The Dumbest NASA Decision In Years? Why NASA is Being Forced To Ground Rover and Sent Ballast.
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- čas přidán 4. 09. 2024
- Announced on Wednesday is the cancellation of the VIPER mission to the moon, this is shocking because the Rover is finished construction and just needs a test session.
Moreover, NASA is contractually required to pay Astrobotic to fly a NASA payload to the moon, so they have to pay for this anyway.
Instead of a rover NASA will send ballast to the moon.
And the worst part is this is triggered by a cost increase to NASA due to the lander being delayed.
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Just rename the rover "Mass Simulator".
What rover?
@terp2726 - Perfect !!
Thats some big brain thinking right there
@@JoshuaR.Collins Alas, there would be a bureaucrat present at the loading that would make sure plugs of battery and solar cells are disconnected.
@@ivonakis exactly
Seems like a literal perfect scheme. Get a contract with NASA and then go way over budget so that you get shut down with full payment and no requirement to deliver anything at all.
@@SirSparris starship is constantly being developed and you can literally see new progress every few months, to say that starship will be just a scheme is incredibly shortsighted
@@SirSparrislame argument many many reasons why.....
@@SirSparris ...meanwhile at blue origin who received more funding than starship they have had how many launches?
@@SirSparrisThunderf00t, is that you? 😂
@@SirSparris doesn't sound like starship at all to me...
I work as a gubment contractor, I hear them say all the time, "well, we can't spend that because that's a different pot of money." It doesn't matter if it is obvious to EVERYONE that a decision will waste money as long as it doesn't hit some manager's pot of money. If that manager has the power to kill a project.
Absolutely flailing in government, quite disappointing
Shit, the same thing is true in big private companies. I was involved in designing and installing a huge paint system at my old job. We could have spend another ~$50k (on a multi-million dollar project) to install a system to partly coat the parts automatically as they went by, thereby eliminating 3 human painters from the system (down to 6, instead of 9) and greatly simplifying the design of the paint booth. I pointed out that doing this would pay for itself within a few months (as well as eliminating the need for 3 more people to stand in a hot booth full of poison wearing very bulky and hot PPE), and I was told that it didn't matter because it would be saving money from a different budget. The fact that it would save at least $200k/year wasn't relevant, because it would cost $50k *now*, and that wasn't acceptable.
@@a.p.2356 Dude, I -know-. This is something I deal with all the time in a not very large corporation, just a couple hundred employees. I try to cut through this stuff by escalating to parties who are accountable to both sets of problems, but that is a real challenge at times.
Apparently not the case here though: another comment got in contact with their representative in congress and actually got a real response. Apparently the main technical reason is that NASA isn't confident about the "finished" rover actually passing vacuum testing without revealing things that need to be fixed (delaying the launch until next year, because the launch window is missed), nor about the rover making a successful descent. And they simply don't have the budget to keep the teams on staff for another year. The 30% overbudget rule hasn't applied since 2017 and isn't the reason: the main (budget) reason is just overall cuts to the science budget and NASA wanting to keep Artemis funded with what they've got left.
And just launching ballast because they've contracted and scheduled the rocket already is probably still cheaper than having to pay the company for the rocket anyway after a lengthy legal battle. Because the company that prepared the rocket has every right to expect their money. Not their fault that the rover company took too long to "finish" their end of the project.
No, thats not the rover on the lander. That is just a rover shaped mass simulator.
we found it lying by the side of the road
This is why it's being disassembled now. No cheating
We even have proof. See! Here's a picture of us pulling it out of a storage crate marked -Rover- Mass Simulator.
"Then why is it moving?"
"... Solar wind?"
@@camicus-3249 well, it was cheaper to use the Rover as a mass simulator rather than building one and we must have left the software active by accident
If NASA has to keep to no more than 30% over budget, I think defense contractors should need to meet the same requirements.
This. Absolutely.
Bingo
Cost overruns should hurt the company, not be a way to con the state out of more money.
The budget of NASA has increased constantly, so the corruption in the organization.
What? Are you anti Boeing?
Hello Scott, I called my local congress representative about this, and just got a response: The 30% overbudget limit hasn't been in effect since 2017, so that isn't why the mission is being cancelled.
The mission is being cancelled due to general funding cuts to the science program to make room for artemis, but mostly because confidence in Astrobotics' lander not causing more delays or failing on descent is low.
They can't afford for another year of delay, as the mission has a specific launch window once a year, and if astrobotics misses the launch window again that is another year of wasted salaries for the team, which is not affordable.
So, this isn't congress' problem, it is purely astrobotics and NASA budgeting decisions. It could be political interests in NASA wanting commercial space to fail, as you said, but this mostly rests on the shoulders of astrobotics.
Good to know.
I get launch windows matter when it comes to traveling to other celestial bodies like Mars, but the moon is approximately at the same distance from Earth all year round. Is there something special about reaching the poles that I don't understand?
@@rbgtk It's explained in the video, the rover needs to land at the start of the lunar polar day to have time to complete its mission before it gets dark for half a year again. You could land a few months later but that would pretty much be a waste of the rover anyway, so in practice there really is a narrow launch window every year, it's just dictated by the rover instead of the rocket.
Congress will always be the problem. Between budgets and time constraints and hearings Congress is as big of a pain to get anything done scientifically rather than religious extremist views. I suppose if we name the rover jesus take the wheel it'll get sent.
Thank you for taking the time to find and add this additional information. This changes my take away from the video completely, and the final decision to cancel the mission makes sense now.
I'm probably not the intended audience for a video like this, I don't follow NASA and I'm not well educated. Just reading the comments section makes me feel dumb. But if you can a wider audience to follow NASA, get more people to care, maybe more funding will follow.
Doing nothing takes an incredible amount of energy and Congress is extremely busy doing that right now.
Yeah...
I burned the roof of my mouth by eating some french fries that were extremely super hot, it really hurts!😢
November can't come quickly enough...
@@aldunlop4622 Nah, nothing is going to change in terms of Congress actually doing anything useful, regardless of who wins.
@@NightKev- please don't take our hope away... might have to talk Congress into finding it.
@@NightKev Ehhhh there's a _certain side_ of the political aisle that doesn't seem too friendly toward science and education in general, and would likely completely gut all such federal programs (or just outright teach propaganda). They reject proven concepts like our planet being round, or the theory of evolution, climatology, vaccines...
They can let Boeing run amok with their horrendous starliner yet they built something that actually works and its over budget. Unbelievable
It is very believable since the smallcaps are behind the market movements
Nothing horrendous about Starliner. Abd it has a fixed price.
@@paulopenteado5552 Space X is more reliable + cheaper
Boeing is running amok with their commercial planes too.
@@HenriFausthopefully they didn’t design the doors on the rover 😅
They could send a large block of cheese to encourage Wallace and Grommet to return to space travel.
the man went to the moon and back in a single stage on regular petrol
The English space agency’s finest.
Insane to send a "mass simulator" instead of the rover. Doesn't anyone have the balls to just approve sending the already finished rover without environmetal testing and hope it works?
I was thinking the same thing. A rover that doesn’t work is, in effect, a mass simulator that *may* work.
And were supposed to believe they sent a rover big enough for a man nearly 60 year's ago?
@@only1thatmakessense ... yes? It's a fuckton easier to do things when your budget is basically a blank check than it is when you're getting table scraps.
@@only1thatmakessense And we're supposed to believe that the Soviet Union wouldn't have shouted the proof from the rooftops if it was fake, instead of sending their congratulations? Oh wait, I guess the whole USSR was _in on the conspiracy!!!_
@@keiyakins 60 years ago, just let that sink in
That's just plain stupid. To think that they would just throw away the money already spent and fly a block of iron rather than something which is mostly paid for, this late in the game is just absurd.
Welcome to the real word, a constant exercise in human absurdity!
And, I know it's nothing compared with the millions of dollars, but instead of flying a rover, we have to buy all that iron!
@@dakotahrickard Aerospace-grade iron? You know these companies are going to charge many millions for it.
Truth IS stranger and DUMMER than fiction.
Typical governmental agency
Isn’t there a museum of managerial incompetence where it can be showcased?
Yes there most certainly is a "museum of managerial incompetence"... it's called "The Planet Earth".
@@edgeeffect 🤣👍
Well, ain't that swell? Geez. I'm reminded of Churchill's saying "you can trust America to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all the other options..."
He’d know, his mother was an American ….
The U.S. Government is far from having a monopoly on being utterly incompetent... There are plenty of others around the world who share that dubious honour.
Gotta wait for CN moon landing to happen before they got serious about it 😂
The only thing we exhausted comes out the back end.
Tbf as a Brit we are the only country to get an orbital space program then throw it away...
Strange... they go over budget because they want to do extra testing, now they have to cancel the project and instead develop a mass simulator.
That will of course again cost money.
Why not just send the already built rover without doing the extra testing?
That would make too much sense
It might fail without it
@@timedeathe if it fails you get data
@@timedeathe Mass simulator has a 100% chance of failing rover objectives
Not sending it is a 100% chance of failure. Not testing it is less than 100% chance of failure.
“We don’t have guts at NASA anymore.”
- Edward Baldwin, 1969
That's because DEI has become more important.
These days they are also missing brains.
@@reignman30 dude, that was a for all mankind quote
@@reignman30use more buzz words next time from your overlords.
@@reignman30nothing to do with corporate greed right
NASA should send the rover as the mass, it can't do anything else with it. I think that qualifies it as inert mass. "Hey, Bob, find us something useless with the exact size and weight as the rover to send to the moon as mass." "OK Bill, we have this hunk of scrap metal which meets the specs perfectly, which we can't use for anything else lets send that." "What is it Bob?" "Its that viper rover which got cancelled." "Perfect"
Then it would just be a dead mass. Operating it takes money.
@@paulopenteado5552 Donate the dead Mass on the moon to a university. or at least a highschool for STEM.
@@paulopenteado5552 Better than it not being there. If someone has the foresight to add a wake command then you could risk trying it untested. There's a small chance of success that way, and 0% the other way
You nailed it, I am finding increasingly as I get older that common sense isn't so common! Bonkers decision making (or 'not' decision making, and they get paid for this)
This is the same Congress that limits the debt with a debt ceiling law rather than, you know, _the budget._
This is the same political body that tries very hard to prevent actual discussion about why we're doing some of these dumb things.
it reduces "debt" by using austerity measures to reduce public spending but also reduces taxes on the wealthy and massive corporations.
They’re senile, what do you expect
@@nocturnemusique - Congress-critters all Senile? Hardly. Crooked as a dog's hind leg? Definitely. But why should they be the exception, in a world where powerful people get that way by _skirting the law_ or worse?
@@YodaWhat congress: "why cant we be both?"
Make no mistake: the rover is not flight ready. Vacuum testing is a long process that often reveals expensive problems. So it's not as simple as just chucking the thing on the spaceship.
But it's so close!
Isn't it just put a thing in a vacuum chamber and turn it on, after 72 hours check the sensors. That's it
@@funguy398 Read "Roving Mars" by Steve Squyres. Similar spacecraft, and boy did they find unexpected problems
30% over budget?? If that is the case, then why the hell is SLS still a thing? That has to be 200% over budget 😂
Or James Webb which is 1,000% over budget.
Because SLS is the Senate Launch System.
@@EdwardRLyons can we use it to send the senate to land on the sun?
@@EdwardRLyons you means the senate laundering scheme
Congress can vote to extend mission funding for viper, just like they did with james webb and SLS
I find it laughable that an agency isn't allowed to send something already built on mission, because of budget constraints. Total waste of time and money, but governments are great at wasting money.
It would cost less just to send it at this point than scrap the whole thing.
They still need to test the rocket
@@samsonsoturian6013No they don't? It's launching on a Falcon Heavy. The lander needs to be tested, sure, but that wasn't stopping them before. There's already risk in this mission, if it doesn't complete all the testing they wanted to do for budget reasons, just send the damn thing anyway. It's like paying for a non-refundable all expense paid vacation and then deciding not to go in order to save money.
*AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE:*
Here's the lengthy (sorry about it) explanation, but I promise it will make explain what goes on.
I have a classmate who is now very high up in the ISS Program.
Basically if you don't have her signature it does NOT go to the ISS. When they were still constructing the ISS I got into an argument with her about how they were building it. I was in the camp that wanted to use the Shuttle C which was the shoot once version with nothing but a payload pod. The idea many at the time were saying was it was taking too many very expensive space shuttle flights and Shuttle C could lift as many as 5 ISS modules in a single flight.
Part of my argument as it was for others we needed to get the ISS finished so we could get on with manned exploration.
To say she slapped me down is an understatement.
*FIRST -* As she put it I had no idea what it took to connect and commission any of the ISS modules.
*SECOND -* She quite rightly pointed out that until we solve the propulsion and life support issues for long term manned missions NOBODY was going anywhere beyond LEO. Sadly those 2 technological hurdles of propulsion and life support have still not been solved.
*THIRD - NASA does not decide its missions and this is still not widely understood.* The US Government (as in the politicians) decides what NASA missions do and do NOT happen. If anyone wants to see how badly that can work go and look up a video story Scott did on the Artemis Rocket from a couple of years ago and how there were 2 teams doing the same job on the same rocket and how that made all the decisions take longer and the whole thing be a GIANT CLUSTER F*CK.
When Scott did that story on Artemis I knew exactly what was happening because it was exactly what my classmate had explained to me years earlier. The politicians make decisions FOR NASA based on political needs not technical needs.
Another good example of that was during the post Challenger processes. Kelly Johnson (P38, U2, SR71) came out and said (paraphrasing) _"Don't build a replacement. Give my team the $3 Billion and we'll build you a single stage to orbit (SSO)."_ I have no idea what Kelly Johnson and his team had discussed or what their plans were. That's one of aerospace's great "what If?" mysteries. *HOWEVER* the decision to spend $3 Billion and replace Challenger with Endeavor was a POLITICAL DECSION not a technical decision.
I was in college at the time and had a couple of heated arguments with people who weren't engineers. The reason to replace was that some MILITARY strategists (YES MILITARY) had *CLAIMED* that without 4 operational space shuttles America would lose its pre-eminence in space to the Russians because they new the Russians had Buran on the way. *So politics intervened and instead of moving on from the Space Shuttle NASA limped along with a technically brilliant but also faulty and expensive system for another 20+ years. It also lead to the decade long era where NASA could not even put men in space they had to pay the Russians to do that for them, which was kind of ironic.*
So sorry for the long comment but I think its stuff that needs saying.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, only 8% of the ocean has been explored, that's right, here on earth but Nasa is looking for other Galaxies that have planets that can support human life AS WE KNOW IT but we couldn't even get there even in, well maybe never! Also, the effects on the human body after extended time in a weightless environment are well known, and we haven't even solved that problem either or how to keep one alive after a zillion light years of travel.
First, it was just the moon. Then, it was the search for ET. Now, it's the planets for human life. Kinda reminds me of the "global cooling" that turned into the "global warming" that turned into the "climate change" grift.
@@tonywilson4713Strange that politicians with their 5-year election cycle, get to decide decade long projects.
Further proof of the old adage "the opposite of progress is congress".
This just brings to mind the same old irony that Congress critters want to find missions to fly on SLS, but will not fund said missions to be significant enough to justify the SLS cost.
SLS > Starship
@@blackhatfreak Yep. 4 billion per launch vs around 100million(fully unreusable) so SLS certainly is much > Starship.
@@NScherdin Thats the theoretical cost. Each starship test flight is closer to 0.7-1.2 billion all in. I work at starbase.
Maybe instead of picking and choosing 'teams' we should just root for everyone.
@@ThePhantomRocket 1.2 billions is still 3.3 times cheaper than 4 billions, which is a lot. However, I agree with your last point, more options is better than fewer, or only one.
@@yonidellarocha9714 Your still wrong, Starship gutted is 1.2 billion. Throw in the crew rated parts and we are sitting over 4 billion. They don't even have one bit of research done on radiation shielding for Starship. Guess how many billions that is?
I wish the military would be required to cancel any project that's 30% over budget. That would save a LOT of money that could be used, for example, to land rovers and people on the moon. With enough to spare to cure cancer in record time...
Ah, cancer will never get cured, unless there's a massive profit motive.
It's all these over budget projects that keep military contractors in business.
There is a lot of multiple ways of curing cancer. Current one is making medical companies big bucks
Imagine if they had to cancel Apollo 11 two months before launch because "naaaah too much costs"
Yes. Imagine we would NOT run US space program in essentially socialist fashion, where everything in run by government and no one cares about costs, profitability, doing things efficiently. Maybe we would NOT have financially unsustainable Saturn V followed by financially unsustainable STS for effing FORTY years.
You do understand that a Falcon9-like rocket could have been built in ~1990, thirty-four years ago? There were no _technical_ reasons why it didn't exist back then - only organizational ones.
Crowdstrike predicts a 1202 error and has recommended Apollo 11 be canceled.
@@bobroberts2371this is so perfect lmao
"Sorry guys, we're $5 short! Shut it down!"
Apollo got a blank cheque
Artemis is finished. If NASA cant meet this budget requirement with a simple robotic rover, theres no way a crewed mission is going to pass, with all the safety-related delays we can expect.
Hasn't that been clear from the beginning? Constellation also wanted to return to the Moon. Humans on the moon are not really necessary, rovers are cheaper and can do most of the science anyway. Apollo was politically motivitated as a result of the cold war, so no. Also Lunar starship ain't gonna happen. Since there are international partners for Gateway we might get Gateway...
Artemis will have its own budget, which is much larger. As long as it too doesn't overspend by more than 30% I see no problem.
It's like when you can't afford a Costa coffee but you can still afford your mortgage repayments. The absence of coffee doesn't imply that you're going to be homeless. Grownups call it 'budgeting'.
Yeah..... they'd probably scrub during the first delayed countdown like:
"T minus 3 minutes and counting.... countdown hold due to LOX discrepancy...oh wait, we're over our 30% budget - launch cancelled - OK guys, everybody go home."
NASA he almost no budget if they a realistic budget these missions would be child's play
@@nagualdesign Artemis is so far past 30% over budget that it's not even a joke anymore. According to the GAO, every mission will exceed $4 billion (in 2022 dollars), and that's just production and operations. It doesn't include the sunk development costs.
Politicians should never be in charge of anything!
It does always strike me as strange that we give all of the important decision making roles to people who are clearly dribbling imbeciles without at least requiring them to pass some kind of simple test.
Wait, I worked on this Rover! I had not heard much about it after I left the project, I guess this is why.
It sucks because it's use of image processing on earth but image capture on the moon could be a model for future moon missions, maybe even for autonomous manufacturing on the moon
Wait why doesn't the 30% budget overrun trigger some kind of big congressional review instead of an instant cancel?
@@Ryukachoo Maybe the congress thought it would be hit often and didn't want to waste time on it? It sounds like an oversight or laziness to me.
@@Ryukachoo Because most of congress hates space travel and thinks its not focusing on the problems of earth.
They also get rewarded for diverting funds and resources from it to other projects because a large portion of the population just doesnt undestand space, space travel, or what it takes to get something into space....
Basically its a bag of dumb people doing a box of dumb things.
@@xugro Laziness, but also some amount of talk from other people. Their project is private, but not a secret. As soon as they hit the 30%, talk probably started to spread and competitors negotiated some "change of mind", indirectly causing NASA to consider canceling straight up. The decision was still on NASA, but with private commercial companies making quick progress, maybe they diverted attention to the ones already working and scrapped Viper's rover.
Scott says it does trigger a review in congress, that’s why he says it’s not an automatic cancellation, but he also goes on to say that he’s doubtful, this being a election year, that anyone in congress will risk supporting it. I’m sorry about your project, it totally sucks.
This reminds me of a gag in the goon show (at least I think it was the goon show) where they build a tower block for £60k but since the budget was £50k, they knock it down and rebuild it for £50k (yes, the goon show is old)
It is defintely Goon-worthy, even if it didn't actually originate there.
Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe the system doesn’t work at all and the company doesn’t want to admit to it so they are deliberately pushing the project over budget as an excuse to shut the program down
thats the most logical explaination. You would think the people in charge would be raising more of a fuss of their lifes work getting thrown out.
government inefficiencies, status quo, and nepotism
Yes because going over 'budget' is only an issue with NASA when they want it to be. Whatever the reason, this is a failed project.
Rule number one when investing in space innovation.
1. Take their budget and 10x it.
2. Take their timeline and 5x it.
3. Take their enthusiasm and cube root it...
jokes on you, i measure excitement on a scale from 0 to 1
@@emiliaolfelt6370 lol
@@emiliaolfelt6370 Excited = 1
Measuring things like excitement in binary. 😂
@@emiliaolfelt6370that's what real commitment looks like
It is more important to realistically estimate the budget. Apollo stayed very close to its estimated cost thanks to the planning and project management of James Webb (although the lesson wasn't followed by his namesake telescope).
Budget management is important and while a 30% overrun is a lot, it should probably trigger a review instead of a cancelation.
Yeah great point, or at least build in regulation that triggers reviews before 30%
basically it used to, and they would spend the review increase... there isn't a good way to go about it...
It doesn't because NASA is still making stuff in waterfall methodology. National founding.
@@HanSolo__ lol when you are a national agency moving fast and breaking things usually isnt going to lead to supportive press.
its very easy for a politician to say "well you blew up a vehicle in this test, so we should defund you", even if, you and I both know that testing inevitably leads to failures sometimes.
theyre doing exactly what I would do in that situation, try and support private companies that can get away with doing faster design processes, and stick to a few flagship missions for national pride and science.
@@CheesyMez "Moving things and breaking stuff" is not Agile. It's simply idiocy. "Lol"
Waterfall is far superior to whatever Musk is trying to make up. Imagine what miracles the company would make canceling his personal input.
I have a friend who supplies SpeceX with raw materials. He says engineers treat Musk like a business-only side of the company. While outside he is portrayed as an amazing engineer He is an engineer. The shallow level. I have to give to him, he is a person who knows certain persons able to make big things move and tides change.
There has to be more to the story that isn’t being released to the public. There’ve been many NASA projects since 2005 that went more than 30% over budget. Never mind the military. You don’t throw away $400 million over a situation that stupid.
I can tell you, nothing makes sense in USA anymore.
As if anything has ever made sense.
Liar
@@samsonsoturian6013 pedo
@@samsonsoturian6013 "Stop being right g0y1m!"
So now they have a 430kg rover with no use, but they need a 430kg mass simulator to send to Moon, right?
I smell a potential loophole there.
They could rename VIPER to MAMBAS (Moon-Avenging Mass Bureaucracy-Avoiding Simulator)
Best comment I’ve read :)
I think the problem would be the ongoing running and managing expenses of the team responsible for it. Such a waste
It would be wasting a rover. Because it would be a dead mass, doing nothing.
@@paulopenteado5552 phase two would be after the landing: "oh, by the way, that Mass Simulator was previously supposed to be something else, so it has some built in sensors..., how about taking it online and doing some science while we're on the Moon already?"
As a professional in the construction industry I do kinda respect the hardline move for failing to meet project commitments. Our industry could do with more of this kind of thing.
It sucks that the contractor isn't being held accountable, but I guarantee that the next contracts written will learn from this and have much tougher penalties.
Quite honestly, I doubt that. There has been a LONG history of this kind of behavior from contractors.
If they can't stay within budget there should be a clause to get the money back.
It is sad, but consequences are what change behavior. Lack of consequence means lack of a reason to change for the next time
I've never seen Scott so fired up. Heads are going to roll.
What a waste...
Not surprising when the head of NASA is so incompetent that he naively think that dark side of the moon doesn't have any sunlight
Post-Apollo NASA in a nutshell.
Marvel after endgame
Wait until you realize that no one was ever and no one ever will ...
We were supposed to have a moon base in the 1990ies. What have we got instead? Just words, words and more words about 'going back'.
When will this ring a bell with the majority of people AT LAST?
@@rh906 this is 100% congresses fault
they should write it such that the government essentially pays for up to half of the project initially, and then if it goes over budget, the company is responsible for a certain amount of that over budget amount, them being required to fit the bill for most of it, and then if they finish the project, then they'll get the rest of it, or a portion depending on how they allocate the percentages. They should make it such that they are incentivized to come in at or under budget, and then be responsible for most of what they go over and then don't get any more than half of the total if they don't get their act together.
"There's a chance that congress does something" 😂😂😂
"Sir... I'm sorry I have to tell you, but... You have been diagnosed with chronical optimism".
I wouldn't be surprised if NASA comes one day and suddenly cancels the Artemis program 😅
At 4.4 billion dollars a launch, NASA should give the whole space program over to Space X.
@@davidhurlburt1075spacex will just eliminate all competitors, practically owning everything in space, then everyone has no choice but to pay whatever they ask
SpaceX will mess the moon missions so badly with their spaceship costs that it will get cancelled.
@@Yeshas_2107 not sure why they are going there in the first place? cause china is heading there? smh
Artemis is already dead in the water on account of SpaceX
This is your best video so far. Fighting for something you really believe in, especially when that thing is cancel for some really dumb reason. Especially when it is something that is basically already paid for. Just makes sense.
They just need to use the disposal budget to dispose of it on the moon... EASY!
you could make the case that sending it to the moon is cheaper than scrapping it and building a mass smiulator. and knowing the way government agencies spend money, that mass simulator might as well be made out of gold.
The Pentagon should be held to that 30% budget rule if any department should!
My impression is that this is an engineering management issue rather than just dumb budgeting rules or anything - from my experience just finishing the mechanical design and assembly of a project without fully completing the testing and validation phase can be pretty complicated and there's so much that could still go wrong. It takes a lot of work, time, and money to test and validate projects to the point where you can be confident that they will work 99.9% of the time which is the kind of confidence it seems like you'd need for a project like this. If they haven't even entered vaccum testing it sounds like we have no idea where they're at in the validation process and that's a huge red flag against them actually having "completed" this rover. Nothing ever works out exactly as you design it to even if you've built and operated dozens of rovers over many decades.
Spot on ??
Public funding? BTW, how many times has Boeing gone over budget, over time, and still failed? What a waste of time, resources, and science.
Privatize NASA.
NASA spends 30% over budget, and the project is shut down.
ANY military industrial complex company goes 2,000% over budget, and it's further financed even if the project was a total failure.
This
but when us invades a country we get oil or something, nasa ain't finding oil anywhere yet
But this robot would have been looking for ice. If ice was fou d they could generate rocket fuel from it. Rocket fuel is a lot more expensive than oil.
No the Nunn-mccurdy act shuts down military projects that go over budget like the zumwalts
@laimejannister5627 youre talking as if oil is more precious than the benefits that come with space exploration
Never underestimate the stupidity of government.🤔
We should be smart and find NASA better, but it's still smart to cut losses and not fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy either.
You're no different
@@osbjmgSure but “rules is rules” is stupid and dogmatic. I understand that over-riding a rule sets a precedent, but procedural improvements should always be possible. As Scott says, it was due to external reasons that they went over-budget, eg the pandemic.
@@RussTillling I also tell my wife to keep from spending more on credit than we have in the checking account, they are just numbers after all
It's a very diverse government though, and that's what's most important. They'd rather fail with the entire rainbow than succeed with qualified people.
Nasa: *Elon can do this*
Nasa: *picks up the phone*
Wishful thinking
NASA should only be engaged in fixed price budgets. Stop allowing these companies to lower their bid knowing they will go over budget. Let them eat the loss.
YES!!
Sure, but that also means bids will be quite high. The bid needs to include a buffer to account for an overrun on every project
Fixed price only makes sense for well understood products. For true innovation and pushing the boundaries with a one of a kind spacecraft that's just not reasonable, because there's no way to know in advance what challenges and costs will arrise during the course of RnD.
Fixed price contracts will make the requirements be studied more closely, and the contract broken down into different elements according to how innovative they are.
@bluesteel8376: Here's a novel idea. Why not explore the depths of the ocean? After all, only 8% had been explored. Why fund some child's space fantasy as an adult?
UFO'S, have already been acknowledged, so why are we sending probes into deep space looking for ET (intelligent life) they're already here? If they're intelligent enough to travel here, well they're intelligent!
"The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are." -Cicero
I think I'm going to reuse this quote. I see possibilities everywhere.
Cicero never said that. Tacitus was the source for the original _Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges_
Cicero? Cicero wasnt even alive during the roman empire lol
@harbi99 fair enough, I stand corrected. We probably agree though, that this situation is an insane dilemma created by laws not rooted in reality, just the social reality surrounding politicians jockeying for personal power and prestige.
He should talk, he lost to Caesar
Them pockets didn't get deep from handouts.
US politics is broken
Duh
Obvious boy is obvious.
Yes, and this should not even be political.
It is space politics in general. The rest of the world is not better. And the space industry is specialized on extracting the largest amount of money with the lowest effort possible.
Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Lala, NYC .... blue party
Perfect Yes Minister moment. Like the hospital that couldn’t have patients due to a budget stuff up. I think Scott will know the BBC show Yes Minister
Ah, yes, the hospital with 500 administrators and no patients.
"But it's the best-run hospital in the country, Minister!"
Consider the opposite too, private sector may want the credit and tech to become a private asset, so they yoink the rover for cheap, while being able to blame the gov for it. Some key bits form the clip that favor this variant are, scott mentioning sell it to basos now, dont let it go to waste, while saying this is likely a successful mission. Also the competing rocket companies may wanna deny the chance to their competition, effectively buying out winners of the contract to deliver it, even if they are giving some money to said competitor in the process. I.e. buying someones stock during a price war, then immediately reselling it for more than they bought it. While you would get some form of corruption in the process for either variant, it may not necessarily be in the direction favoring the civil servants. There can also be personal grudges at play here too, with the current state of the usa election possibly being an influence.
What a space race!
Instead of 'Wall-E' analyzing lunar regolith in the shadows, NASA is sending 950 lb garbage to the lunar South Pole.
Guess that's the enigmatic 'Mass Effect'.
Why can't they just rename VIPER to "Mass Simulator"?
At last someone with a brain. However NASA will probably spend several years deciding on the font.
It would still require heavy funding to make ready for launch, a chunk of metal is ready.
@@WOFFY-qc9te NASA needs an E4 Mafia to get things done behind the backs of the MBAs.
@@alexradac589 also you would have to account for the parts.
@MusikCassette it's already built though
Any space billionare has the chance to do the funniest thing.
fr lmao
haha wait, so after ordering pizza, the kids will go hungry because the wife took the car and my truck doesn't get good enough mileage? 'Merica!!
As if the US judicial system works. Get yourself a judge who likes rovers and you're sorted. At least they'll delay the case until after the launch.
4:56 By the way, there's already a precedent of bugs being fixed by bureaucracy. In Switzerland, trains cannot legally have exactly 256 alxes because then their 8-bit (binary) counters would treat those as 0, which means no train, which is bad, so they fixed all their counters by law. 🤣
actual fix: use 16 bit computer
Let me get this right, now thats the rover is ready they are gona trash it because its over budget? God i hate the goverment
Its like when the mechanic calls you and says he cant put in your new tuneup parts you prepaid him for because he already took out the engine so add another $5k to get your car back
Its more like if the mechanic said he can't put the fixed engine back in because it cost a lot to fix up... So instead they'll put in a total broken engine of the exact same size and weight
The "cost plus" model has got to go as well.
SLS is a good example of this
This was not a "cost plus" contract. In fact, NASA originally intended to pay only a fixed amount covering about *half of the real cost*. The vendor of the lander was supposed to raise the remainder of funds from selling the space on the lander to interested commercial parties, and from private investors, by telling them a story about booming lunar economy "any time soon". In reality, there were a million of amendments to the contracts covering several overlapping missions. Even if one goes over all of them with a fine comb, it is hard to decipher how much NASA was _actually_ paying for this specific project.
@@cogoid I didn't relate "cost +" to this project. Simply stated the "cost +" notion should go. Furthermore, bids should be fixed cost - in general.
Costs plus contracts has set spaceflight back by 50 years. It's an embarrassment how much we've stagnated. If not for SpaceX we'd still be in the shit.
@@cpthornman1000%
Looking forward to watching your appearance before the US Congress, Mr. Manley, to give a testimonial in the name of space nerds everywhere.
Europa clipper isn't looking very well either...Washington seems like everything goes there to die.
That's Republicans for you
@@blackhatfreak maybe some are just shte ppl... both sides
@@blackhatfreakunfortunately this is definitely a case where either side of the political spectrum can find reasons to not care to fund it
@@alexsiemers7898 just tell them if they won't fund NASA these extra money are at risk of being spent on healthcare. This should do the trick
@@blackhatfreak both parties just want to line their pockets. this is not a partisan issue.
When one recalls how 50 years ago they were riding a bloody Moon BUGGY with people in it on the moon and now they cant even get a fricking box with wheels that moves at snail speed done in less than 10 years and yet alone put it there.. ITS PATHETIC
It’s almost like it’s a pile of science fiction.
@@gabrielrousseau_NM people werent so scared of failure in the cold war as a lot of apollo missions failed yet they still went on wich now with SLS they dont
@@captainheat2314 Branson and Bezos have continued on for well over a decade and once they finally finished their fancy vomit comets the news coverage was endless. A month or so later Space X flung 3 civilians around the earth without any fanfare bypassing the unwanted vomit comet model. Something funny going on with this space BS.
@@captainheat2314 Copium. You guys are as bad as flat earthers at this point.
@@MattyEnglandUSSR literally confirmed it, but sure mr matty from yt comments has better expertise in this area...
Maybe it’s not NASA decision but they also took all funding for Chandra X-ray sat.
I understand the idea of trying to keep projects from going over budget. But the actual consequence of such rule is that (potentially for reasons entirely unrelated to NASA's own performance) instead of spending a bit more than 130% and getting the project done, they choose to spend only 130% and get nothing. I suppose that is a very heavy way of preventing sunk cost fallacy, but clearly, there needs to be some sort of arbitration system where a project has to be reviewed if it goes over 30% of its budget, to find out what caused is and who (if anyone) is at fault, and then decide how to proceed, instead of some sort of automatic cancellation.
Going over budget by a certain amount should prompt a very close fraud investigation on the contractor. Over a certain point it stops being "Oops we guessed wrong".
And for a hard cut-off "cancellation if it would go over 130% of the budget" with "less than X% already spent" makes a lot more sense.
There is NO "automatic cancellation".
There is. It is not an automatic cancel. It went through review. And it got to the point where the budget Congress enacted was not enough to pay for the extra cost.
Nah then it wouldn’t be a government project
Something that looks like Sponge Bob Square Pants shouldn't be named "Viper".
They should have named it after another venomous snake: Krait, perhaps.
@@Togidubnus You know it's an acronym right ? But feel free to tell us how you would have called it if you're so smart
@@TehAzaackFind new words to describe it. You can force anything into an acronym if you abuse your thesaurus enough.
@@VoxAstra-qk4jz Okay let's see what you got. People are all so smart they can't even find a new name
@@TehAzaack We don't care that much. We're just saying that "Viper" is too cool of a name for what looks a box wrapped in aluminum foil.
I am now 73 and watched Apollo 11 land m the moon anticipating a moonbase and exploration of Mars, The future was full of hope.
Now the nearest I well get to seeing a return to the moon in what is left of my lifetime is watching " For All Mankind " on TV!
How sad for the project developers. This sort of behavior will lead to good quality people deciding to avoid working with NASA.
All my decades of Space enthusiasm are drifting to a hopeless acceptance that I will not see the things I was promised sitting on Dad's knee reading PopSci and at 14 excitedly watching Apollo landing.
lol, that image of Osaka opening the demon core with the screwdriver on the laptop in the background.
That's the definition of insanity. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
No.... but the "Cost Plus" model for contractors definitely IS....
one of the rare cases where people make the sunk cost fallacy in the other direction
Politicians ruin everything. Nobody with common sense could ever come up with a system like this.
We really don't miss any opportunity to scuttle success these days.
DEI FTW!! ... oh wait.
Nothin' new for NASA. Apollo 18, 19, 20. Bought and paid for, crews assigned and raring to go.
Budget got cut, they didn't go. At the very least they salvaged some of it for Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz.
The "mass simulator" immediately reminded me of the "Blue Circle" radar fitted to early Tornado interceptor planes. (This is British humour and would take too long to explain to viewers on Scott's side of the pond.)
Jawas are ready to disassemble this rover in no time
I’m ready to bet a farm that humans are not going to the moon on Artemis…
Agreed.
XSpace is crap
I think that was a forgone conclusion the day after they announced the Artemis programme.
Gonna be a LongMarch instead.
@@isekaiexpress9450 I thought the length doesn’t matter 😂
*AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE:*
Hey Scott I have a classmate who is now very high up in the ISS Program.
I promise this will make sense.
Basically if you don't have her signature it does NOT go to the ISS. When they were still constructing the ISS I got into an argument with her about how they were building it. I was in the camp that wanted to use the Shuttle C which was the shoot once version with nothing but a payload pod. The idea many at the time were saying was it was taking too many very expensive space shuttle flights and Shuttle C could lift as many as 5 ISS modules in a single flight.
Part of my argument as it was for others we needed to get the ISS finished so we could get on with manned exploration.
To say she slapped me down is an understatement.
*FIRST -* As she put it I had no idea what it took to connect and commission any of the ISS modules.
*SECOND -* She quite rightly pointed out that until we solve the propulsion and life support issues for long term manned missions NOBODY was going anywhere beyond LEO. Sadly those 2 technological hurdles of propulsion and life support have still not been solved.
*THIRD - NASA does not decide its missions and this is still not widely understood.* The US Government (as in the politicians) decides what NASA missions do and do NOT happen. If anyone wants to see how badly that can work go and look up a video story Scott did on the Artemis Rocket from a couple of years ago and how there were 2 teams doing the same job on the same rocket and how that made all the decisions take longer and the whole thing be a GIANT CLUSTER F*CK.
When Scott did that story on Artemis I knew exactly what was happening because it was exactly what my classmate had explained to me years earlier. The politicians make decisions FOR NASA based on political needs not technical needs.
Another good example of that was during the post Challenger processes. Kelly Johnson (P38, U2, SR71) came out and said (paraphrasing) _"Don't build a replacement. Give my team the $3 Billion and we'll build you a single stage to orbit (SSO)."_ I have no idea what Kelly Johnson and his team had discussed or what their plans were. That's one of aerospace's great "what If?" mysteries. *HOWEVER* the decision to spend $3 Billion and replace Challenger with Endeavor was a POLITICAL DECSION not a technical decision.
I was in college at the time and had a couple of heated arguments with people who weren't engineers. The reason to replace was that some MILITARY strategists (YES MILITARY) had *CLAIMED* that without 4 operational space shuttles America would lose its pre-eminence in space to the Russians because they new the Russians had Buran on the way. *So politics intervened and instead of moving on from the Space Shuttle NASA limped along with a technically brilliant but also faulty and expensive system for another 20+ years. It also lead to the decade long era where NASA could not even put men in space they had to pay the Russians to do that for them, which was kind of ironic.*
So sorry for the long comment but I think its stuff that needs saying.
The money saved from the extra shuttle missions could have been put into life support & propulsion research - in a sane world. Point 3 is really the only relevant one. It seems like a mix of single-use and reusable shuttles could have gotten the pieces up there and assembled them. A failure of imagination, and a failure of the administrative state that is baked into our obsolete Constitution. Congress must be abolished, and all regulatory agencies need actual citizen oversight boards who team up with project managers, and, if needed, prosecutors. America needs a 21st Century Constitution to build a government where each agency is capable of leading itself, where successful projects get funding, and where cost overruns are analyzed to see if they're worth the money or if the people involved in the cost overruns get a bad mark on their record.
@@Nphen I'm actually Australian but did my degree in America courtesy of a sports scholarship.
A bunch of my friends were pre-law and they used to drag me into their discussions to get another perspective. So I got an unorthodox but interesting education on the US Constitution.
My opinion is that the US Constitution is one of humanities finest achievements but it has a major weakness in that it *guarantees freedom without responsibility* and that makes it easily exploitable by people with nefarious goals. We see this right now with SCOTUS and how a very small but well funded group called the Federalist Society hijacked the American Court System without anyone asking WTF they were up to.
Do you know that the people behind all this are NOT Southern Fundamentalist Christians?
They are actually Fundamentalist Catholics.
Tied into that are the Libertarians who basically want the entire administrative state dismantled. YES they are totally nuts and unrealistic but they are also highly motivated and have a mountain of money. These are the people like Charles Koch who's a major funder behind the Heritage Foundation and CATO Institute.
So the US Constitution isn't so much the problem it how its being exploited that's the problem and that manifests in things like the decisions forced on NASA and the funding NASA gets.
@@Nphen And the reason I always bring up those other points first is so people understand what decisions were made that have had long term effects.
"No disassemble Johnny 5!"
Need data!
Good thing the debt printing machine never runs out of ink
Liar
Headlamps are half the battle - low light optics matter vastly more with good signal to noise ratio that can work on the moon... then lighting can be minimal and still be excellent. We don't need unaided human eyes to see, we just need the optics to see.
check out X27 night vision, it's really magical. that said, the moon does not have atmospheric scattering at night so it will be starlight alone which I doubt very much even this thing can do
Cost+ needs to go. If a company can't meet the requirements they need to either take the loss or not apply at all.
This is not the first time that the US government has pulled the plug AFTER passing the point of no return in committing to and finishing a project. Classic example is the Boeing 2707
nuh that was different
Never let the government control your cool and fun thing you do. They’ll make it not fun and depressing and make you pay for it anyways. No wonder this country is 36 trillion + in debt
Everyone is assuming the rocket will make it to the Moon. Let's wait and see if it does before saying not putting a prototype payload on it was a waste.
By this measure (> 30%), SLS should be canceled immediately.
That is the project Congress cares about so that always gets extra money.
We have always enough money for wars all over the world but never enough for things that could bring humanity one step further to the future...
2024: _NASA has concrete plans for another Moon mission._
2026: Space station "Big Cheeto" poised to replace ISS in the early 2050s
using real concrete
1:14 Osaka with Demon Core is not something I expected to see, but it’s a welcome surprise, unlike the NASA announcement
I think that you're spot on with saying that it's more likely to be internal politics that's haulting this mission. When I was working for the federal department of energy, there was a lot of the not invented here politics that prevented truly innovated projects from ever getting going.
Why we can't have nice things....
I work at the facility where this rover is being developed and see it all the time. I was sad to see that it's being dropped because I was looking forward to seeing it launch.
I guess that the good side of this is that it prevents us from going to space until we become less stupid.
No stupid in space is a good rule.
I’m going to remember this line in the future when a situation exactly like this happens again :)
They should scrap Starliner instead
Starliner is private. Boeing.
No reason to. Already paid for and working.
And yet no complaints about contract funds being wasted on a starlink ship, with no HLS in sight for Artemis from SpaceX. I would rather have NASA funding actual science programs then a private company using government funds for their own commercial use.
The dumbest decision is to allow a company to still get paid if they're 30% over budget. You submitted a quote, if you can't deliver on what you literally promised to deliver in a contract, you are the problem.
If that is the case, shouldn't SLS be canceled?
No because it's flight proven unlike Starship lmaoooooooo
@@blackhatfreak It has flown though? I know you're trying to be a little peace disruptor and do some rage bait in the comments, but at least try to say stuff that makes sense?
@@blackhatfreak Sunk cost fallacy
The Senate is never going to cancel its own launch system.
@@EdwardRLyons that is the truest answer