Earlier quoted context omitted.
They pulled Jared Isaacman because it was revealed he had donated to Democrats.
That's pretty amusing, considering Trump spent decades as a NY Democrat.
Elon too, until 2022.
NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
41–50 of 60 posts
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#42They say “the only US alternative”, which is true, but it’s not the only alternative - nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m sure they could go back to doing the same. Perhaps China would be willing to sell seats on their launches. Maybe India will be in a position to offer human launches to the U.S. fairly soon - should be up and running by 2027, and they seem to hit their objectives most of the time.…
NASA still cooperates heavily with Roscosmos and American astronauts regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats. The latest one is Johnny Kim who launched in late April on Soyuz MS-27 from Baikonur and will stay on the ISS until december. And Christopher Williams is already scheduled for the next Soyuz mission. China on the other hand will probably never happen because of the general political climate in the US and this admin…
> American astronauts regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats
It's a seat swap arrangement, no money is exchanged.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-extends-seat-barter-agreement-wit...
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm usually not one to defend Elmo, but it was a response to P47 threatening to defund SpaceX. It's like watching children. Poor USA, poor us.
Wasn't it Musk that was calling for a smaller and leaner government?
By my estimate, SpaceX has saved the US government 10s of billions by reducing launch costs with Falcon 9, developing Dragon, Starlink, etc.
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting SpaceX under the CEO of Boeing would make SpaceX as bad as Boeing, not Boeing as good as SpaceX. Also, it's still America. Good luck to anyone trying to "force" SpaceX, a private company, to do anything they don't want.
Trump admin has suggested using wartime powers to nationalize SpaceX. They're already using those powers for deportations. I don't know if they seriously want to do it, but whether they can do it is up to a highly sympathetic SCOTUS.
They’re in a pissing match. The relationship between SpaceX and the federal government is mutually beneficial. I would be surprised if either follows through on their threats.
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#45They say “the only US alternative”, which is true, but it’s not the only alternative - nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m sure they could go back to doing the same. Perhaps China would be willing to sell seats on their launches. Maybe India will be in a position to offer human launches to the U.S. fairly soon - should be up and running by 2027, and they seem to hit their objectives most of the time.…
>nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m sure they could go back to doing the same
No. Obviously not.
>Perhaps China would be willing to sell seats on their launches.
That would be an extreme humiliation of the US and NASA. Abandoning civil space programs entirely would be preferable.
>Maybe India will be in a position to offer human launches to the U.S. fairly soon - should be up and running by 2027, and they seem to hit their objectives most of the time.
India is nowhere close to the capabilities of the US, China or Russia.
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting SpaceX under the CEO of Boeing would make SpaceX as bad as Boeing, not Boeing as good as SpaceX. Also, it's still America. Good luck to anyone trying to "force" SpaceX, a private company, to do anything they don't want.
Trump admin has suggested using wartime powers to nationalize SpaceX. They're already using those powers for deportations. I don't know if they seriously want to do it, but whether they can do it is up to a highly sympathetic SCOTUS.
It hasn’t. A former advisor, Steve Bannon, suggested it while also suggesting they deport Elon. It is clearly just a swipe at Elon and not “Trump admin” seriously suggesting this.
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#47It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor, most likely Boeing or Boeing's largest rival, Lockheed-Martin.
no it does not seem likely, that's nonsense. the pentagon likes the spacex product just the way it is
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
DragonX is the smaller and leaner government.
No, it’s a private for profit corporation.
NASA making their own rockets/spacecraft certainly wouldn't make the government leaner. NASA was always using contractors, but usually NASA was taking a bigger part in the development/operation of rockets/spacecraft. For human spaceflight, that changed with the Commercial Crew Program, with the contracts for the development of the crewed spacecraft that would be designed, produced and operated entirely by commercial companies. SpaceX received $2.6 billion for the development of Dragon, Boeing received $4.2 billion for Starliner. So SpaceX was the cheaper option, and they started operational crewed missions to ISS in 2020. Boeing got much more money, and in 2025 they still don't have an operational spacecraft.
Commercial Crew Program (and also commercial resupply flights to the ISS) started during Obama presidency, so we can thank Obama for commercializing space and making NASA leaner and saving taxpayer dollars.
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#49It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor, most likely Boeing or Boeing's largest rival, Lockheed-Martin.
> It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor I'm sorry but what? SpaceX is private, not public, and regardless the Pentagon has zero power to force any such thing. It's making gobs of money and growing pretty fast (around $12 billion revenue this year, prediction is/was ~$15.5 billion so something like a 30% YoY increase) with most of that from Starlink, then commercial…
What you need to know is that the Pentagon has ultimate authority in matters like this (regardless of the contractor’s equity structure) and it has wielded it time and time again throughout the Cold War. SpaceX cannot escape the command structure by “decommissioning” anything. If you use drugs and threaten US interests in jest, you are done. Those are hard rules. Perhaps Musk will wind up emaciated with footlong fingernails living on the top floor of a hotel in Las Vegas or Florida, but he will not still influence the assets at SpaceX in such a state, regardless of his wealth, passion, allegiance, intelligence, charisma, army of sycophants, children named after chemicals, etc. He can work out his relationship with personalities in the US government, but his arse is cooked in terms of command of dual-use orbital transit and communications systems. The people at SpaceX deserve so much better anyway.
Re: NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The real plan Ugh that is being way too generous. A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them.
> A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them. No, this is completely opposite to reality. The current US private space industry was absolutely the result in large part of a rare modern spell of good policy decisions and sustained support (and absolutely yes, a certain amount of luck, but it's important to create conditions where luck can snowball). Support that has paid off in spades and…
> Multiple providers is now an explicit goal of the DOD and they have repeatedly acted to support it
I agree with everything you said, but to be precise it was the DoD policy for a long time to have at least two providers. In the 90s it was Lockheed (with Atlas rocket) and Boeing (with Delta rocket). For complicated reasons they were forced to combine their rocket divisions, and they formed a joint company, ULA. But they still had these two rockets, so at least there was redundancy on the technological side, but no competition. After SpaceX entered the launch market, DoD and ULA weren't willing to allow SpaceX (not yet a part of the military-industrial complex) to compete for DoD launches, but SpaceX sued their way into these contracts. And after SpaceX became the cheapest, most reliable and fastest launch provider, the benefits of opening the market are obvious, so there's no coming back to the ULA monopoly (or any other monopoly, at least in launches).
But on the side of NASA resupply/crew programs, yeah, it was a great decision by NASA/government/congress that paid off massively, and allowed today's space boom to happen (and made SpaceX what it is today).