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This is a dumb take. NASA has (or had until Trump can back) plenty of interesting things. New Horizons, Europe Clipper, the James Webb, Hubble, Mars missions, I

This is a dumb take. NASA has (or had until Trump can back) plenty of interesting things. New Horizons, Europe Clipper, the James Webb, Hubble, Mars missions, ISS operations, human spaceflight, etc, etc are all being done by NASA workers. They do way more than just launch rockets and SpaceX can't even come close to the stuff NASA was doing.

Lord-Jobo 1y ago
James webb is the perfect example of why we absolutely need NASA and what they do. Did the budget balloon and delays rack up? Yup, and if you read about why you will see that it was basically unavoidable. A private business would have canceled it at the first roadblock (depriving us of an INCREDIBLE scientific tool). And for the actual launch and deployment, the cost of the instrument meant that a very high success rate was very very important. Go ahead and look up the success rate of space X launches and tell me you would put a multi billion dollar tool on their rocket. You need someone who can spend more money, even a lot more money, and guarantee success.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  JWST is a great achievement. No question about that. But we could have easily made good use of a dozen of them. NASA could have built a dozen with only a small incremental cost, because once you have a design and tooling and test rigs and test plans and machine shop setups, the incremental cost is pretty small. For example, when I worked at Boeing, sinking a die for a forging cost $250,000. Stamping out a forging cost a few dollars. When I was putting together a stack of identical electronic circuit boards, the first one took 2 hours. The last one took 15 minutes.
  - OrvalWintermute 1y ago
    What you said is very correct. there are a huge amount of one time costs associated with the design and engineering of a spacecraft or a satellite that could enable fairly cheap constellations compared to singular satellites, and the testing regimen becomes much more cheap when it’s done as part of a campaign. I’m a proponent for the disaggregation of satellites from sensors using specified interfaces. Industry is definitely moving in this direction with their satellite buses you can buy fairly cheaply. Will we want to stick a $3 billion sensor onto a $15 million satellite? I can’t answer that question

Lord-Jobo 1y ago

James webb is the perfect example of why we absolutely need NASA and what they do. Did the budget balloon and delays rack up? Yup, and if you read about why you will see that it was basically unavoidable. A private business would have canceled it at the first roadblock (depriving us of an INCREDIBLE scientific tool). And for the actual launch and deployment, the cost of the instrument meant that a very high success rate was very very important. Go ahead and look up the success rate of space X launches and tell me you would put a multi billion dollar tool on their rocket. You need someone who can spend more money, even a lot more money, and guarantee success.

WalterBright 1y ago
JWST is a great achievement. No question about that. But we could have easily made good use of a dozen of them. NASA could have built a dozen with only a small incremental cost, because once you have a design and tooling and test rigs and test plans and machine shop setups, the incremental cost is pretty small. For example, when I worked at Boeing, sinking a die for a forging cost $250,000. Stamping out a forging cost a few dollars. When I was putting together a stack of identical electronic circuit boards, the first one took 2 hours. The last one took 15 minutes.
- OrvalWintermute 1y ago
  What you said is very correct. there are a huge amount of one time costs associated with the design and engineering of a spacecraft or a satellite that could enable fairly cheap constellations compared to singular satellites, and the testing regimen becomes much more cheap when it’s done as part of a campaign. I’m a proponent for the disaggregation of satellites from sensors using specified interfaces. Industry is definitely moving in this direction with their satellite buses you can buy fairly cheaply. Will we want to stick a $3 billion sensor onto a $15 million satellite? I can’t answer that question