More Fake SLS News From Boeing
More fake news in Facebook ads from @BoeingSpace As if Falcon Heavy (which has actually flown) New Glenn (to be built in vast factory buildings under construction), Starship (being tested) etc are not in the equation and available for sale – all at a price vastly cheaper than SLS pic.twitter.com/ou37TZ53iV
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 20, 2019
It may be fake news, but there are apparently congress critters that are pushing a similar story.
Yes, Boeing’s Senator will not allow those other systems to be used.
I don’t necessarily want a single launch shot to deep space.
Everyone has been making believe that Orion and SLS are the only solutions for flight beyond LEO. Fact is Dragon Rider, the large Musk rocket and even CST100 can be configured for deep space and lunar and Falcon Heavy has already demonstrated the capability for lunar and planetary flights.
Dear God! This is a form of ‘Technological Gaslighting’ if ever I saw it. Who the heck are they trying to kid?!
Boeing’s recent problems aside, the company retains a position similar to that of IBM, back in the day*, in the sense that pronouncements from Chicago are seen by many as holy. Indeed, watching a science committee hearing earlier in the year, I would fairly characterize at least two elected members as dullards, wholly susceptible to the company line, and proud do do so.
In this framework, Boeing offers a simple, digestible, and ‘reliable’ assessment, and has done it in a timely and useful way for certain ill-equiped congresspersons. It’s to be expected.
And, adding this: the idea that SLS, or Starliner, or Max provide useful tools for characterizing a very large, complex, and capable company like Boeing will not serve one well.
* “Nobody ever got fired for specifying IBM.”
This is just Boeing doing routine Congressional engineering.
Continuing Congressional support for boondoggles like SLS is a matter of a Congressional-minority coalition that directly benefits, plus enough mindless you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours support from the rest of Congress to reliably pass the funding.
This rest-of-Congress acquiescence is vital, and depends on one thing: The rest remaining reasonably assured the minority boondoggle WON’T EMBARRASS them.
Once it embarrasses them, it’s toast. (See “Bridge To Nowhere”.)
Boeing Marketing is not aiming these ads at us. It’s aiming them at keeping the majority of Congressmen (who aren’t paying much attention) subliminally convinced that Boeing SLS won’t embarrass them.
The sentence ended too soon. Here’s the part that got clipped: “… using the mission profile we designed that doesn’t use any other company’s products.”
I take a week off for vacation and come back to see Boeing is still up to its usual, dirty, tricks. I wonder how many Boeing employees working on SLS actually believe all of the PR b.s. that the company puts out. I’m guessing quite a few, unfortunately.