Comment by panick21
2 days ago
Starship is irrelevant. SLS was dumb already in 2011 when Starship doesn't exist. Its a dumb system and was never the right system. NASA own analysis showed that.
People who defend SLS on the bases that Starship isn't good don't get it. It doesn't matter if Starship exists. SLS should have been canceled even if you assume the state of the rocket industry in 2015.
Anybody with half a brain and 3h time to do analysis on the topic could figure this out.
It's a total jobs program. I don't know what Starship will be, but at least Starship is trying to do something new and potentially very valuable. Maybe it is too ambitious but SLS is not that ambitious and not that successful :(
The only reason NOT to cancel SLS outright is "we can't get anything better". "Sure, it's pretty dumb, but it can be built, and good luck getting anything better built."
Starship is important because the closer Starship gets to coming online the more obviously wrong that line of thought is.
As is, Starship, with its first stage being online and reusable already says "we could have done something like SLS much cheaper if we were smart about it". When the second stage comes fully online, the argument for SLS will diminish further.
This not actually a good reason. First of all, of course you can't get anything better if you never ask for anything better or consider alternatives or put any money into anything better.
If you never invested in anything else, then the M4 Sherman tank would still be the best tank. And then you could say 'we can't get anything better' and continue to use it while refusing to ever even put 1$ into developing anything else.
And actually there are plenty of ways, even without Starship to do these things differently.
I remember when SLS fans in 2016 told me that SLS is real and Falcon Heavy is fake. Even when Falcon Heavy and now New Gleen can do most things SLS can.
One NASA Administer was almost fired for exploring if Orion could launch on Falcon Heavy.
The thing is NASA is not looking for alternatives, and it doesn't matter if Starship is fully proven and operational. People will still say its not the same, because Starship will need refuel and isn't direct.
You can always find a reason to justify one solution if you only ever consider that solution and refuse to even look at any other possibility.