NASA does not need SpaceX. Never will. What NASA needs is for the rich white assholes in DC to stop fucking them over with predatory contractors for five goddamn minutes.
SpaceX needs NASA contacts now now than ever. The jerk’s AI business has been shoved into SpaceX, and that’s a money burning machine. Should NASA take one too many contracts away from SpaceX, the huge red numbers will come out.
This result was inevitable the monent that the government decided to outsource their space exploration/scientific endeavors to a private company.
You don’t need to be Cassandra to be able to recognize 100% predictable outcomes.
This is why you don’t privatize space exploration and research
privatize space expiration
Dear god
Fixed, I still can’t find a good mobile keyboard
This is why he’s wrapping all his other companies into SpaceX
Nationalize Space X after all these pedophiles are in prison, lol.
Revoke launch licenses until NASA gets what they need. Export ban on company and tech. Nationalize launch assets if absolutely necessary. Or at least threaten these things. SpaceX needs starlink, the kind of AI revenue they’d otherwise need is never going to materialize. Force them to play ball.
If it was built with public money, it should be appropriated to public use.
They generally weren’t given money.
They won contracts and provided services. They did it almost entirely with fixed base price contracts as well. None of the cost plus, which was typical in space, and leans more into handouts as people intentionally try to milk the government by going over.
Its like if the US government buys billions of pieces of paper a year from paper suppliers and you expect them to own the paper companies that sell them the paper because they took government money for a sale. Many even own their own mills, but thats now a government mill since the government bought their paper.
This analogy falls apart in several ways. The majority of all funding for SpaceX comes from the government. This isn’t like a paper company that has massive contracts outside of the government. Furthermore a paper company is a dime a dozen and probably not a national security issue like the sole provided of needed launches.
Governments would probably never need to take over a mundane company like a paper producer, but they most certainly would need to take over a critical supplier of national security needed services because it is run by a space Nazi.
Doesn’t really matter if the government is the main source that gets it off the ground.
Maybe a upstart paper company was able to snag a contract and they could undercut existing companies because they found an abandoned mill that they got for pennies on the dollar.
National security is definitely an issue, but again nothing to do with how it was built. Thats entirely outside how something is funded.
Edit: just to clarify the majority of all early funding. Today its starlink, government money isnt the main thing now.
All of these are rational national plans, if only the administration is rational and working on national interests.
Musk also desperately needs that starlink revenue to continue until he can merge Tesla and SpaceX to cover for dropping Tesla sales.
And who will make these restrictions? Until someone shoots trump, that’s not going to happen. Hopefully it happens soon.
Yeah that’ll happen. I’ll just stay standing while holding my breath until it does.
NASA helped keep SpaceX alive when it couldn’t make payroll, then spent decades making it indispensable. Now Musk has discovered that launching AI servers pays better than launching astronauts. Outsourcing your space program to one billionaire was a bold leap for mankind, straight into a monopoly with rocket engines.
I don’t think it was intentional on NASA, Boeing couldn’t really deliver with starliner and SLS isn’t as good as they hoped either.
SLS is a congressionally mandated jobs program.
NASA was forced to use existing shuttle infrastructure instead of developing new hardware with partners. If they had been given freedom, I’m sure we wouldn’t even need SpaceX for anything.
@Zron @technology True, #NASA was forced to use the Shuttle engines but part of the reason was the US had no capability to design and manufacture a similar rocket motor. We were entirely dependent on using the Russian Proton engines. This was one factor in support for helping SpaceX — to recreate a U.S. capability to build rocket motors. At the time, we needed a new launch system engine for smaller uncrewed spacecraft missions. That decision had nothing to do with the Lunar/Mars human spaceflight ambitions. The alternative proposal on the table was to refurbish stored ICBMs for this purpose. The Earth-to-Orbit ISS resupply need came later. (I know this because I was there and involved.)
True, NASA is basically a jobs program — for the southern states; this is where most of the money goes. LBJ did that to get the votes for the appropriations needed and to keep the southern state Democrats in the party. Part of the political culture at NASA HQ is to “efficiently distribute money to Congressional districts.” The NASA centers in Houston and Huntsville had a corresponding sense of entitlement, at least when I was working with them at the beginning of the Constellation program. Now that Senator Shelby (Alabama) is no longer the ranking head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, maybe things will start to change in the human spaceflight area. Huntsville’s NASA centers had/have responsibility for the remaining space shuttle’s engines.
You type like an ai, why
I need a comic of a man struggling to raise a child, then the child grows big and strong (roided up and addicted to debt) then punts the aging man off a cliff.
I’m amazed Elmo has bots even on Lemmy
This is some Borderlands megacorporation bullshit I tell ya.
Great article. Evil billionaire monopolizes the space launch industry with help from the Federal Government, could be alternate headline…It also sounds like a made for TV movie from the 80/90’s. So is NASA going do anything about it or are they really hoping that New Glen comes online rapidly to provide an alternate? There are several satellite companies, like AST Space mobile, that are also waiting to hitch a ride that seem to be cast to the side now with the recent change at Spacex to focus solely on Starship and stand down their workshorse F9.
The despairing thing is how quickly this has come to pass.
The only reason I’ve been critical of NASA is because of their over reliance on that shit heel musk
Before SpaceX it was the ULA doing ALL launches. This is nothing new. Launch is expensive, and no one wants to pay the barrier to entry.
Exactly. NASA bankrolled SpaceX to break the ULA monopoly, and now they are also funding Blue Origin to break the SpaceX monopoly. Rinse and repeat forever.
Fuck anything musk related.
