> NASA had no way to get crew to the ISS, and relied exclusively on Russia. The reason NASA was doing that was because of risk aversion and lack of innovation!

> NASA had no way to get crew to the ISS, and relied exclusively on Russia. The reason NASA was doing that was because of risk aversion and lack of innovation! The shuttle was shut down because NASA couldn’t afford another disaster like Columbia and there had been absolutely no meaningful progress to replace it . Without spacex, that would still be the case , Dreamliner is still not done a demo flight and Boeing would have held NASA by the balls and renegotiated from fixed price to cost plus contract as they have been doing for decades. SpaceX forced the hand by delivering on commercial crew (CCS) The shuttle had bunch of older parts designed for other programs and was 30 years old in 2010. SLS flies on engines that are decades old from shuttle era with no plan for new engines and still costs in multiple billions per launch ! If not for spaceX we would be cheering BO for successfully delivering the Vulcan engines and being proud of that as pinnacle of private space . BO official Moro is step by step ferociously. They were always culturally tuned to be risk averse and careful