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Say what we will about Elon, but him gambling his PayPal fortune was the best thing that happened to the US space program (and the global space race as whole!)
You've truly achieved wealth when even people you don't like and don't like you in return depend on your shit to stay alive!
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This is just my opinion, but I think a lot of it has to do with requirements. NASA is first and foremost about prestige (even above science IMO. This is also - again my opinion - why NASA hasn't been back to the moon in 50 years. There's little prestige to be gained for an expensive operation). With prestige as the backdrop, it makes them very risk adverse. There are layers and layers of requirements made to reduce r…
> NASA has additional requirements they must manage (e.g., political risk) that SpaceX has less exposure to This doesn't appear to be the issue with ML-2, whose problems are closer to Boeing's subcontracting addiction than e.g. the F-35's sticker-collection approach to manufacturing.
IMO NASA has done the same with their selection of major center locations. It doesn’t make a lot of logistics sense to have your biggest centers in CA, OH, VA, and TX but it makes a lot of political sense if your goal is to avoid large programs being mothballed.
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> NASA has additional requirements they must manage (e.g., political risk) that SpaceX has less exposure to This doesn't appear to be the issue with ML-2, whose problems are closer to Boeing's subcontracting addiction than e.g. the F-35's sticker-collection approach to manufacturing.
I’m sorry, I don’t follow. Can you elaborate? Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I think sub-contacting is heavily related to political risk mitigation, as it’s a method of spreading project money across many political districts. IMO NASA has done the same with their selection of major center locations. It doesn’t make a lot of logistics sense to have your biggest centers in CA, OH, VA, and TX but it makes a lot of poli…
Good point, I'm unclear whether Bechtel was awarded the contract by NASA/Congress after selecting its subcontractors or before. (And if having a roster of subcontractors was an implicit ask from NASA or a decision made by Bechtel to future-proof their contract.)
We see something similar with Boeing, and while that was also partly politically motivated, there was also the financial desire to be asset light. The OIG's story about "one subcontractor, [to] which Bechtel allocated approximately 46 percent of the fabrication work to" selling off "all of its shop space to a non-NASA customer because Bechtel's steel fabrication plan lacked a signed contract with the subcontractor" forcing Bechtel "to find another subcontractor with available shop space" sounds like incompetence, not savvy politics [1].
[1] https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ig-24-016.pd... page 19
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NASA is a political jobs program from a funding perspective. There isn't any way around that. This creates uncertainties, distractions and perverse incentives all around: 0. Everything is dramatically complicated by the artificial divisions of work across states needed to get enough political support. Grossly inefficient from the start, and inflexible into perpetuity. 1. Initial schedules are incentivized to be unrea…
> 2. Essentially a cost plus (or cost even) program. This is really the only problem. Because the government was the only buyer - no one in their right mind would supply unless a ridiculously cushy contract is in place. You're going to massively overpay if you're the only buyer in a new industry that requires insane CapEx and is high risk.
For perspective 2.7B is 0.04% of the entire US budget for 2024. This is a rocket that goes to the moon. If your reaction is "lord help us" then perhaps space exploration just isn't in your blood.
Say what we will about Elon, but him gambling his PayPal fortune was the best thing that happened to the US space program (and the global space race as whole!)
Having praised Elon, I will now additionally add that he is pretty much a mouthpiece for rightwing Russian propaganda despite Starlink being vital to Ukrainian war efforts. You've truly achieved wealth when even people you don't like and don't like you in return depend on your shit to stay alive!
Both sides in the Ukraine War are using "irregular" Starlink dishes.
* Russia is reportedly buying dishes (and the service attached to the dishes) in the Middle East.
* Ukraine has its own fleet of dishes (being paid for by the US, after Musk initially provided free service early in the war after a Ukrainian request), but also many individual dishes that were donated, and being paid for, by private individuals outside Ukraine.
US law prohibits Russia from using Starlink. The problem is, how to stop Russia from doing so? A simple location-based ban won't work, because the front line is constantly shifting. Whitelisting only Ukraine's own dishes to work within Ukrainian territory might work, but 1) what about dishes that get captured by Russia? 2) As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
Another way to think about this is that this demonstrates just how lifesaving for Ukraine Starlink has become in the past two years. Ukraine could ask Starlink to disable all dishes within its territory. On the contrary, it has decided that the benefits of Starlink to Ukrainians outweighs Russians also benefiting from it.
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Well, they do a lot of fundamental try/test that others use then, including SpaceX. Didn't want to defend NASAs schedules, of course, but still they are often the first pioneers in many areas. And that plays not really well with public money, unlike private startups that can do whatever.
NASA still does great stuff but SLS specifically is not exactly a pioneering program. It's a disposable rocket using Space Shuttle engines, attempting to go to the Moon again. Meanwhile SpaceX got reusable first stages into production, and recently got the world's largest-ever rocket to orbit and attempted to land the second stage. And it's all powered by newly designed engines that significantly advance the state of…
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NASA still does great stuff but SLS specifically is not exactly a pioneering program. It's a disposable rocket using Space Shuttle engines, attempting to go to the Moon again. Meanwhile SpaceX got reusable first stages into production, and recently got the world's largest-ever rocket to orbit and attempted to land the second stage. And it's all powered by newly designed engines that significantly advance the state of…
There are _a ton_ of innovations in SLS, especially in the space ship (payload). Engines is just a small piece of the program, not really important one. Over the years a lot of theory improved, a lot of new technologies developed (e.g. materials, IT) and SLS tests them for space. Kinda "deploy in production".