Summary
Elon Musk and his advisers are pressuring Trump to cancel NASA’s $24 billion Space Launch System (SLS), citing high costs and outdated technology.
GOP lawmakers from Alabama and Texas oppose the move due to job losses and national security concerns.
Critics favor SpaceX’s cheaper, reusable Starship, but supporters argue SLS has already flown successfully and is more powerful.
Former NASA administrator Bill Nelson believes SLS will survive, as Trump likely wants to be the president who oversees the next moon landing.
NASA’s budget is less than 1% of the entire federal budget. We can do both.
“Critics favor SpaceX’s cheaper, reusable Starship”
…yeah these critics definitely aren’t just Musk with a fake mustache and spacex investors or anything…
Ah yes, Elon Musk deciding who gets government contracts to build spaceships. Move along, no conflicts of interest to be seen here.
Trump likely wants to be the president who oversees the next moon landing.
Like this MF would last the 10 years that would take.
Ugh I can just imagine the brain dead boomers now, “nobody else has been able to do it for 60 years, but Trump did it!”
Bruh, just let him believe it. Trying to argue against keeping NASA isn’t the best angle, atm.
Right? That’s like #273,836 on the list of shit to scrutinize.
I also don’t see how President Musk would ever allow Trump to oversee it.
I don’t think this is a meaningful test because actually creating stuff for the money you get isn’t required when you have the power to devalue USD and your own companies’ stocks. This is literally the only reason he surpassed the other tech bros in wealth accumulation: market manipulation.
Yeah, Starship is definitely not ready for primetime. Maybe cancel SLS after SpaceX has flown a Starship mission around the moon.
It’s not the correct architecture for making it to the moon. Starship/SuperHeavy is an absolute beast for LEO but they are nowhere close to being able to make it to the moon with that system. I wish Super Heavy all the luck and success but it’s frustrating when they keep pushing it for other roles without acknowledging the major issues that come with staging so low in the atmosphere
Agreed, though I’m still interested in some “assemble in orbit” lunar architectures. No need to lug the whole Starship out there, but it can put significant mass into orbit. You could build an Apollo style lander out of three or four launched components, I suspect.
https://medium.com/@ToryBrunoULA/the-secrets-of-rocket-design-revealed-e2c7fc89694c
This is a pretty good article that gets into the nitty gritty of some of the issues. Disclaimer: it’s written by the CEO of SpaceX’s main competition but he’s well regarded in the industry.
$24 billion Space Launch System (SLS), citing high costs and outdated technology.
Fuck Musk, but they ain’t wrong. It’s just rearranged space shuttle parts designed to funnel pork barrel money to the same old contractors (except now we even gotta throw away all the RS-25 engines instead of reusing them). There’s nothing fundamentally new there that they didn’t already do in the 60s. It kind of is a step backward in terms of aerospace tech.
