NASA Successfully Test Fires J-2X Engine.

Reaction from the Mars Society:

The Space Launch System HLV (Heavy Lift Vehicle) as currently designed is fine. However, NASA's human spaceflight program needs a mission.

NASA's proposed SLS-HLV budget of $3 billion per year is much higher than is actually needed to fund an HLV, and appears to be an effort to spend the former Shuttle program funds for political purposes.

NASA needs a deep space mission. From the mission comes the plan; from the plan comes the things necessary for its implementation. NASA needs to fund missions, not things. The mission comes first.

This is exactly right. Apollo was successful because it started with a goal, to land a man on the moon. Kennedy didn't say "Let's build a big Saturn V booster and see what we can do with it later". If he had, it would've almost certainly led to program cancellation later by a Congress asking "What the hell are we spending all this money for?"

The SLS program as it stands now is guaranteed to be cancelled. (but not before many billions are funneled to the well-connected)

NASA today is not the young NASA of the 60's. It's become a bloated bureaucracy.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Burt Rutan:

NASA's become a jobs program.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/bi2OwmaXhhg/nasa-successfully-test-fires-j-2x-engine

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