Boeing Restarts Its EUS Lobbying Campaign On Social Media
Keith’s note: Boeing has restarted its social media campaign on Facebook which means they are mining your Facebook user data for other uses that it is not bothering to tell you about. The Boeing ad points you to this page https://www.boeing.com/space/space-launch-system/. But this is how it tracks the social media user from Facebook with a campaign they call “slsphase2”
When you get to the page it says “Additional missions are planned with this configuration as the even more powerful Block 1B version of the rocket is designed and built. This follow-on, evolved two-stage configuration will provide a lift capability of more than 105 metric tons, using the Boeing-built Exploration Upper Stage.”
Hmmm … “slsphase2” Boeing is being rather blunt in what it sees this effort as. Unless I missed something NASA has not ordered production of EUS. As you may recall from the NASA Authorization Act wording in draft House legislation Boeing has been lobbying hard for the EUS and excluing private sector commercial alternatives at the same time.
Back in December Jim Bridenstine called B.S. on these efforts by Boeing, telling the Washington post “… any plan that requires an EUS to be ready by 2024 is a plan that reduces the probability of success. It’s just not going to be ready. … “All of our contractors lobby Congress to achieve what is in their best interest even though it may not be in the best interest of the nation,” Bridenstine said in an interview. “This is another example of that. My job as NASA administrator is to make sure we do what’s right for the country, and for the taxpayer.”
And of course Boeing wants you to forget that the SLS is billions over budget, years behind schedule, and is still a year or more away from flying. They most certainly want you to forget that SpaceX is flying Falcon Heavy rockets and is preparing to test its immense Starship. Meanwhile development of Blue Origin’s monster rocket New Glenn is underway.
– Boeing Uses Deceptive Social Media To Grab Your Browsing Data, previous post
– Boeing’s Misleading Anti-SpaceX Pro-SLS Facebook Ad Campaign, previous post
– Join Boeing’s SLS Fan Club So They Can Track Your Activity, previous post
– Boeing’s Creepy Petition Wants To Track Your Online Activity, previous post
When these show up in my feed I flag the post as fake news to Facebook.
I actually blocked Boeing from my preferences and they still showed up. They are using the Facebook tricks to force their message on you based on a variety of things you are interested in.
I need to find a way to block that whole SLS sidebar ad on space news webpage it is so annoying
Try and ad blocker.
Good social media campaigns find ways to get around that too ….
Didn’t you know? Social media was how the Borg orginated. Resistance is futile you will be assimilated.
Really? I thought they came from automatically targeted advertising. (And bonus points for anyone why remembers, “I am Pentium of the Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.”)
Or to put that in other, truer words “The Space Launch System is the only rocket that NASA is allowed to use, because we forced them to carry humans and cargo to deep space using a single launch at ten times the price”
When corporate lobbyists control the narrative, this is why we can’t have nice things.
In other news, Boeing’s Starliner had a parachute that wasn’t attached in a recent test, and had a timing problem that caused in-flight failure to reach proper orbit. And Boeing’s 737 MAX had a poorly designed control system that ended up killing >300 people in two separate crashes.
I’m waiting for Boeing to focus more on good execution than marketing and next quarterly profit.
Let’s remember that HR 5666 has only been introduced .. it’s not cemented yet. It needs to get shot down. It’s all partisan garbage. With that said, once SpaceX gets there before Boering is even ready to launch, they’ll have one hell of a time making any of this stick, or so I’d hope.
Boeing was pushing EUS before the House language was released and it will continue to do so if the language is not adopted.
It’s worth noting just how influential Doug Cooke’s architecture op-eds and congressional testimony have been to cementing Boeing’s recent legislative agenda. The whole “HLS is so much easier if you just send the whole thing on its own Block 1B” is a stroke of PR genius. It’s completely devastating to any hope that there would be money available for actual payloads to do interesting science or technology development, but pitch-perfect if the goal is merely to make SLS components at the lowest labor productivity (and therefore highest cost-plus profit) possible.
I suspect Maxar and SpaceX will get there before Boeing. At least, the current plans call for a 2022 non-SLS launch of the Gateway Power and Propulsion Element, which will then get itself to lunar orbit. Maxar is building the PPE, I’m willing to bet they contract to SpaceX for the launch, and it’ll probably get to the vicinity of the Moon before the Artemis I flight. And, yes, that should make Boeing look bad. Except very few people are likely to remember. How many people remember what a fiasco Boeing’s development of the C-17 was?
I appreciate the response. I was unaware of Maxar.
The latest versions of Firefox have an extension available called “Facebook Container”. I normally suspect extensions, but this is an officially-supported one, and not all that complex because the “containers” feature is built-into the newest versions of Firefox. The extension just applies it specifically to Facebook and the myriad web sites that Facebook puts their tracking-apps on.
The Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) would be an awesome addition to the SLS, if the SLS were an operating rocket. But for Boeing to advertise the SLS as “The Most Powerful Rocket” is totally fake, since they haven’t flown yet. The most powerful rocket currently is the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The next generation heavy lift rockets on the horizon include the SLS, the Blue Origin New Glenn, and the SpaceX Starship.
The next launch of the “most powerful rocket” is still up in the air, it could be either one of those three companies. But for Boeing to peddle their next version of a second stage is a bit premature.
The next Falcon Heavy flight, carrying something for the Space Command, should launch sometime towards the end of this year. That’s definitely going to be before the first SLS launch and I’m pretty sure it will also be before New Glenn and Starship. I could also quibble about leaving out the Saturn V, but you did say currently. But, more importantly, EUS is clearly from the same people who brought us (or are bringing us) SLS. The performance is impressive, but four (!) RL-10s? Do you know how much those things cost?
More then a reusable Falcon Heavy flight.
Maybe so, but still none of those launch vehicles are anywhere close to becoming operational. I agree that the SLS, kind of like the Webb telescope are, well, let us just say, well behind and since new technologies still need to be invented to get either of these off the ground.
Falcon Heavy is operational.
Umm …. the whole point of SLS was that it required *no* new technologies and so was claimed to be “safe, simple, and soon” because it was just repackaging pieces from the Shuttle program. There are many reasons why it was not (indeed, should not have been expected to be), but “new technologies” are NOT one of its characteristics.
So what is the holdup?
Mostly Boeing dragging its feet on a cost plus contract. They’ve spent about $43 billion since 2013 buying back Boeing stock (to push up the stock price). Is it any wonder that so many of their development projects are floundering?
https://marketrealist.com/2…
The sad truth is that the current Boeing executives care more about the stock price than running successful programs.
Unfortunately, this sort of project can be very, well, elastic. Safety and reliability are important issues, but it’s impossible to take the failure rate all the way to zero. Do you try for 99.9% or just 99% or what? When someone comes in, as they always do, and points out a potential problem, should the manager sink time and money into evaluating and mitigating it? (And, somehow, those people who come up with new, potential problems, also tend to be the “right” ones to pay for the analysis…) Time and cost, by the way, usually go hand in hand, since the cost is largely for the person-hours of effort.
We’ve got more data from robotic missions, since new human-rated launch vehicles are few and far between. A few years ago, the National Academies published a study on CubeSats, which had some interesting statistics on cost and reliability. At the time, and for all CubeSats regardless of who builds them or how, the failure rate was about 40%. A small Explorer, developed as what NASA calls a Class C or D mission costs about ten times (and ten times the number of person-hours.) There failure rate is about 20% according to the National Academies analysis. And for a factor of two or three more in cost, you get into the world of “failure would be a catastrophe” major missions, which actually do fail about 10% of the time.
It’s hard to extrapolate, but if cutting the in half takes twice to ten times the money, getting it down to 1% might be ten to two thousand times more expensive. There are easier ways to do it, but they involve accepting (even expecting) high failure rates in early flights, evolving the design based on experience and things you discover the hard way, and repeating. But that’s not how NASA or Boeing generally do things.
Strictly speaking, no. SLS does not require any new technology to be invented. Adapting and modifying existing technology isn’t the same as inventing something new. I don’t think anything on SLS started below what NASA would call Technology Readiness
Level (TRL) 4. Probably 5 or 6.
And of course, I still support all and want Congress to step up and fund these projects as needed to be successful. Where would our space program be without NASA?
If Elon authorized an Upper Stage upgrade for the Falcon Heavy: even in expendable mode it would be about One Tenth the cost of an SLS Block 1 launch and would have about 80% as much payload in most parameters. How much longer can Boeing continue this scandal?!
…Falcon Heavy, Vulcan Heavy and the New Glenn launchers will give America a formidable *Fleet* of capable and cost-effective launchers. And if SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket and Starships end up working..?! How could Boeing then keep on playing their tune?
Hmm… Could the SLS lift a SpaceX Starship upper stage? Never mind…
If Boeing were only half as good at building SLS as they are at lobbying for it, we’d have crews in NRHO right now.