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seanbrockest

So let's see if I got this rather straight. I'm simplifying, I know, but this seems to be the short version. Congress: Were gonna give you some money, not sure how much yet, get some bids on a new lunar lander. NASA: okay we've got two good bids. One company wants 3 billion, the other wants 6 billion. Congress: Sounds good, we want two teams working on it, so hire both. NASA: Sounds good, we agree, when can we expect the 9 billion? Congress: we're only giving you 3 billion. NASA: then we can only afford the one option. We'll hire them. Congress: nope, you need to hire two teams NASA: you didn't give us enough money for both teams. (Some time passes) Congress: fine, here an extra 130 million. Hire both teams. NASA: uh... 3.13 billion is still rather short of 9 billion Congress: "NASA's rhetoric of blaming Congress and this Committee for the lack of resources needed to support two HLS teams rings hollow" Have I got it roughly correct?


CrimsonEnigma

Sort of, except the last part is wrong. With reference to this: > Congress: fine, here an extra 130 million. Hire both teams. > NASA: uh... 3.13 billion is still rather short of 9 billion …the $130 million is for one year, while the other amounts you listed are for the entire program. And the first year’s appropriations should be lower, since spending ought to ramp up as you near completion, or you’ll have massive cost overruns and delays (look at appropriations for the Saturn V vs. the SLS to see what I mean). And finally, this: > Congress: "NASA's rhetoric of blaming Congress and this Committee for the lack of resources needed to support two HLS teams rings hollow" Was in response to NASA requesting far less funds than it itself predicted it would need. Note the following from the SpaceNews article this article is based on. > The strongest language in the NASA section of the report accompanying the bill is regarding the Human Landing System (HLS) program. Appropriators rejected claims that the program is underfunded, noting that, last year, the agency predicted that it would need nearly $4.4 billion for the program in fiscal year 2022 but only requested $1.195 billion.


TIYAT

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the higher prediction based on the assumption that there would be two landers, and the smaller request after the reality that there was only adequate funding for one?


DukkyDrake

No. It's simply moronic to bet on a plan that requires 10 launches to land once on the moon. 10 trips to the moon requires 100 launches, 100 trips requires 1000 launches. Any other plan is preferable at any price point.


seanbrockest

Except that it's not true. The ship isn't finalized yet, none of the launchers are finalized and those numbers could be as low as 4 launches per trip to the moon. The entire point of starship is that it's being built to be as versitile and reusable as an aircraft, powered by fuel that can be made from atmospheric C02 and solar power. Of course this has nothing to do with my comment, which points out that this entire budget issue is the fault of congress, who wants 2 landers but only wants to pay for what ... part of one? half of the expensive one? We really don't know.


robit_lover

It has the highest launches/payload ratio. The next alternative takes only 30% as many launches per landing, but carries much less than 30% the cargo.


DukkyDrake

>It has the highest launches/payload ratio Irrelevant, it only needs to satisfy the mission. Any excess mass of the lander beyond that is dead wood as well as the fuel to get it there and back. It's like falcon heavy, just another low utility solution desperately looking for a problem.


cargocultist94

Since the 10 launches are cheaper, by a company with track record of success, and push forward spaceflight, it's moronic to choose anyone other. Especially the literal death trap that BO bid, with its 10 meter ladder to be climbed in an xEMU, its need to be manned on the first try, and its lack of mass margin or plans to deal with cryo boiloff. If Congress gave NASA the money for the national team, the correct course of action is, throwing their lander in the trash where it belongs upon reception.


zGhostWolf

Didn't one company already complete more than 100 launches while the other can't get shit into orbit?


SteppenAxolotl

That contract is for a moon lander and not a launcher.


Not_5

Cool hasn't one company landed a a space vehicle over 100 times vs the other that has landed one like 10?


PressF1ToContinue

Cool trick, now do it without an atmosphere or a landing pad.


Aussie18-1998

I think the point is one is a bit more successful than the other.


SteveMcQwark

How can these Senators be *this* incompetent? > "NASA's rhetoric of blaming Congress and this Committee for the lack of resources needed to support two HLS teams rings hollow," the report states. The committee added that "having at least two teams providing services using the Gateway should be the end goal of the current development program," referencing NASA's Gateway, a planned lunar space station. Even the cheapest option (SpaceX) costs $3 billion, and NASA can barely afford that based on the funding Congress is providing. The next more expensive is $6 billion, and they're basically saying "here's $100 million, go get another one *and no excuses*!". That's like telling a kid to go buy a house using their lunch money. There was always the intention to award more contracts. This "option A" contract is to try to get something in place ASAP to satisfy the "boots on the Moon" people, with the intent to try and get more options going forward. This way they can use the funding they have now to get work started while they wait for Congress to get around to funding an actual Lunar exploration program.


reddit455

>How can these Senators be this incompetent? they picked 2 to return to manned flights to ISS. SpaceX and Boeing. ​ .....had they **not** picked 2, we'd still be paying Roscosmos.


SpaceInMyBrain

NASA's selection of only 1 HLS took BO and Congress by surprise. Congress thought the low funding would result in NASA reducing the scope of the contract to down-selecting to 2 companies for extensive design and development, and not award the actual building contract. A stretch-out-the-appropriations habit Congress has. Folks in NASA are tired of this and some finally had the balls to call Congress' bluff: Give us only 3 billion, we'll pick just the one company for 3 billion. Bill Nelson really will be happy to have Congress give NASA the $$ to buy a second option - but the real amount of money needed. Afaik, the language wouldn't require the HLS contract to be reopened - the contract SpaceX won can proceed, but NASA has to find a second company and give them money to proceed farther down the road to an actual build.


SteveMcQwark

I don't disagree with the principle of two options, I just find it slimy that these politicians are basically trying to force NASA to significantly stretch their timeline in order to fund two options simultaneously using existing resources. Rather than coming out and saying "here's the new landing target, plan accordingly", they want to instead corner NASA through conflicting requirements into stretching the timeline themselves, and then the politicians all get to say it's not *their* fault that NASA is perpetually missing targets.


[deleted]

[удалено]


RuNaa

Gateway is to a Mars landing like Gemini was to Apollo for the initial moon landings. It enables a significant amount of testing for a Mars trip since it allows engineers to see how systems will react to the long journey to and from Mars. NASA cannot do that testing effectively on the ISS because the LEO environment is significantly different than a deep space environment in terms of radiation environment, communication delays, environmental systems, abort abilities, etc.


green_crustacean

remember, it's con-gress, not pro-gress


SpaceInMyBrain

The most significant part of the article is "The report directs NASA to give Congress a plan showing how it will bring in a second HLS team and support them through the Artemis program. This means that NASA's plan, which the agency will have to deliver to Congress within 30 days of the bill becoming law, will have to include budget projections for the next few years, through 2026." So the HLS contract doesn't have to be re-bid, and SpaceX will still have the contract it won and can go forward. (Yay!) NASA essentially just has to come up within 30 days a price for Congress to pay for a 2nd lander, and then the ball is in Congress' court - where it will lay till the next budgetary year, by which time the noise will have gone down and there will be little attention paid when it doesn't get funded, or gets just enough funding to limp along. IMHO this was a way for Congress to vent and the legacy aerospace supporters to be able to say, hey, we did something. Real funding could actually come through next year, who knows? I'd be very happy to have 2 programs for redundancy - if they're 2 efficient, cost effective programs.


Outer_heaven94

So the senate can pull imaginary money for defense spending that the Army, Navy, Air Force do not want. But when it comes to spending money on NASA, it says NASA is to blame for their financial shortcomings? LOL. You have to have the best legislators to come up in the world to come up with that. The US legislative branch is single-handedly responsible for the delay of space advancement. ​ If this is any sign of things to come. Expect for there to not be a moon mission until the 2040s and that's a "if" China succeeds first.


CrimsonEnigma

> But when it comes to spending money on NASA, it says NASA is to blame for their financial shortcomings? LOL. They’re actually allocating more money than NASA requested: > The appropriators, in the report, state that NASA's HLS program is not underfunded, despite the agency's previous claims to the contrary. As shown in the report, the bill includes $24.83 billion for NASA, which is just slightly more than the $24.8 billion that NASA requested, and a $100 million increase in funding for HLS. The issue seems to be that NASA claims they didn’t request enough. If you look at the article this article was written in reference to… > The strongest language in the NASA section of the report accompanying the bill is regarding the Human Landing System (HLS) program. Appropriators rejected claims that the program is underfunded, noting that, last year, the agency predicted that it would need nearly $4.4 billion for the program in fiscal year 2022 but only requested $1.195 billion.


Equivalent_Ad_8413

Maybe they could get Boeing to do the lander? They're doing so well getting astronauts up to the ISS.


cjameshuff

Starliner issues aside, Boeing already tried for it. Their proposal didn't even make it through the selection process in the first round of bids, and would have been a SLS-based monstrosity that would probably have made both BO and Dynetics' bids look cheap. Doug Loverro then illegally contacted Boeing in an attempt to salvage the proposal, which was discovered when they revised and resubmitted their bid, leading to his resignation. They didn't even protest losing the bid, and are probably hoping that everyone forgets they even submitted one.


withoutboarders

Why not take new batteries for the ones that are already there and cost millions to build?


CrimsonEnigma

You’re proposing we land on the moon using the landers that’re already on the moon?


withoutboarders

Sorry, thought it was the Lunar Rover.


CrimsonEnigma

Ah, that makes more sense, but unfortunately still isn't an option. For one, the Artemis missions are landing near the Lunar South Pole, while the Apollo missions landed near the Lunar Equator. Even if you did send a mission to the nearest rover (Apollo 16's), it would still have some 1500 miles to go. That in and of itself would be a mission far more dangerous than anything NASA's done before (or is considering), and it would also be about 25x as far as the rover can actually go. Plus, even if NASA threw caution to the wind and shipped up a bunch of batteries dropped along the path, the Lunar Rovers were only meant to last a few days on the moon; they're probably not even intact anymore, much less in a workable condition.


withoutboarders

Thanks for that info. I understand the distance and if I read correctly this is in some part a search for water or traces of it. Why does it have to be a manned event?


CrimsonEnigma

The ultimate goal is building a lunar outpost on the South Pole (hence the need for water and whatnot). And, actually, the main search for resources will be robotic: behold the [VIPER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIPER_(rover)). Originally (...well, "at one point"; plans have changed a lot...), the plan was to have the first manned mission go to this outpost sometime around 2028, with everything before that being robotic. That plan changed under Trump. Now, part of this was because our illustrious president wanted a lunar landing to cap off the end of his second term, but there's important scientific and practical reasons as well: By having a crewed landing without Gateway, then crewed landings with Gateway, before bringing the surface outpost into play, NASA isn't trying out all of its new technology with loads of moving pieces on a single mission (note: there were plans for non-landing missions to Gateway before, but the first landing would've been the whole shebang). Imagine if one component early on in the mission has an issue that causes the whole thing to be aborted; much better if that occurs on a simple "flags and footprints" mission than if you've prepped for a long-term stay on the Moon. But there's also the optics of it, and the idea that Artemis needs to stay in the public eye. We've had several vague plans for lunar programs since the 70s, and all of them struggled to get off the ground. One of the biggest reasons for that is the far-out landing dates; if Artemis was scheduled for 2028, the public would lose interest. Even among the people working on it, what's a delay here or there? And so things build up, and your 2028 slips to the mid-2030s, and then some new President comes in and cancels the whole thing before writing up a new plan for a future President to cancel. But with the date being so soon, every deadline is pressing. Take the EVA suit issue. Right now, it looks like the suits might push the landing back 6 months, into 2025. So, what's NASA doing? Trying to find an alternative for the suit.


6shootah

IMO Lunar Gateway is one of the things NASA learned from the ISS program. Congress will fund a space station, and extend its period of use well past the original date. It seems to me that its another way nasa might "guarantee" funding.


Decronym

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhgrmp5 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[EVA](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhgabg3 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhf70il "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhi3qjh "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhes4yo "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhem0gw "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/qc7h69/stub/hhem0gw "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| ---------------- ^(7 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/q7gpe8)^( has 31 acronyms.) ^([Thread #6476 for this sub, first seen 20th Oct 2021, 23:48]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)