After giving in to Putin/Xi’s demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon’s Space company with our national secrets
After giving in to Putin/Xi’s demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon’s Space company with our national secrets
To be fair here… The old guard still aren’t working on reuse even after SpaceX not only championed it but actually succeeded and proved reliability.
The old launch providers are still just throwing their shit away and still cost billions of dollars for launches.
The Commercial Resupply Service and Commercial Crew Programs have also achieved better standards than NASA had when they started them, and at much cheaper cost than the previous solutions.
Privatisation isn’t inherently bad, and importantly, the money is still being handled through NASA for oversight.
I bet if you offered them grant money to develop it… it wouldn’t have been left on the table.
No, but they wouldn’t do anything beyond the exact specific minimums of the grant either.
And you think a private business will do anything more than the minimum of a contract?
SpaceX has with their vehicles and options. They’re all more capable than the contact they were built under.
Yes
Huh? Why do you think this? The implication seems to be that they want to pocket the rest or something?
Let’s not forget, we are talking about NASA here, not a private corporation. Why would an arm of the federal government have any interest in not doing “anything beyond the exact specific minimums of the grant”?
I cannot speak to building rockets, but I do know about other types of government financing, and I can tell you that the scientists and engineers who would have received such a grant, would have no reason not to use as much of it as possible. In fact, that’s exactly how they would justify a need for more in the future.
NASA aren’t the ones building things. They’re just the ones deciding what the requirements are after Congress gives them a fraction of what they need to accomplish the impossible.
It’s the likes of Boeing that are building and milking it. And they have never done more than the minimum required, and until competition from SpaceX at a fraction of the cost were experts at milking the Cost Plus contracting they essentially required to do anything space related.
NASA will never be in charge of building things on their own. Space too much of a cash cow for the Congress Critters to milk via the complexity and obfuscation of the government contract process. Thinking they would be able to bring anything in house is hilarious.
Also does it even SEEM like NASA cuts corners? No. They know people’s lives are at stake. They test and retest and are very dedicated to proper procedure so things don’t get fucked up the wrong way … like when you cut corners.
Yeah i mean look how much money telecoms got over the last century. That paid off really well.
Oversight of the money is far from the problem here. This is not an issue of cheating the government or mismanagement of money, this is a national security issue.
In some ways, SpaceX delivered too well.
NASA has been trying to find multiple launch providers but where are they? This is probably not the risk reduction they were going for but it is exactly risk that can be reduced by having multiple providers. However SpaceX succeeded well enough to dominate the field, worldwide
Where are Bozos and those other guys? Where even is ULA? Where’s that payback on NASA funding?