...not even a contest

Pork is only a secondary goal for NASA

[raymorris]

The summary claims that pork pork is the primary goal for NASA. Perhaps, but NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says the foremost priority is something else:

"When I became the NASA administrator, he (President Obama) charged me with three things.
One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math;
he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and
third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good"

One would hope nuclear control systems are

[Viol8]

Because if this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Happened at a nuclear power station or a nuclear missles launch system a lot of people would be in deep radioactive shit.

And that's a surprise - how?

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of software development projects are late and well over budget. There is a lot of competitive pressure that forces bidders to give false expectations on both fronts, over and over and over again. If your offer is projected to take x million and y months, and your competitors' is 4x/5 million and 4y/5 months, who is going to win the bid? Of course, the winner will probably end up requiring 2x million and 2y months to get the job completed (if at all) so next time your bid will be 3x/5 million and 3y/5 months, lest you lose again. And the vicious circle is up and running.

Re:And that's a surprise - how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Space and military software is not up for bidding in the standard manner. Teams are created to see through a 20+ year life cycle. The coders needs security clearance, the companies they work for have to have proven track records in the field.

You're a moron if you believe the specs are sent out to anyone willing to cut some code on a budget.

May I perhaps suggest...

[tlambert]

May I perhaps suggest... a 2230 E Rocket Launch Controller?

Re:May I perhaps suggest...

[wafflemonger]

The could have contracted Kerbodyne to make this.

"In other words...

[backwardsposter]

...even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own."

Yeah, other, incorrect words. "...when it was made a decade ago that was exactly the time that SpaceX was beginning to build its rocket." Because when a commercial rocket is being built is the time to decide it's software is ironclad? And that the software you have available from NASA that was tried and true was definitely defunct? NASA has a lot of process to go through, including COTS and acquisition, so I'm not sure what you're proposing here was a better alternative without hindsight.

Re:"In other words...

[backwardsposter]

Of course, captain hindsight would have been correct about this project, and I just now realized that after making my post. Thanks captain hindsight!

What COTS Launch Software?

[robogoofers]

There is no Commercial Off-The-Shelf launch software.

Mod parent down, please.

[WindBourne]

I never should have posted earlier and lost my mod points. You trolls need to be modded down

Make versus Buy Decision

[Geoffrey.landis]

Yes, the article seems to be trying to manufacture outrage out of nothing.

It's a make-versus-buy decision. Industry does these decisions all the time. When your applications are unique, the decision tends to go toward "make your own;" when your application is something that many other people also do, the decision tends to go toward "buy the commercial product".

Buying off the shelf comes with hidden costs unless what is available exactly meets your need-- if you need to write a new contract for every change (and since you still haven't designed the system you're launching, there will be a lot of changes needed, as you keep refining requirements) every single change is a chance for the vendor to demand large dollar payments.

And the article's statement "why doesn't NASA just use what Space-X used" is absurd. Ten years ago, Space-X was an unknown company who had just launched their first rocket. Which failed. As did their next launch. And the one after that.

Re:Make versus Buy Decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the 4th fall into the swamp?

Re:Make versus Buy Decision

[Anonymous Coward]

... and they still don't write to aerospace quality standards. It saves a lot of money by throwing away a few dozens of billions of dollars of lessons learned.

Our education system has failed

[Overzeetop]

No, the submitter has 3rd grade reading comprehension skills and an agenda. And it's in the summary which suggests that software was available, TFA quote is actually "Commercial software products would be a better option for NASA as well, according to the audit, especially given recent advances in the area." Note the use of future tense, not past unreal conditional. IOW, it still might be more economical at this point, but it wasn't an option when the project was started.

The commercial firms which are servicing the space program had never delivered a payload to orbit at the time of the original design specification and plan, and had no tested software at the time. NASA, otoh, had subroutines already written which had been tested and vetted for decades, over hundreds, if not thousands, of successful launches and NASA wanted to use those [tested] routines in their new launch control system. The contract was to put them all together into a cohesive whole. Not a trivial task, but also not writing from scratch.

  More importantly there is no COTS software in this arena. This is not Word with a custom skin. This is piece by piece built based on the unique hardware and control systems which are part of the critical safety path of the launch sequence. Even if SpaceX or another space transport company has software they use, it would have to be stripped, rebuilt, and re-tested for the configuration at the KSC launch complex to be used for these flights.

The crap of the crap

[Ektanoor]

SLS may be really The Crap. However, the original post is surely the proof Space is too sweet for the flies to leave the pie in peace...

Whoever thinks "private" soft is more effective than any government funded project is dumber the dumbest ass on the road. He does not know nothing about space travel, specially the fact that there are still lots of unknowns behind the "simplicity" of celestial mechanics. These problems are hard enough to turn a well-planned trajectory into the nightmare of a very fluid situation, specially if there are people inside the crap. Now tell me what commercial venture will risk its head on such things. Or has anyone took off the "Ltd." out of modern business?!

NASA glued stuff? Great! That's exactly what we all do today. We GLUE stuff! We "optimize expenses", cut budgets by the half, mix apples with carrots to sell them in Tetrapacks. Oh! And you don't need to be a government agency for that because EVERYONE does it! That's what we call "Business Processes" without even thinking that there is a first principle voiding everything we do - "No changes/improverment shall stop the work of the current business..." But we are above that! Let Hell freeze over, we make a revolution! We create "the stuff" able to work everywhere for everyone everytime.

The only ooops here is that even before NASA sent people to the Moon, even before USSR sent the Sputnik and the nazis lauched its V-2... There was such stuff! It worked everywhere for everyone everytime. Its name - "snake oil".

significant figures

[Anonymous Coward]

I always like when a project predicts a budget to three significant figures and then misses the target by a factor of 2. Then rinses and repeats.

$207 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell do you spend that much when all you need is a fuse, a match and someone who can run very fast.

How they choose contractors

[clifwlkr]

I don't know for sure, but I would bet that it involves government contractors. Have you ever looked at how they actually choose contracting companies?

It starts with the fact that they have all kinds of preferential treatment involved. Is your company run by veterans? How about a disabled veteran? How about a disabled veteran woman? Best yet, a disabled veteran native American woman! Now you get the contract for sure!

I interviewed at a few of these kinds of shops. The heads were all FIGURE heads, not actually smart people. I could not stand talking with them as they clearly knew absolutely nothing about software development. Likewise, everyone they attracted was people who were not turned off by this. No wonder we get the crappy software in the government space we do.

I considered opening my own shop and bidding on some of these, because honestly the software is SO bad I would only have to half try, and it would be stellar. But after looking into it, I determined the only way I would ever be successful is to make my wife the head. In order to really get ahead, we had to prove her connection to her Native American past, and we haven't been able to conclusively close that loop yet. I joke with her that she should join the military and get shot just to help the cause, but she hasn't been willing yet.

Bring back fair and open bidding on these, and don't just go to the cheapest solution. I think that is what ends up costing all of the extra in the long run is that these companies under bid, have no idea what they are doing, and usually end up missing the deadlines. Most are not run by people who know how to build modern softare.

Can we get a new filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer to not see all the posts by Libertarian trolls and their absolutist, theoretical, impractical, and anti-social nonsense.

Re:Can we get a new filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

"absolutist, theoretical, impractical, and anti-social nonsense"

Oh you mean like Space Nutter nonsense about colonizing Mars because mankind is doomed?

200 million? Over budget? Chris, is that you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heeeeey, are we talking about NASA software or Star Citizen?

Pathetic Click-Bait.

[JustBoo]

Last paragraph is Pathetic Click-Bait by some clueless Internet Dude who sniff's and licks Elon Musk's ass. "Ain't nobody got time for that." Off to a real news site.

Re:Pathetic Click-Bait.

[phayes]

No, it's the ravings of someone who thinks that the Impala/JATO urban legend is plausible. SLS is too different from anything else for anyone to be able to easily/cheaply reuse anyone else's LCS. That you didn't make that point & instead ad-hominimed Elon Musk makes you no better.

Re:Pathetic Click-Bait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there an apostrophe in "sniff's" but not in "licks"? How does that work?

lolz how hard is it to write...

[Anonymous Coward]

...an app that sends a command to say "launch"?

I smell OO software.

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is great!!! Just draw what you want and split the software up in to ten layers running on different machines and the use as many strange libraries you can find!

WTF! This isn't what was supposed to happen? I guess we have to throw it all away and try again.... as usual.

Ah SLS

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when I thought that SLS couldn't disappoint any more. Everything about it and its associated programs seems to result something that costs orders of magnitude more than originally projected with less capabilities than initially stated.

Technical details,please

[drwho]

I'd like to know what programming languages, operating systems, development methodologies, quality assurance, etc. are being used. COTS software is usually not designed to be used in the critical operations which NASA performs. Lots of software even says that it is not for such things in the license agreement.

We have to keep the typical moron programmer far away from NASA projects. It is customary for programmers to criticize MBAs and other managers for having no coding knowledge. Well, too often coders have to deep computer science or systems integration knowledge, and can't manage a project which has more than three people working on it.

Sheesh

[Indigo]

Slashdot posts have had their ups and downs over the years, but this kind of information-free, foaming-at-the-mouth crap is really beyond the pale. The article submissions should include at least some informative content - if any dead strawmen need further beatings, why, that's what the readers are here for.

As to the topic at hand. Love the SLS or hate it, whoever thought NASA should have used off-the-shelf software for SLS launch control should be punished by 5 years working SAP ERP's support desk. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. But at that level of scale, complexity, and criticality, off-the-shelf should not be your go-to option.

Attempts to revise history of risky innovation

[mi]

Commercial Air Travel was first created as an adjunct to the US Post Office, which is a government organization.

A lie. The first fixed-wing commercial flight happened in 1914 (in Florida). USPS established airmail in 1918. How embarrassing, no wonder, you'd rather remain anonymous. Yes, carrying airmail was a big part of the early airlines' business, but it was not what started the industry. USPS was a (happy) customer — not an investor.

Telephones were spurned on by the government mandated monopoly that ended up being called AT&T.

Another lie. The government-created monopoly came into being many years after various competing phone companies appeared — and froze innovation in it for decades, I might add.

Personal Automobiles were given their lease on life in the form of a road network that was er um, paid for by government.

Government-built roads existed, yes, but personal automobiles were created independent of government support — a risky investment, that paid off.

You need to get your libertarian thoughts out of your head and come into the real world

An anonymous liar is in no position to tell me — nor anyone — what I "need to do".

By the way, have you recently flown on an airliner? because if you have, you have benefited from government investment

I may have. But, if it were useful, had the government not made it, it would've been made anyway. And, likely, done better.

The point remains — tax-monies spent on things not required for the country to continue to exist represent tyranny.

Re:Attempts to revise history of risky innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is required for a country to exist except:

a) borders
b) a government or leadership figure
c) a populace or military to defend it

Yet somehow I fail to see how you are tyrannized by:

-basic scientific research
-roads and infrastructure
-NASA
-people not dying in the streets of poverty

No. you are a sad sad little man who thinks that in a world of anarchy he could live a freer and safer life than the one he does in this modern world.
yet oddly, you still prefer to live HERE, rather than in Somalia or some other place with actual lack of government.

Re:Attempts to revise history of risky innovation

[mi]

Yet somehow I fail to see how you are tyrannized by:

• basic scientific research
• roads and infrastructure
• NASA
• people not dying in the streets of poverty

Whoever wishes to pay for these things, is welcome to do so. Using the government's monopoly on violence to pay for them is bona fide tyranny.

No. you are a sad sad little man

Love and kisses to you too, hater.

yet oddly, you still prefer to live HERE, rather than in Somalia

The stupid meme is so old, articles have been written to debunk it. Somalia was destroyed by an authoritarian (Socialist — hi, Senator Sanders) government , and is now slowly climbing back to life. The recovery does benefit from weak central government, but it still remains too unpleasant a place to move to.

Now, why wouldn't you move to (no, not North Korea) Venezuela?

Government Waste...

[Methadras]

With little to no oversight, millions over budget, and behind schedule, and proprietary? I'm shocked, SHOCKED I say...