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Thanks, I’ve heard before how utterly disfunctional EU/ESA/Airbus is. But that’s kind-of obvious, and I guess it’s not why e.g. NASA and ULA (Lockheed Martin +
by tomp 8y ago
Thanks, I’ve heard before how utterly disfunctional EU/ESA/Airbus is. But that’s kind-of obvious, and I guess it’s not why e.g. NASA and ULA (Lockheed Martin + Boeing) are so inefficient - they sure are very political as well, but probably not so fractured (because it’s all US). What makes SpaceX better than them?
- hef19898 8y agoNow I'm just guessing obviously. First is focus, SpaceX is only building and launching rockets, the others are doing a lot more. Then you have programs like the F-35 (Lockheed) which is intentionally very international and thus political, even morw so than your average defence program. No matter how much everybody is talking about strategy and core technologies in the end the only questions governmants and politicians care about how much money is flowing into their home turf. The equivalent to EU politics in the US could be Congress and the Senate medling with budgets? But I'm just guessong here. In general being in a very protected industry, politically and by high barriers of entry, makes people lazy. And politics rub off, so even you don't want to you get political by working with politics for too long. Overhead builds over time, maybe SpaceX did have the time for that yet. And now the last, and arguqbly controversial point, I'm not sure if SpaceX is better by the degree it seems they are. Again, that is just my personal opinion. EDIT: What does ULA mean? I never heard of that acronym.