I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague of many, Bob Zimmerman. He keeps the website behind the

black, space engineering, and space exploration. We begin with an engineering story that requires a lot

of backstory, and Bob's been telling him for years. The SLS, the Senate launch system, and big government.

Bob, the SLS is a troubled program. I think every two years it launches,

spends a billion dollars, and then goes back into the barn to think about itself. Right now,

we're waiting for it to emerge for a test in April, we believe. And the Senate, their opinion.

Good evening to you. Good evening, John. The space law system, which you more properly

call the Senate launch system, because it was Congress that designed it, which of course explains why

it's such a bad rocket. You say it launches every two years, but that gives a misconception, John,

because it only has launched once. And it might launch two years later,

maybe, that we'll get to where that stands in a minute. But the Senate is putting together

another NASA authorization bill. This is Congress issues these every few years. They're usually

pretty meaningless. But they do give you a sense of the politics, and that's

what I look at. Most of the press looked at this authorization bill that was approved by the Commerce Committee, and they noticed it did a bunch of things like it wants to extend ISS to 32. It supports commercial

split

is what's

the

commercial

space

stations

to replace

ISS

...