patrick.net

What disgusting hogwash. First of all, Lockheed Martin was issued the contract to build two capsules, one for testing and one for manned flight, in 2006. It only took the company 19 years to build both. Second, that 2006 contract was supposed to only cost $3.9 billion. Instead, NASA has forked out more than $22 billion.

And what have we gotten? Two capsules, plus a handful of prototype test versions. Worse, this first capsule will be the first to ever carry the life support systems that keep humans alive, as Lockheed Martin admits in its press release
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The company needed almost two decades and billions before it could install that life support system. And it will test it for the first time with humans on board, flying around the Moon.

Worse, the press release says nothing about Orion’s unsafe heat shield, which NASA admits has serious engineering flaws and carries a real risk of failing upon return to Earth.

As a taxpayer, I want my money back!

All in all, the entire SLS and Orion program has been a scam on the public, designed not to explore space but to pump cash into the pockets of the old big space companies. What makes this even more atrocious is that these facts were obvious from day one. I wrote about it repeatedly going back to the very start of this website (see here and here for just two examples). And yet, our so-called mainstream press gladly promoted the lie, and the public accepted it blindly.

Even now that same propaganda press is pushing back against Trump’s proposals to trim NASA’s budget, which includes the cancellation of both SLS and Orion. That none of this money accomplishes what it is supposed to do — establish the United States as a viable space-faring nation — matters not. These pointless projects funnel cash into these big space companies, who in turn funnel cash into the campaign bank accounts of those politicians. They all prosper while America goes bankrupt. What a deal! And the propaganda press is all for it!

Have Americans finally awakened to this scam? I have no idea, though I think we shall find out in the next three years, without doubt. Either Trump will succeed in reshaping NASA into a more efficient operation, or the same crap will go on, bankrupting the country. It will all depend on whether the public buys into the propaganda spewed at them from Washington and the press.