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NASA is basically a jobs program at this point. Congress keeps funding it primarily as a way to direct federal money to certain states. There's no vision. Ther
by CrazyStat 7y ago
NASA is basically a jobs program at this point. Congress keeps funding it primarily as a way to direct federal money to certain states. There's no vision.
There are lots of good people at NASA and they manage to do some great work, but they could do much more with the budget they have if they weren't subject to the political whims of two branches of government.
ESA/Ariane are in a similar situation. They rejected reusable rockets a couple of years ago explicitly because they were afraid of the effect it would have on the jobs on their production line--the calculus is purely political, and jobs won out over not being left behind with an overpriced single-use launch platform. To their credit they recently walked that back and are now developing a reusable launch platform.
- growlist 7y agoHit the nail on the head. If Starship/Superheavy succeeds the contrast will be stark, with the relative inefficiency of ESA/NASA making them look like employment schemes that do space as a side-effect. If they care about remaining relevant in rocketry both organisations need to wake up, smell the coffee and start disrupting themselves before SpaceX becomes the only game in town (ESA efforts notwithstanding). This is very much what I would love to see, it's 2019 and we should have at least a moonbase by now.
- nnain 7y agoSo true, India's ISRO is the only well performing govt agency, and even that's too little compared to SpaceX (considering the budget that's been poured into it for the last 70 yrs). The rest of the govt companies in India couldn't even make a decent aircraft. It's sad to see people join them only to get a 'safe job' and not really to create phenomenal stuff with the massive budget.