That’ll work well of course:
SLS [NASA’s Space Launch System] and its Orion capsule have been developed using old technology and NASA’s traditional cost-plus procurement process, in which contractors get reimbursed for design changes and cost overruns. Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver writes in her new book, “Escaping Gravity,” that the agency is paying the manufacturing company Aerojet Rocketdyne $150 million apiece to refurbish the outdated RS-25 outdated engines—$600 million a flight. It is no wonder that taxpayers so far have put nearly $30 billion into the Artemis moon-launch program before its first launch: $12 billion for the first SLS, $14 billion for two Orion crew capsules and $3.6 billion for new SLS launch facilities at Cape Canaveral.
Using Blue Whatever it is, SpaceX and all that – rapacious capitalist bastards who try to profit while obeying market pricing strictures – gives space flight cheaper.
So, why would we move back to that bad and worse older system of pricing? Because Spud has the economic intellect of a potato, of course.
Wasn’t it John Glenn, who used to comfort himself with the thought that his Mercury ship was built by parts from all the lowest bidders ?
Not sure the serial failure of Artemis launches to date is a good advertisement for cost plus
NASA is a pork-barrel plaything for Congress-cunts. So why am I not surprised at the serial failures, delays and the $billions firehose. Having said that, Musk dumped a lot of hardware in various places before SpaceX cracked the reliability issues, but that was his MO and it has worked so far.
I don’t envy them with the current abort. I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near leaking liquid H2!
I don’t know what Artemis is meant to achieve. Not world-wide prestige, I’d have thought – I hadn’t even heard about it until yesterday.
Lord Spudcup doesn’t even seem to understand how the electricity system itself works, let along the economics. Clearly, he’s a self-taught engineer, and all documented engineering principles are neo-liberal falsehoods.
Reference energy chart for US: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/Energy_2021_United-States_0.png
How can electricity generation have a 35% efficiency (12.9/36.6) while petroleum industrial and transportation efficiency is 52% ((12.7+5.65)/35.1), unless a lot of electricity is sent to ground because supply vastly outstrips demand?
Since nuclear can’t be ramped up to meet demand spikes, aren’t nukeheads calling for more obscene energy overproduction at capriciously escalating prices, because you will have to run nukes at peak demand supply levels even at night when demand collapses?
What do they mean by “rejected enerhy” ?
https://energycultures.org/2014/07/rejected-energy-much-energy-unloved/
《Rejected energy is part of the energy of a fuel – such as gas or petrol – that could be used for a purposeful activity, like making electricity or transport. However, because of the technologies that we currently use to consume fuels a lot of it gets tossed out by turning it into heat in the environment, which is totally useless. For a coal fired power station, for instance, about 2/3 of the energy released when the coal is burnt is discarded as heat in the environment.》
But doesn’t this explanation leave out that coal is used for only about 25% of US electricity generation?
I.e., doesn’t nuclear provide much higher efficiency, and almost the same number of quads as coal, so why is electrical generation still only 35%, unless a whole lot of generated electricity is going to ground or releasing itself into the air as you can hear when powerlines buzz?
Wasn’t it John Glenn, who used to comfort himself with the thought that his Mercury ship was built by parts from all the lowest bidders ?
Someone should have pointed out it was better than being built by companies whose only qualification was that they were located in an incumbent party’s marginal constituency or that they met some random diversity criteria or even both.
Seems our irritating interlocutor hasn’t yet met Monsieur Carnot.
Of course there are many ways of using that ‘wasted’ energy from James Watt’s design improvements onward.
Most “nukeheads” want nuclear for baseload and dispatchable generation on top, gas being the best currently available. I’m rather optimistic that Allam cycle stations will prove the way forward; the fact the CO2 they generate is easily tapped off could lead to all sorts of interesting industrial applications and, at worst, we can stick it underground to appease the Gaia-worshippers.
Humph
I’d like to know who thought that thermodynamics was a good idea.
Yes, I’m looking at you Lord Kelvin and Max Planck.
Incidentally the calculation to give 52% efficiency for petroleum from that graph is obviously and, frankly, laughably wrong. To be right 1) all of the gas, coal and biomass on the input side of the industrial box would have to have no usable output and b) the 8.78 petroleum input would have to provide the entire 12.7 usable output.
@dearieme:
Apparently it’s to put a woman and a person of color on the Moon.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-provides-update-to-astronaut-moon-lander-plans-under-artemis
More charitably, it’s to fund and keep busy the kind of companies and engineers who know how to build ICBMs.
Capacity factors are another laugh on us, and used to claim future wind will deliver bigger benefits than stated on the power plate.
We’ve got approx 12.7GW offshore and 14.2GW onshore with claimed cfs of 43 and 27% respectively. So the average contribution to the grid should be around 9.3GW.
Gridwatch graphs show that being exceeded some times, but below far more often.
Also, this:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis/woman-on-the-moon
Amazing that this kind of thing is considered not just acceptable, but admirable.
“… at worst, we can stick it underground to appease the Gaia-worshippers.”
My impression is that if this winter isn’t mild and windy, a lot more people are going to come around to the idea that the Gaia-worshippers can get f****d.
When I visited Drax when it was a proper coal power station, the “waste” heat was used to heat huge greenhouses to grow fruit. But then I am encumbered by the disadvantage of being a qualified electrical engineer. 🙁
When I visited Drax when it was a proper coal power station, the “waste” heat was used to heat huge greenhouses to grow fruit.
Not for his moonraker project? 😉
dearieme,
“I don’t know what Artemis is meant to achieve. Not world-wide prestige, I’d have thought – I hadn’t even heard about it until yesterday.”
What’s any of it supposed to achieve? Sending probes to Mars, maybe. Even then we’re not going to find life on mars in the form of superbeings or green women like Kirk used to shag. It’ll be some microbes. So, well, great, I suppose.
Manned space travel is even dumber, a giant waste of money until someone figures out a solution to cutting down the time to travel light years, or some way to make money in space. Someone like Musk or Bezos want to go to Mars, that’s how to do it. That’s how people went to the South Pole or climbed Everest, which are equally frivolous pursuits.
Going to the South Pole was a “because it’s there” thing. However is is now quite successful as a scientific base for astronomy/cosmology stuff as well as the Antarctic environment despite the cost of maintaining it.
Anyway, don’t they really want to find fossils on Mars ?
That’s strange, why did my name come up capitalised ?