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Remember the last time the Airforce butted heads with NASA? They almost lost their entire space program. To better justify the Shuttle during its development, N
by valuearb 10y ago
Remember the last time the Airforce butted heads with NASA? They almost lost their entire space program. To better justify the Shuttle during its development, NASA demanded that all air force payloads ride on it. The air force pushed back because they needed polar launch and wider landing capabilities. NASA knew the Shuttle design would fail to meet its performance and cost promises, so it agreed to modify the Shuttle design (making it worse in most ways) for the Air Force in return for locking down Shuttle political support.
The airforce was forced to wind down its space program until, the Challenger explosion. Then they were forced to scramble to restart it.
Now the Airforce is advocating for a technology that is directly counter to the interests of NASA, its funders in the Senate, and the SLS, which is the main reason for that funding. NASA and its congress critters aren't going to like this, they still want to pour massive amounts of pork into their districts with the SLS and any government employee publicly pointing out its missions could be done far cheaper is going to get whacked.
- kiba 10y agoExcuse me, NASA ran the COTS program for commercial resupply contract to the ISS, and they also ran another program for commercial space vehicle. After all, NASA help made what SpaceX is today. Of course, there's probably a faction within the NASA and aerospace contractor community that don't like SpaceX, but it is inaccurate to say that it run contrary to the interest of NASA as a whole.
- erentz 10y agoRight, wouldn't NASA be SpaceX's largest customer? They gave them $1.6 billion for those resupply missions (right when SpaceX needed it to stay alive) and a further $3 billion for that crewed vehicle development you mention.
- greglindahl 10y agoCommercial Crew was $2.6 billion to SpaceX and includes 6 flights, I believe. Yes, NASA is SpaceX's biggest customer, but SpaceX also gets a lot of revenue from launching commercial communications satellites to GEO -- a business that US launchers have not been price competitive at for a long time.
- valuearb 10y agoAnything that threatens the SLS is NASA's mortal enemy, even if it offers a far cheaper route to Mars.
- geezerjay 10y ago> Now the Airforce is advocating for a technology that is directly counter to the interests of NASA Why do you believe that reusable rockets are against the interests of NASA?
- valuearb 10y agoThey've are spending $20B to design an obsolete disposable heavy launch system that maximizes political pork.
- geezerjay 10y agoYou've failed to answer the question. You only stated that a project costs money, and proceeded to assert that the technology is "obsolete" and then pulled from the conspiracy theorist's playbook with the pork reference.
- valuearb 10y agoDo you really think NASA would be fine with canceling the SLS so they can restart a new reusable launch system, or contract with BO/SpaceX for one? Any launch system that's in current development that isn't reusable is obsolete. The likely cost savings are so substantial they make disposables entirely uncompetitive. ULA knows this, Arianespace knows it, and NASA knows it but practices denial because their political support is predicated on a project spending lots of money in a huge number of vongressional districts.
- Can_Not 10y ago> Now the Airforce is advocating for a technology that is directly counter to the interests of NASA I'm out of the loop on most of this, but is there a reason they can't give NASA the funding to cover both interest groups?