121–130 of 259 posts
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> Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now. You're not optimizing for the same outcomes as Congress. NASA is a jobs agency.
A 'jobs agency' that has produced a whole lot of technical advancements, maybe.
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A 'jobs agency' that has produced a whole lot of technical advancements, maybe.
maybe in the 60s, current NASA is living off past accomplishments
It's an important one for sure! But it's just not true to say NASA hasn't accomplished amazing stuff in the last decades with the funds and focus they're allocated.
Why can't they cooperate instead of compete? It's not like they don't already have all the money they'd ever need or could use, and wouldn't the world be better off if they worked together than against each other?
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SpaceX is launching its own internet satellites into low orbit so their satellites will only burn up in a decade without boosting. If your argument is "don't progress or change in any way because something bad might happen" then I suspect you'll find few takers on this site.
Collisions in LEO launch debris in all orbits, they are not limited to LEO. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX will turn out to be the reason we won't be able to explore space at all for a few hundred years.
You seem to be referring to the Kessler syndrom. If that happened, it would not mean that we could not send probes to space anymore. It only becomes unviable to have satellites at the altitude of the debris field. We could still launch through it into higher orbits or onto interplanetary trajectories.
It's really a shame what has happened to Blue Origin. They've gone from a promising space startup to yet another purveyor of perpetual vaporware. Where is the BE-4 engine? Delayed, again and again. New Glenn, the rocket that could actually go into orbit? Same. So far their only functioning hardware (New Shephard) is, in effect, a glorified amusement park ride. Considering that SpaceX has actually made it to orbit mul…
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/a-telescope-on...
I appreciate SpaceX's focus and god bless em for what they're doing in that sector, but there are other things to space than just delivery driving.
Maybe that’s just the kind of attitude it takes to be the richest person alive, but it definitely rubs me the wrong way.
Not like he cares who it rubs or in which way, of course.
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They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the first to land vertically. That's not nothing. BE-4 has been delayed, true, but if it were looking like a failure, ULA would have dropped them a long time ago. I think 2022 will clear up lots of things for everyone. SLS, BE-4, New Glenn, etc... Till then there is no sense of dooming anything.
> They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the first to land vertically. That's not nothing. Sorry, but the McDonnell Douglas DC-X did the rocket straight up & down vertical landing in 1993. New Shepard frankly wasn't particularly different. It went higher and longer sure, but for orbital rocketry the challenge isn't height so much as speed and everything that comes with that. The Falcon 9 flight 20 at th…
The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. What Bezos actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned flight of a totally new rocket design. It was a massive display of faith in his engineering team.
Musk didn't do that. Branson didn't do that - and earlier test pilots of his craft died.
As for the BO rocket being totally automated, that was the original intent of the Mercury missions, until the astronauts objected. Nobody called them joyriders or ludicrous.
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Forget orbit, SpaceX has paid for it's ISS contract about 3x in savings over Soyuz. Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now.
BO didn’t want to replace SpaceX. That’s not what this is about. BO said historically NASA gives contracts to multiple companies, and BO wanted funding too (in addition to SpaceX. BO “argued that the agency was required to make multiple awards" because it had previously stated a preference for multiple awards”
They also got court injunctions preventing SpaceX from starting it's program, kinda deflating your whole 'just wanted to play along' narrative
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A 'jobs agency' that has produced a whole lot of technical advancements, maybe.
What advancements have its current flagship program (SLS) produced? Maybe they do produce some but congress clearly wants them to produce jobs not anything else.