What you're saying doesn't even make any logical sense. Musk is the primary contractor for ISS contracts and given the shit show that Boeing has turned into it's safe to call him the exclusive contractor for ISS contracts.
And most of NASA's budget is not spent doing stuff, but on thinly veiled graft like the SLS which obviously will not be redirected to SpaceX because the goal isn't to achieve anything, but to spend money on interests tied to the people directing the spending.
> What you're saying doesn't even make any logical sense. Musk is the primary contractor for ISS contracts
It makes lots of sense to torch a crowded market & lean-in on heavy-lift first-mover advantage. He will be the only contractor for a hypothetical Mars missions and will have a blank check as soon as the government commits to it - if he doesn't write the bill himself.
SpaceX will lap Blue Origin on heavy lift, while having NASA pay for R&D that will be used by SpaceX to go the asteroid belt and mine precious metals or whatever post-Mars yarn will be spun to make SpaceX a trillion-dollar company, realistic or not.
> Musk is the primary contractor for ISS contracts and given the shit show that Boeing has turned into it's safe to call him the exclusive contractor for ISS contracts.
Just because they're doing fine now, doesn't mean we want to give SpaceX a monopoly in the future.
Reminder: SpaceX was not a thing a few years ago, and NASA throwing money at them could have been considered 'wasteful' when there was a solution that worked already. We are where we are now because the government spread the money around a bit: some of those 'bets' worked out, some did not.
The commercial crew program started in 2011, the same year that the Space Shuttle was retired. From 2011 to 2020 (when SpaceX first sent astronauts to the ISS) we were 100% dependent upon Russia. That's undesirable not because of Russia, but because it's plainly ridiculous for any superpower to not have the power to independently send humans to space! SpaceX also won the exclusive contract for commercial crew. Boeing managed to get this overridden with political connections forcing NASA to not only also accept their bid but to pay their dramatically larger asking price.
All that aside, I actually agree with you in principle! The SpaceX of tomorrow will not necessarily be the SpaceX of today. And having a space economy full of good healthy competition is a great thing for everybody, including SpaceX. But this was not a case of that. This was just an old dysfunctional company relying on some old corrupt politicians to butter some bellies.
Blue origin is doing pretty well. Got partly reusable rocket to orbit recently. NASA has no reusable rocket in development. This is fine, as the private market is doing it, but SLS needs to be retired soon. Maybe after the manned moon landings?
> Musk is the primary contractor for ISS contracts and given the shit show that Boeing has turned into it's safe to call him the exclusive contractor for ISS contracts.
From Musk's perspective, NASA is an unnecessary, inconvenient middleman. Eliminate the public middleman, and everything goes to private companies, in other words, to SpaceX. And it's not just about NASA; the current administration wants to privatize the entire government, including the US Postal Service, for example.
> And most of NASA's budget is not spent doing stuff, but on thinly veiled graft like the SLS which obviously will not be redirected to SpaceX because the goal isn't to achieve anything, but to spend money on interests tied to the people directing the spending.
Musk/DOGE currently controls all federal spending.
And most of NASA's budget is not spent doing stuff, but on thinly veiled graft like the SLS which obviously will not be redirected to SpaceX because the goal isn't to achieve anything, but to spend money on interests tied to the people directing the spending.