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> Falcon reusability was perfected through lots of explosions in landing attempts, good luck getting NASA or ESA to risk that given how dumb the average taxpaye

> Falcon reusability was perfected through lots of explosions in landing attempts, good luck getting NASA or ESA to risk that given how dumb the average taxpayer can be about iterative development like that. It's even worse than just risk averseness. There was a very telling comment by the CEO of ArianeGroup a few years ago[1] about why they weren't investing in reusable rockets--they were afraid that it would be too efficient, so they would end up laying off workers because they wouldn't have enough demand for new rockets. In the twisted world of government programs efficiency is often seen as a bad thing. Space programs are jobs programs. The SLS program was hamstrung by Congress requiring that it reuse 50-year-old Space shuttle tech because it's a jobs program. Getting to space efficiently isn't even a priority. More recently ESA has reversed course[2] because SpaceX is eating their lunch, but they're still probably a good decade out from having a reusable rocket, and it's unlikely they would be heading that direction at all if not for the pressure from SpaceX. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-frustrated-with-spacex-for-driving-down-launch-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-f... [2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/european-leaders-say-an-immediate-response-needed-to-the-rise-of-spacex/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/european-leaders-say...

AustinDev 4y ago
This is exactly the reason I don't do R&D work for the DoD anymore. Cost plus contracts incentivize the performer to have more staff than required to make more profit and to never deliver anything early or over perform in any way. I just couldn't live with myself if I min-max'd the situation.
dotnet00 4y ago
To be fair, their concern about having so few payloads that they wouldn't be building enough boosters isn't completely wrong for Europe. There is some merit to the idea that they needed to maintain a large workforce trained in rocketry to hold onto their capabilities and that government funded programs are good for that until private industry firmly takes hold. The issue of course was that they were giving into stagnation and assuming that demand wouldn't grow to meet supply, while SpaceX took it the other way and came up with the demand to utilize the supply they had created (also helps that Russia torpedoed its own commercial launch industry and all other providers are stuck in a delayed generational transition, highlighting the unpredictability of demand in the industry). Now that European launch companies are starting to make progress, perhaps this need for government 'protection' will also go away. It desperately needs to go away in the US since we already have several private companies who've made it to orbit (plus a nearly 20 year tech lead on the rest of the world courtesy SpaceX) and hopefully SLS's obsolete-ness will quickly become too hard to ignore when the Artemis 3 crew is shown transferring from the cramped Orion capsule to the spacious HLS.

AustinDev 4y ago

This is exactly the reason I don't do R&D work for the DoD anymore. Cost plus contracts incentivize the performer to have more staff than required to make more profit and to never deliver anything early or over perform in any way. I just couldn't live with myself if I min-max'd the situation.

dotnet00 4y ago

To be fair, their concern about having so few payloads that they wouldn't be building enough boosters isn't completely wrong for Europe. There is some merit to the idea that they needed to maintain a large workforce trained in rocketry to hold onto their capabilities and that government funded programs are good for that until private industry firmly takes hold. The issue of course was that they were giving into stagnation and assuming that demand wouldn't grow to meet supply, while SpaceX took it the other way and came up with the demand to utilize the supply they had created (also helps that Russia torpedoed its own commercial launch industry and all other providers are stuck in a delayed generational transition, highlighting the unpredictability of demand in the industry). Now that European launch companies are starting to make progress, perhaps this need for government 'protection' will also go away. It desperately needs to go away in the US since we already have several private companies who've made it to orbit (plus a nearly 20 year tech lead on the rest of the world courtesy SpaceX) and hopefully SLS's obsolete-ness will quickly become too hard to ignore when the Artemis 3 crew is shown transferring from the cramped Orion capsule to the spacious HLS.