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NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capa

by btilly 7y ago

NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They already are planning suborbital flights this summer, and already are looking for it to be human rated by NASA. Their announced timeline (which is probably ambitious but that is par for the course) includes suborbital flights this summer, aiming for orbit by 2020, going around the moon in 2022, going around the Moon with a human inside by 2023, and humans on the moon for 2024. They have a record of being ambitious, but also a record of launches. And nobody on the planet in recent years has developed more successful rockets or had more successful rockets than SpaceX. More impressively, nobody has done it so cheaply. So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet?

gfodor 7y ago
The only way to stop SpaceX is to convince the public they are affiliated with a political party, or that space exploration is a political issue. It’s one of the few arenas that hasn’t been enveloped by hyperpartisanship, so I suspect any actual help Trump may be giving SpaceX either doesn’t exist or is widely being kept out of the public spotlight.
HuShifang 7y ago
There's a reason SLS is nicknamed the Senate Launch System -- Sen. Shelby of Alabama rains fire down on any NASA official who comes anywhere near observing that SpaceX could fulfill any objectives allocated to the SLS. It's as much a pork barrel, to use the political lingo, as it is a rocket -- a steady source of jobs for Alabama and a couple other Southern states for as long as it's in development / production. And no one cares enough to take on Shelby and his allies. So, rational proposals like using SpaceX are sadly political non-starters at the moment.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  It really does seems rather un-democratical if just single (albeit voted) representative wields so much power, apparently withou much the others can do about it.
nordsieck 7y ago
> So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet? Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't. But as a person who has done big deals before, he almost certainly understands that congress needs its cut. Congress needs to shovel enough pork to defense contractors so they get campaign contributions to get re-elected. They just won't support a budget that cuts that out. IMO, the only real hope is that congress + the next president can carve out enough money (ideally at least 10% of the SLS budget) to actually do something useful.
Tuna-Fish 7y ago
> So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet? Because what NASA does is not a decision where Trump has much say. Trump nominally appoints NASA top leadership and sets the agenda, but the budget is entirely decided by the Congress. It doesn't matter what Trump would want NASA to do if the only things that get funded are the SLS contracts.
foobarbecue 7y ago
Remeber this? https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-leaving-trump-advisory-councils-following-paris-agreement-withdrawal/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-leaving-trump-ad...
reddog 7y ago
Why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk? Because he has NASA. NASA has a proven record of human and machine space exploration. It put men in space 60 years ago. It put men on the moon and returned them all safely before Musk was born. Despite its second mover advantage, SpaceX has never put a human in space and the only celestial body it has managed to land on is earth. Granted, SpaceX is good at cheaply delivering Tang to the ISS and shooting sports cars into space. But NASA is currently actually exploring the solar system. It's got robots on Mars, probes going to the belt, the sun and every planet in the solar system and many of their moons. Its got Hubble pointing at the universe and dozens of billion dollar satellites pointing at earth. Send a manned space ship into earth orbit, land it back in Florida and then reused it? Been there, done that. 30 years ago. Good God, it has even got a probe that has left the solar system and is currently flying through interstellar space. If you want your stock hyped to impossible valuations call Musk. But if you want to explore space call NASA. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/?order=launch_date+desc&per_page=50&page=0&search=&fs=&fc=&ft=&dp=&category= https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/?order=launch_date+des...
- 93po 7y ago
  NASA is doing the same things as SpaceX at a tremendously inflated cost. NASA has also managed to kill something like 20 astronauts - it's hard to say that's a "proven" record. The anti-Musk bias and astroturfing is getting really boring.

by btilly 7y ago

gfodor 7y ago

The only way to stop SpaceX is to convince the public they are affiliated with a political party, or that space exploration is a political issue. It’s one of the few arenas that hasn’t been enveloped by hyperpartisanship, so I suspect any actual help Trump may be giving SpaceX either doesn’t exist or is widely being kept out of the public spotlight.

HuShifang 7y ago

There's a reason SLS is nicknamed the Senate Launch System -- Sen. Shelby of Alabama rains fire down on any NASA official who comes anywhere near observing that SpaceX could fulfill any objectives allocated to the SLS. It's as much a pork barrel, to use the political lingo, as it is a rocket -- a steady source of jobs for Alabama and a couple other Southern states for as long as it's in development / production. And no one cares enough to take on Shelby and his allies. So, rational proposals like using SpaceX are sadly political non-starters at the moment.

m4rtink 7y ago
It really does seems rather un-democratical if just single (albeit voted) representative wields so much power, apparently withou much the others can do about it.

nordsieck 7y ago

> So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet? Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't. But as a person who has done big deals before, he almost certainly understands that congress needs its cut. Congress needs to shovel enough pork to defense contractors so they get campaign contributions to get re-elected. They just won't support a budget that cuts that out. IMO, the only real hope is that congress + the next president can carve out enough money (ideally at least 10% of the SLS budget) to actually do something useful.

Tuna-Fish 7y ago

> So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet? Because what NASA does is not a decision where Trump has much say. Trump nominally appoints NASA top leadership and sets the agenda, but the budget is entirely decided by the Congress. It doesn't matter what Trump would want NASA to do if the only things that get funded are the SLS contracts.

foobarbecue 7y ago

Remeber this? https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-leaving-trump-advisory-councils-following-paris-agreement-withdrawal/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-leaving-trump-ad...

reddog 7y ago

Why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk? Because he has NASA. NASA has a proven record of human and machine space exploration. It put men in space 60 years ago. It put men on the moon and returned them all safely before Musk was born. Despite its second mover advantage, SpaceX has never put a human in space and the only celestial body it has managed to land on is earth. Granted, SpaceX is good at cheaply delivering Tang to the ISS and shooting sports cars into space. But NASA is currently actually exploring the solar system. It's got robots on Mars, probes going to the belt, the sun and every planet in the solar system and many of their moons. Its got Hubble pointing at the universe and dozens of billion dollar satellites pointing at earth. Send a manned space ship into earth orbit, land it back in Florida and then reused it? Been there, done that. 30 years ago. Good God, it has even got a probe that has left the solar system and is currently flying through interstellar space. If you want your stock hyped to impossible valuations call Musk. But if you want to explore space call NASA. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/?order=launch_date+desc&per_page=50&page=0&search=&fs=&fc=&ft=&dp=&category= https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/?order=launch_date+des...

93po 7y ago
NASA is doing the same things as SpaceX at a tremendously inflated cost. NASA has also managed to kill something like 20 astronauts - it's hard to say that's a "proven" record. The anti-Musk bias and astroturfing is getting really boring.