(January 16, 2015 at 4:37 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Interestingly, Elon Musk has weighed in on a heavy lifter, stating that he could likely make one better, cheaper, and quicker than the SLS projects proposals. I think that this offer is doomed to failure because if the SLS is the model, cheaper and quicker isn't what we're looking for, and even though we seem perfectly content with allowing an entity like SpaceX to ferry our spacemen to and fro, we seem unwilling to relinquish direct congressional oversight on a project -guaranteed- to produce as much opportunity for career perks as the SLS. Put simply, if there were some folks in government who thought that farming it out to SpaceX would make their buddies more money on grift than the cureent SLS - they'd go with that....and damn the rest of it, but they know better.
It's not what failure averse, politically neutered, and hamstrung-by-contradictory-public-expectation NASA is looking for, but it is what a space agency untethered to political expediency will need. Think about it, if NASA suffers a partial launch failure hot on the heels of a complete launch failure, NASA would be out of business for 18 months. If NASA made the economically sensible decision to use russian engines to save cost, while accepting an economically acceptable trade off, NASA would be politically crucified.
