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“Long-term budget pressures on NASA mount.”

Why SLS will surely die: “Long-term budget pressures on NASA mount.”

Whether the cheaper, more efficient, and competitive commercial space program will survive remains unknown. It could be that our brilliant Congress, which wants SLS, will keep that very expensive program alive just long enough to choke the life out of the commercial space program. Then, with the government part of private space dead from lack of support, they will suddenly be faced with the gigantic bill from the NASA-built SLS and will, as they have done repeatedly during the past four decades, blanch at paying the actually construction and launch costs, and will kill that too.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Kelly Starks

    Given COTS/CRS has proven much more expensive then advertized, lower quality, and a dead end for the agency – only its political crony connections in Washington support it.

    Also webb is pricy, and not as high a stated priority as SLS, so its much more vulnerable.

  • JohnHunt

    Kelly, Might agree with CRS, but how do you figure COTS is pricey? A NASA study showed that the F9 was developed at 1/3 the cost than had it been done the FAR way.

  • Kelly Starks

    A nit, but the study was BS, it always cost NASA 100 times more to develop similar boosters and capsules. Commercial programs would cost tens of times more then spaceX, even ellette teams like Rutan or the Skunk works would cost several times more. Course you get what you pay for.

    Pricey in that the total cost per pound to the station was 20% above that of the Shuttle.

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