History, Politics And Current Affairs

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:19 pm**

https://nextbigfuture.substack.com/p/bo ... dium=email

I grew up with the Space Race, and I still have a wonderful thrill and pride in the history and stories of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

Trouble is, when Dad went to work for NASA in 86, he learned real fast that the glory days were done and that NASA pretty much existed to be a welfare program for aerospace contractors, and that went double for the Shuttle. SLS has been hopeless since the beginning, and given the events of the last week or so, I am now convinced that when DOGE starts digging into NASA it's going to be awful.

End it. If Boeing goes with it, reorganize the company and press on. Let SpaceX and Blue Origin take us back; the US Government and NASA are no longer capable of doing so in any reasonable amount of time or money.

Mike

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:47 pm**

MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:19 pm given the events of the last week or so, I am now convinced that when DOGE starts digging into NASA it's going to be awful.

Just given what is coming out of the Treasury around payment documentation and process controls, not to mention the estimates from career Treasury staff of anywhere from 100 billion a year to a billion a day in payments that should not have been made but were, we can reasonably assume every government department is riddled with unnecessary and possibly fraudulent expenditure, grossly jacked up overhead, and plenty of officials who flat out didn’t give a damn.

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:55 pm**

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:47 pm
MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:19 pm given the events of the last week or so, I am now convinced that when DOGE starts digging into NASA it's going to be awful.
Just given what is coming out of the Treasury around payment documentation and process controls, not to mention the estimates from career Treasury staff of anywhere from 100 billion a year to a billion a day in payments that should not have been made but were, we can reasonably assume every government department is riddled with unnecessary and possibly fraudulent expenditure, grossly jacked up overhead, and plenty of officials who flat out didn’t give a damn.

Worse yet, they got a kickback from it. Maybe not directly but to a cause they support.

I'm still waiting for the misdirected money to the Conversative, Inc. side of the swamp.

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2025 10:04 pm**

jemhouston wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:55 pm
Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:47 pm
MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:19 pm given the events of the last week or so, I am now convinced that when DOGE starts digging into NASA it's going to be awful.
Just given what is coming out of the Treasury around payment documentation and process controls, not to mention the estimates from career Treasury staff of anywhere from 100 billion a year to a billion a day in payments that should not have been made but were, we can reasonably assume every government department is riddled with unnecessary and possibly fraudulent expenditure, grossly jacked up overhead, and plenty of officials who flat out didn’t give a damn.
Worse yet, they got a kickback from it. Maybe not directly but to a cause they support.

I'm still waiting for the misdirected money to the Conversative, Inc. side of the swamp.

Like the USAID money that went to Bill Kristol? Or Liz Cheney bloviating about how she’s a USAID baby?

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2025 11:25 pm**

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 10:04 pm
jemhouston wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:55 pm
Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 9:47 pm
Just given what is coming out of the Treasury around payment documentation and process controls, not to mention the estimates from career Treasury staff of anywhere from 100 billion a year to a billion a day in payments that should not have been made but were, we can reasonably assume every government department is riddled with unnecessary and possibly fraudulent expenditure, grossly jacked up overhead, and plenty of officials who flat out didn’t give a damn.
Worse yet, they got a kickback from it. Maybe not directly but to a cause they support.

I'm still waiting for the misdirected money to the Conversative, Inc. side of the swamp.
Like the USAID money that went to Bill Kristol? Or Liz Cheney bloviating about how she’s a USAID baby?

Yep.

I'm just expecting the Democrats to do so they can say, "See you do it too."

Trump's response, "Thanks for point it out, we'll cut it next."

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2025 11:28 pm**

MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:19 pm https://nextbigfuture.substack.com/p/bo ... dium=email

Trouble is, when Dad went to work for NASA in 86, he learned real fast that the glory days were done and that NASA pretty much existed to be a welfare program for aerospace contractors, and that went double for the Shuttle. SLS has been hopeless since the beginning, and given the events of the last week or so, I am now convinced that when DOGE starts digging into NASA it's going to be awful.

Mike

Which Center did your Dad work at and what projects?

NASA is built on a fiefdom system around the major centers, JSC vs. Huntsville is feud I'm most familiar with.

Posted: **Mon Feb 10, 2025 1:20 am**

jemhouston wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 11:28 pm
MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:19 pm https://nextbigfuture.substack.com/p/bo ... dium=email

Trouble is, when Dad went to work for NASA in 86, he learned real fast that the glory days were done and that NASA pretty much existed to be a welfare program for aerospace contractors, and that went double for the Shuttle. SLS has been hopeless since the beginning, and given the events of the last week or so, I am now convinced that when DOGE starts digging into NASA it's going to be awful.

Mike
Which Center did your Dad work at and what projects?

NASA is built on a fiefdom system around the major centers, JSC vs. Huntsville is feud I'm most familiar with.

Jem,

Dad was at NASA Lewis-Glenn in Cleveland, working officially for the Propulsion Directorate. But just about anything could and did cross his desk - he did keels for America's Cup ships, the storage framework for experiments on the shuttle (he would always say that he did the shuttle's luggage racks) , lead engineer on the sanitary waste disposal system on the ISS as well as storage and experiment racks there, a program whose name escapes me but was a wedge shaped test air intake that was mounted on the back of an SR-71, and my personal favorite: the 500 ft deep micro-gravity test site, or as I called it, the Wile E. Coyote Memorial Test Facility. There were literal hundreds of other projects in between those.

Mike

Posted: **Mon Feb 10, 2025 2:24 am**

Wait….the Wolowitz Waste Disposal System is actually the Kozlowski Waste Disposal System, and we’re just now hearing about it?!

Posted: **Mon Feb 10, 2025 2:42 am**

Worked in the sim building for a month. So I saw the ISS version of it.

Posted: **Mon Feb 10, 2025 7:43 am**

Given that the owner of SpaceX is going to be auditing rival companies, I'm absolutely sure that they will find waste and mismanagement whether or not it exists (as I'm quite sure it does in every large organisation - the trick is rooting it out without destroying the organisation which nobody has managed yet).

Posted: **Mon Feb 10, 2025 5:56 pm**

Pdf27 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 7:43 am Given that the owner of SpaceX is going to be auditing rival companies, I'm absolutely sure that they will find waste and mismanagement whether or not it exists (as I'm quite sure it does in every large organisation - the trick is rooting it out without destroying the organisation which nobody has managed yet).

The conflict of interest on that is of concern

Posted: **Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:14 pm**

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 5:56 pm
Pdf27 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 7:43 am Given that the owner of SpaceX is going to be auditing rival companies, I'm absolutely sure that they will find waste and mismanagement whether or not it exists (as I'm quite sure it does in every large organisation - the trick is rooting it out without destroying the organisation which nobody has managed yet).
The conflict of interest on that is of concern

Less so given that the space competition can’t find their asses with both hands and a flashlight.

At best, if everything actually worked, we’d be getting much more expensive kit that it often a full generation behind what we have off the shelf from SpaceX.

SLS is a jobs program demanded by the Senate that NASA didn’t want and Boeing staffed with morons. Orion is an absolute cluster of malfunctioning that nobody knows how they keep screwing up. And we saw just how bad Boeing’s Starliner is.

So, given that we’re getting highly expensive deathtraps at best, I’m not particularly worried Musk will find waste with his competitors when the baseline is spend lots of money on stuff that doesn’t work for a good 15 years now.

Posted: **Tue Feb 11, 2025 7:52 am**

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:14 pmAt best, if everything actually worked, we’d be getting much more expensive kit that it often a full generation behind what we have off the shelf from SpaceX.

SLS is a jobs program demanded by the Senate that NASA didn’t want and Boeing staffed with morons. Orion is an absolute cluster of malfunctioning that nobody knows how they keep screwing up. And we saw just how bad Boeing’s Starliner is.

Having talked to someone last week about how SpaceX and Blue Origin about how they source their electronics, I'm not so sure that they're any better. I would not legally be able to fly parts that they do under the FAA or EASA, and purging them from the system once you've started is almost impossible.

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:14 pmSo, given that we’re getting highly expensive deathtraps at best, I’m not particularly worried Musk will find waste with his competitors when the baseline is spend lots of money on stuff that doesn’t work for a good 15 years now.

All rockets are expensive death-traps, always have been.

Posted: **Tue Feb 11, 2025 3:04 pm**

Pdf27 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 7:52 am
Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:14 pmAt best, if everything actually worked, we’d be getting much more expensive kit that it often a full generation behind what we have off the shelf from SpaceX.

SLS is a jobs program demanded by the Senate that NASA didn’t want and Boeing staffed with morons. Orion is an absolute cluster of malfunctioning that nobody knows how they keep screwing up. And we saw just how bad Boeing’s Starliner is.
Having talked to someone last week about how SpaceX and Blue Origin about how they source their electronics, I'm not so sure that they're any better. I would not legally be able to fly parts that they do under the FAA or EASA, and purging them from the system once you've started is almost impossible.

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:14 pmSo, given that we’re getting highly expensive deathtraps at best, I’m not particularly worried Musk will find waste with his competitors when the baseline is spend lots of money on stuff that doesn’t work for a good 15 years now.
All rockets are expensive death-traps, always have been.

And yet SpaceX’s stuff works a lot more often than not, is almost single-handedly driving the price of lift to orbit drastically down after decades of stagnation at eyewateringly expensive, is generally a lot cheaper and better than the competition, and continues to push the envelope in a way traditional space industry can’t or won’t.

Whereas SLS has been in development since the early 2010s, has flown a few test flights at most, and most likely won’t be capable of the planned lunar missions, assuming it even has a spaceworthy capsule. Which it probably won’t given the continued issues with Orion.

So we’re getting a lot more for our money from SpaceX than Boeing.

Posted: **Wed Feb 12, 2025 10:33 pm**

Pdf27 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 7:52 am
Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:14 pmAt best, if everything actually worked, we’d be getting much more expensive kit that it often a full generation behind what we have off the shelf from SpaceX.

SLS is a jobs program demanded by the Senate that NASA didn’t want and Boeing staffed with morons. Orion is an absolute cluster of malfunctioning that nobody knows how they keep screwing up. And we saw just how bad Boeing’s Starliner is.
Having talked to someone last week about how SpaceX and Blue Origin about how they source their electronics, I'm not so sure that they're any better. I would not legally be able to fly parts that they do under the FAA or EASA, and purging them from the system once you've started is almost impossible.

Any specific examples of this with electronics? I know that SpaceX uses off-the shelf non radiation hardened processors for it's flight computers.

Posted: **Thu Feb 13, 2025 7:43 am**

brovane wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2025 10:33 pmAny specific examples of this with electronics? I know that SpaceX uses off-the shelf non radiation hardened processors for it's flight computers.

It was along those lines. Context was the problem I had with it - he was citing the SpaceX / Blue Origin way of doing things as a justification for us ignoring the EASA/FAA certification requirements and just using industrial electrical parts in the propulsion system of his new CS-23 passenger aircraft. He used to work at one of the "new space" companies, and then spent quite a lot of time telling me about all the things that they've had go wrong in flight on their prototype two-seater version of the passenger aircraft which were (IMHO) all completely avoidable

.

Posted: **Thu Feb 13, 2025 11:41 am**

Just as a sort of random observation, NASA seems to be hardwired into testing some systems to admirable reliability, but dropping the ball at a system level. Since they practically invented FMEA this puzzles me. However my partners in crime from the aerospace world tell me they do bottom up (what happens if this bolt isn't torqued up) whereas in the car world we do top down (what happens if we drive into another car).

Posted: **Thu Feb 13, 2025 1:48 pm**

warshipadmin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2025 11:41 am Just as a sort of random observation, NASA seems to be hardwired into testing some systems to admirable reliability, but dropping the ball at a system level. Since they practically invented FMEA this puzzles me. However my partners in crime from the aerospace world tell me they do bottom up (what happens if this bolt isn't torqued up) whereas in the car world we do top down (what happens if we drive into another car).

I get the general impression that the NASA approach is "test and study the living snot out of every individual component and do everything humanly possible to keep it from failing--and if we do that, everything will be ok".

I'm of mixed opinion on the traditional aerospace vs.open market components thing. On the one hand, sure, I see the value in the rigorous specifications and the traceability of the supply chain. I would hope that all of that would get us supreme reliability and high quality... but that doesn't seem to be borne out with the regular component failure rates and quality escapes we keep seeing. I kind of wonder whether the aero industry's approach to quality, of subcomponent tests, manual in-progress QC checks, and the highly manual build/assembly process that falls out of it, is hurting more than it helps.

Posted: **Thu Feb 13, 2025 5:39 pm**

gtg947h wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2025 1:48 pm
warshipadmin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2025 11:41 am Just as a sort of random observation, NASA seems to be hardwired into testing some systems to admirable reliability, but dropping the ball at a system level. Since they practically invented FMEA this puzzles me. However my partners in crime from the aerospace world tell me they do bottom up (what happens if this bolt isn't torqued up) whereas in the car world we do top down (what happens if we drive into another car).
I get the general impression that the NASA approach is "test and study the living snot out of every individual component and do everything humanly possible to keep it from failing--and if we do that, everything will be ok".

I'm of mixed opinion on the traditional aerospace vs.open market components thing. On the one hand, sure, I see the value in the rigorous specifications and the traceability of the supply chain. I would hope that all of that would get us supreme reliability and high quality... but that doesn't seem to be borne out with the regular component failure rates and quality escapes we keep seeing. I kind of wonder whether the aero industry's approach to quality, of subcomponent tests, manual in-progress QC checks, and the highly manual build/assembly process that falls out of it, is hurting more than it helps.

Both good and bad. You don’t want an inflight failure because of a cheap part.

The same mentality of milspec.

Just like anything, though, taken to extremes can run costs through the roof and schedules out past infinity. Eventually, the program becomes unexecuteable

Posted: **Thu Feb 13, 2025 5:49 pm**

I seem to recall Stuart telling us at some point that "hardening" electronics induces about 10% on top of the cost, at least for milspec and aimed at EMP sort of things.

Is this 10% surcharge similar for commercial/government space flight components? If not, why not? What's different about it?

Belushi TD

History, Politics And Current Affairs

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