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Fair point, though I still think that other nations (and I really do wish them every success!) have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering wo

Fair point, though I still think that other nations (and I really do wish them every success!) have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side. I guess my point is that the US ought to capitalise on the ever-decreasing edge it still has in knowing how to do this stuff, not in trying to reprise past glories for very little return.

rsynnott 6y ago
> have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side. The same launcher that will launch JUICE (ESA's Jupiter moon probe) will launch NASA's James Webb space telescope, because NASA didn't have access to an appropriate American launcher (everything available at time of planning failed on either payload capacity by mass, payload capacity by volume, or reliability track record, AIUI, so Ariane it was) after decades of under-investment. And most of NASA's highest profile missions this century launched on an Atlas V, which, while made in the US, uses rocket engines designed in the Soviet Union almost 50 years ago and made in Russia (incidentally, these are by some metrics still amongst the most capable kerosene rockets available; underinvestment in rocket engine design isn't _just_ a US thing). Domestic commercial stuff may take over at some point, but for the moment, NASA is largely dependent on partially or entirely foreign launchers for its highest profile scientific launches.
qayxc 6y ago
> [...] I still think that other nations [...] have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side If you argue that way, one could just as well say that the US leveraged other nation's know-how to get into space in the first place... This idea also quickly falls apart if you'd just take a look at the pioneering work the Soviets did. Most of the firsts in space weren't done by the US. As great as NASA was/is, not every great accomplishment was based on their work. The engineering side in particular was done independently and arguably better in some regards elsewhere (Soyuz for example, which incidentally is the basis for the manned Chinese capsules as well).

rsynnott 6y ago

> have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side. The same launcher that will launch JUICE (ESA's Jupiter moon probe) will launch NASA's James Webb space telescope, because NASA didn't have access to an appropriate American launcher (everything available at time of planning failed on either payload capacity by mass, payload capacity by volume, or reliability track record, AIUI, so Ariane it was) after decades of under-investment. And most of NASA's highest profile missions this century launched on an Atlas V, which, while made in the US, uses rocket engines designed in the Soviet Union almost 50 years ago and made in Russia (incidentally, these are by some metrics still amongst the most capable kerosene rockets available; underinvestment in rocket engine design isn't _just_ a US thing). Domestic commercial stuff may take over at some point, but for the moment, NASA is largely dependent on partially or entirely foreign launchers for its highest profile scientific launches.

qayxc 6y ago

> [...] I still think that other nations [...] have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side If you argue that way, one could just as well say that the US leveraged other nation's know-how to get into space in the first place... This idea also quickly falls apart if you'd just take a look at the pioneering work the Soviets did. Most of the firsts in space weren't done by the US. As great as NASA was/is, not every great accomplishment was based on their work. The engineering side in particular was done independently and arguably better in some regards elsewhere (Soyuz for example, which incidentally is the basis for the manned Chinese capsules as well).