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.
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.
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
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.