[flagged]
Isn't SpaceX now part of the military industrial complex?
NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
51–60 of 1001 posts
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#52[flagged]
lol, nasa was delayed over and over and over. Even getting to the moon was pretty recent after explosions to where many didn’t think it was safe. Some revisionist history going on here
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#53I love how government acquisitions works. A company can fail to deliver the final product, then use the recompete process to win a higher paying contract by using the progress they already made on the previous contract to demonstrate a performance level above their competitors. Whereas all the competition has to use their own R&D budget to show capability to meet the requirements of the second contract, the winner of…
> Whereas all the competition has to use their own R&D budget to show capability
Think of it as a vote of no confidence. The incumbent has the advantage. But if they've squandered their advantage so thoroughly that a new entrant can match their capabilities, this is an opportunity to switch horses.
NASA should have done this, for example, when Bechtel began shitting the bed with ML2 [1].
[1] https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ig-24-016.pd...
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#54I'm not really sure if keeping a strict schedule has any real relevance here, outside maybe PR and politics. Starships will drop the cost to other bodies in the same way Falcon dropped the cost to orbit. Why would anyone want to invest in a technology and a project that will be obsolete by the time it's implemented?
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#55Is this realistic? Doesn't the development timelines for a new large rocket stretch into more than a decade? Unless someone else had one under development... Could this just be a pressure tactic on SpaceX?
As mentioned in the article (of course I realise we mustn't read those here) Blue Origin is supposed to be providing a lander in 2030 in any case ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_V ), so doesn't seem like a _huge_ stretch. Somewhat surprised they've waited this long, under the circumstances.
I was about to post that Blue Origin is the only possible candidate for a competitor to SpaceX and they're not even close. More competition is needed but it's like saying more competition is needed for the hyperscalers, going from zero to on par is very hard and even with the time and money you still need the talent.
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#56Posture, no one can compete, not even NASA.
"Not even" only applies to those that haven't followed the events of the past decade. 1. USA is no longer sponsoring groundbreaking research 2. USA had already begun outsourcing research to companies that are not grounded in long term employment of researchers.
In general, yes, but in this specific instance, groundbreaking research or its lack isn't the core of the problem.
This is mostly about the new human-rated lander, which is an engineering problem. Notably, the US never had a reasonably safe spaceship, although Dragon may yet prove good. Both Apollos and Space Shuttles, developed under NASA, were pretty dangerous to their crews.
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#57Artemis is a joke. You can tell this is politically motivated by their stance on SLS. If they were serious they would give Spacex the SLS contract for being years and years behind schedule.
Is starship on schedule?
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#58Is this realistic? Doesn't the development timelines for a new large rocket stretch into more than a decade? Unless someone else had one under development... Could this just be a pressure tactic on SpaceX?
Blue Origin is explicitly named in Duffy's statement. And if SpaceX's Starship HLS catches enough delays, they can slide into Blue Origin's Blue Moon HLS timeline - which is now being developed for Artemis 5, in 2030.
On top of working on a HLS lander, Blue Origin has a pretty large rocket developed already - New Glenn. They just don't have the reusability or the launch cadence, and their HLS needs at least two launches. So far, New Glenn has only ever flown once, with the first stage recovery attempt being unsuccessful. But they may get it into a good shape in time.
I do think that Artemis 3, currently stated for 2027, will be eventually delayed to ~2030, for many reasons. But I wouldn't trust Blue Origin to deliver before SpaceX even if they started the development at the same exact time, and they didn't. SpaceX is, by aerospace standards, a lean and mean company. SpaceX sets unhinged hyper-aggressive "if we lived in a perfect world" timelines, and delivers late. Blue Origin sets reasonable aerospace timelines, and still delivers late.
Blue Moon HLS is considerably less complex than Starship HLS, but it has a lot of the same milestones in front of it - including in-orbit propellant storage and fuel transfers from one vehicle to another. And currently, they certainly don't seem to be ahead of where SpaceX is now with Starship.
Other than Blue Origin and SpaceX? I just don't see anyone being able to squeeze out a HLS candndate in time for 2030. Who else is there in the space, with anywhere near the expertise? Firefly? Boeing?
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#59Remind me why we need to get to the moon again?
The first time was to beat the soviets. This time is to beat china
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#60Artemis is a joke. You can tell this is politically motivated by their stance on SLS. If they were serious they would give Spacex the SLS contract for being years and years behind schedule.
If they were serious, they'd properly look into ending SLS after the ones that are being built are launched, cancel the upgrade, go after the company that spent the entire launch tower budget before even starting construction, open up bids for rockets to fly Orion (probably Vulcan or New Glenn IIRC), and sort out their space suit issues.
Maybe also seriously threaten Boeing with cancelations and restrictions for their constant failures and corruption. We've had the espionage scandal that forced the formation of ULA, SLS's extreme delays and overruns, supressing Vulcan's capabilities to prevent it from impinging on SLS's blank check, Starliner's inability to deliver (and at this point it seems unlikely the station will be around long enough for their 6 flights), and the scandal that caused their disqualification from the original HLS bid.
Starship is being painted as the sole blocker in Artemis, but I can't think of any component of Artemis that has any contractors delivering competently and on-time.
We still haven't heard anything about the status of the EVA suits, which the US has an even worse track record on than rockets. My understanding is that they haven't been able to build and bring a new suit into use, for 25+ years now, and not due to a lack of spending.