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It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor, most likely Boeing or Boeing's largest rival, Lockheed-Martin.

by vaxman 1y ago

dmos62 1y ago
What would be the goal?
xoa 1y ago
>It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor I'm sorry but what? SpaceX is private, not public, and regardless the Pentagon has zero power to force any such thing. It's making gobs of money and growing pretty fast (around $12 billion revenue this year, prediction is/was ~$15.5 billion so something like a 30% YoY increase) with most of that from Starlink, then commercial launch and gov launch. It launches more mass to LEO then everyone else on the planet combined by a long shot, for far far less $/kg. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. There would be zero interest on either side in a merger, nor is there any particularly good national security argument for it. The real plan is the same as it's always been: have a reasonably vibrant set of multiple motivated, competitive commercial launch providers. That'll take years more but is by far the better long term solution, and there are plenty of promising options, like Rocket Lab (their Neutron medium lift rocket is apparently close to maiden flight) and Blue Origin (who finally at last seem to have been shaken up and are actually launching rockets and making engines). Old Space wants out of the launch business, which is why ULA came to be at all. People are also tossing around "nationalization" as if it's some quick fix too all of a sudden, but nationalization doesn't nullify the 5th Amendment (or 1st). The US government would have to come up with the arguably hundreds of billions of dollars present value of SpaceX, at a time of deep budget cuts, debt worries, and high interest rates. It would also have to win a set of massive lawsuits by an extremely well funded opposition about all aspects of the mess that would drag on for years. And a lot of the value of SpaceX is in its institutional knowledge, culture, key people etc etc. Nationalization could not prevent key people all bailing and destroying much of the capability. This would all be hugely disruptive, at a critical juncture, and a big political mess too. It's concerning how blasé folks can get about expensive, complicated big deal gordian knots.
- rapsey 1y ago
  > The real plan Ugh that is being way too generous. A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them.
  - xoa 1y ago
    >A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them. No, this is completely opposite to reality. The current US private space industry was absolutely the result in large part of a rare modern spell of good policy decisions and sustained support (and absolutely yes, a certain amount of luck, but it's important to create conditions where luck can snowball). Support that has paid off in spades and now is self-sustaining sure, but that's a good thing and doesn't change the vital nature of the bootstrapping period. Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew were critical, as was opening up national security launches then actually embracing it. Multiple providers is now an explicit goal of the DOD and they have repeatedly acted to support it, from awarding NSSL launch contracts with an eye towards which player really needed them to stay in business to being willing to take on more risk for less critical payloads. It hasn't been a short road or one without bumps and conflicting interests, and it's almost a miracle it happened at all given Congress' general shortsightedness and desire to use space almost purely as a vehicle for pork regardless of efficiency, but happen it did (ironically thanks in significant part to Boeing [0]). The contrast with the slow, anemic and visionless efforts of the EU during the same time period is striking. ---- 0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/actually-boeing-is-probably-the-savior-of-nasas-commercial-crew-program/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/actually-boeing-is-p...
    - oskarkk 1y ago
      > Multiple providers is now an explicit goal of the DOD and they have repeatedly acted to support it I agree with everything you said, but to be precise it was the DoD policy for a long time to have at least two providers. In the 90s it was Lockheed (with Atlas rocket) and Boeing (with Delta rocket). For complicated reasons they were forced to combine their rocket divisions, and they formed a joint company, ULA. But they still had these two rockets, so at least there was redundancy on the technological side, but no competition. After SpaceX entered the launch market, DoD and ULA weren't willing to allow SpaceX (not yet a part of the military-industrial complex) to compete for DoD launches, but SpaceX sued their way into these contracts. And after SpaceX became the cheapest, most reliable and fastest launch provider, the benefits of opening the market are obvious, so there's no coming back to the ULA monopoly (or any other monopoly, at least in launches). But on the side of NASA resupply/crew programs, yeah, it was a great decision by NASA/government/congress that paid off massively, and allowed today's space boom to happen (and made SpaceX what it is today).
kjksf 1y ago
Putting SpaceX under the CEO of Boeing would make SpaceX as bad as Boeing, not Boeing as good as SpaceX. Also, it's still America. Good luck to anyone trying to "force" SpaceX, a private company, to do anything they don't want.
- LightBug1 1y ago
  "it's still America" Is it?
- smt88 1y ago
  Trump admin has suggested using wartime powers to nationalize SpaceX. They're already using those powers for deportations. I don't know if they seriously want to do it, but whether they can do it is up to a highly sympathetic SCOTUS.
  - rlt 1y ago
    They’re in a pissing match. The relationship between SpaceX and the federal government is mutually beneficial. I would be surprised if either follows through on their threats.
  - whamlastxmas 1y ago
    It hasn’t. A former advisor, Steve Bannon, suggested it while also suggesting they deport Elon. It is clearly just a swipe at Elon and not “Trump admin” seriously suggesting this.
  - vaxman 1y ago
    DoD has now and has always had ultimate authority when it comes to putting things into the space above our heads. Don’t listen to the idealistic millennials and their powerful downvote buttons. ;)
- vaxman 1y ago
  They may try to fix Boeing with SpaceX because they must take every effort to fix what went wrong there. They do have several other options though.
vpribish 1y ago
no it does not seem likely, that's nonsense. the pentagon likes the spacex product just the way it is

It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor, most likely Boeing or Boeing's largest rival, Lockheed-Martin.

by vaxman 1y ago

It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor, most likely Boeing or Boeing's largest rival, Lockheed-Martin.

dmos62 1y ago

What would be the goal?

xoa 1y ago

>It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor I'm sorry but what? SpaceX is private, not public, and regardless the Pentagon has zero power to force any such thing. It's making gobs of money and growing pretty fast (around $12 billion revenue this year, prediction is/was ~$15.5 billion so something like a 30% YoY increase) with most of that from Starlink, then commercial launch and gov launch. It launches more mass to LEO then everyone else on the planet combined by a long shot, for far far less $/kg. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. There would be zero interest on either side in a merger, nor is there any particularly good national security argument for it. The real plan is the same as it's always been: have a reasonably vibrant set of multiple motivated, competitive commercial launch providers. That'll take years more but is by far the better long term solution, and there are plenty of promising options, like Rocket Lab (their Neutron medium lift rocket is apparently close to maiden flight) and Blue Origin (who finally at last seem to have been shaken up and are actually launching rockets and making engines). Old Space wants out of the launch business, which is why ULA came to be at all. People are also tossing around "nationalization" as if it's some quick fix too all of a sudden, but nationalization doesn't nullify the 5th Amendment (or 1st). The US government would have to come up with the arguably hundreds of billions of dollars present value of SpaceX, at a time of deep budget cuts, debt worries, and high interest rates. It would also have to win a set of massive lawsuits by an extremely well funded opposition about all aspects of the mess that would drag on for years. And a lot of the value of SpaceX is in its institutional knowledge, culture, key people etc etc. Nationalization could not prevent key people all bailing and destroying much of the capability. This would all be hugely disruptive, at a critical juncture, and a big political mess too. It's concerning how blasé folks can get about expensive, complicated big deal gordian knots.

rapsey 1y ago
> The real plan Ugh that is being way too generous. A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them.
- xoa 1y ago
  >A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them. No, this is completely opposite to reality. The current US private space industry was absolutely the result in large part of a rare modern spell of good policy decisions and sustained support (and absolutely yes, a certain amount of luck, but it's important to create conditions where luck can snowball). Support that has paid off in spades and now is self-sustaining sure, but that's a good thing and doesn't change the vital nature of the bootstrapping period. Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew were critical, as was opening up national security launches then actually embracing it. Multiple providers is now an explicit goal of the DOD and they have repeatedly acted to support it, from awarding NSSL launch contracts with an eye towards which player really needed them to stay in business to being willing to take on more risk for less critical payloads. It hasn't been a short road or one without bumps and conflicting interests, and it's almost a miracle it happened at all given Congress' general shortsightedness and desire to use space almost purely as a vehicle for pork regardless of efficiency, but happen it did (ironically thanks in significant part to Boeing [0]). The contrast with the slow, anemic and visionless efforts of the EU during the same time period is striking. ---- 0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/actually-boeing-is-probably-the-savior-of-nasas-commercial-crew-program/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/actually-boeing-is-p...
  - oskarkk 1y ago
    > Multiple providers is now an explicit goal of the DOD and they have repeatedly acted to support it I agree with everything you said, but to be precise it was the DoD policy for a long time to have at least two providers. In the 90s it was Lockheed (with Atlas rocket) and Boeing (with Delta rocket). For complicated reasons they were forced to combine their rocket divisions, and they formed a joint company, ULA. But they still had these two rockets, so at least there was redundancy on the technological side, but no competition. After SpaceX entered the launch market, DoD and ULA weren't willing to allow SpaceX (not yet a part of the military-industrial complex) to compete for DoD launches, but SpaceX sued their way into these contracts. And after SpaceX became the cheapest, most reliable and fastest launch provider, the benefits of opening the market are obvious, so there's no coming back to the ULA monopoly (or any other monopoly, at least in launches). But on the side of NASA resupply/crew programs, yeah, it was a great decision by NASA/government/congress that paid off massively, and allowed today's space boom to happen (and made SpaceX what it is today).

kjksf 1y ago

Putting SpaceX under the CEO of Boeing would make SpaceX as bad as Boeing, not Boeing as good as SpaceX. Also, it's still America. Good luck to anyone trying to "force" SpaceX, a private company, to do anything they don't want.

LightBug1 1y ago
"it's still America" Is it?
smt88 1y ago
Trump admin has suggested using wartime powers to nationalize SpaceX. They're already using those powers for deportations. I don't know if they seriously want to do it, but whether they can do it is up to a highly sympathetic SCOTUS.
- rlt 1y ago
  They’re in a pissing match. The relationship between SpaceX and the federal government is mutually beneficial. I would be surprised if either follows through on their threats.
- whamlastxmas 1y ago
  It hasn’t. A former advisor, Steve Bannon, suggested it while also suggesting they deport Elon. It is clearly just a swipe at Elon and not “Trump admin” seriously suggesting this.
- vaxman 1y ago
  DoD has now and has always had ultimate authority when it comes to putting things into the space above our heads. Don’t listen to the idealistic millennials and their powerful downvote buttons. ;)
vaxman 1y ago
They may try to fix Boeing with SpaceX because they must take every effort to fix what went wrong there. They do have several other options though.

vpribish 1y ago

no it does not seem likely, that's nonsense. the pentagon likes the spacex product just the way it is