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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI NASA delays next flight of Boeing's alternative to SpaceX Dragon
vaxman wrote 7 hours 19 min 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.
vpribish wrote 7 min ago:
no it does not seem likely, that's nonsense. the pentagon likes
the spacex product just the way it is
kjksf wrote 4 hours 5 min 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.
smt88 wrote 44 min 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.
whamlastxmas wrote 11 min ago:
It hasnât. A former advisor, Steve Bannon, suggested it while
also suggesting they deport Elon. It is clearly just a swipe at
Elon and not âTrump adminâ seriously suggesting this.
rlt wrote 30 min ago:
Theyâre 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.
LightBug1 wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
"it's still America"
Is it?
xoa wrote 4 hours 9 min 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 wrote 3 hours 29 min ago:
> The real plan
Ugh that is being way too generous. A private space industry exists
despite their plans not because of them.
xoa wrote 2 hours 41 min 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:
URI [1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/actually-boeing-...
dmos62 wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
What would be the goal?
madaxe_again wrote 7 hours 56 min ago:
They say âthe only US alternativeâ, which is true, but itâs not
the only alternative - nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and
Iâm sure they could go back to doing the same. Perhaps China would be
willing to sell seats on their launches. Maybe India will be in a
position to offer human launches to the U.S. fairly soon - should be up
and running by 2027, and they seem to hit their objectives most of the
time.
Cooperation with roscosmos seems to have been largely unimpeded by
Russiaâs political and military actions over the years, so these all
seem like realistic possibilities.
Yes, it will be a shame if the U.S. has no launch capability of their
own, but short term partisan political thinking is much more important
to the electorate than long term national strategic interest.
constantcrying wrote 18 min ago:
>nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and Iâm sure they
could go back to doing the same
No. Obviously not.
>Perhaps China would be willing to sell seats on their launches.
That would be an extreme humiliation of the US and NASA. Abandoning
civil space programs entirely would be preferable.
>Maybe India will be in a position to offer human launches to the
U.S. fairly soon - should be up and running by 2027, and they seem to
hit their objectives most of the time.
India is nowhere close to the capabilities of the US, China or
Russia.
sigmoid10 wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
NASA still cooperates heavily with Roscosmos and American astronauts
regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats. The latest one is Johnny Kim who
launched in late April on Soyuz MS-27 from Baikonur and will stay on
the ISS until december. And Christopher Williams is already scheduled
for the next Soyuz mission.
China on the other hand will probably never happen because of the
general political climate in the US and this administration in
particular.
thinkcontext wrote 40 min ago:
> American astronauts regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats
It's a seat swap arrangement, no money is exchanged.
URI [1]: https://spacenews.com/nasa-extends-seat-barter-agreement-w...
lupusreal wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
Congress has forbidden NASA to cooperate with China for many years.
It's been law since 2011: [1] Also I believe that Russia isn't
being paid for astronauts to fly on Soyuz. Instead, cosmonauts fly
on Dragon. It's a like-for-like exchange which is mutually
beneficial (both countries need the other's cooperation to keep the
ISS operational, so these exchanges ensure that can continue if
either Soyuz or Dragon are grounded for some reason.)
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
throe83949449 wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
My understanding is Russia wants out of ISS cooperation. Whatever
contract there is, it will expire soon, and may not be extended.
imtringued wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
Correct. The US paid for the Soyuz flights that they owed Russian
astronauts, because they had no means of bringing them to the
ISS.
cbanek wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
"Musk, who has been engaged in a high-profile feud with US President
Donald Trump, on Thursday threatened to decommission the Dragon before
later saying the spacecraft would stay in operation."
Interesting timing.
amelius wrote 5 hours 39 min ago:
That was a pretty dumb tweet as it gives Trump all the ammo to put
SpaceX under close government scrutiny and/or make plans to
nationalize it, or whatever whimsical thing he can think of to hurt
Musk.
kevin_thibedeau wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
I'm hoping Melon loses his SpaceX security clearances. He routinely
commits federal crimes. Everyone else would have lost theirs long
ago.
Propelloni wrote 7 hours 32 min ago:
I'm usually not one to defend Elmo, but it was a response to P47
threatening to defund SpaceX. It's like watching children. Poor USA,
poor us.
numpad0 wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
One thing I wanted to ask somewhere, Jared Isaacman was NOT a Musk
pick, or am I not right?
VectorLock wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
They pulled Jared Isaacman because it was revealed he had donated
to Democrats.
34679 wrote 2 hours 41 min ago:
That's pretty amusing, considering Trump spent decades as a NY
Democrat.
bdcravens wrote 44 min ago:
Elon too, until 2022.
snypher wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
Rules for thee, not for me.
rapsey wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
They knew that from the start. He pretty much said himself it
was a retaliation in the Musk/Trump situation.
lupusreal wrote 4 hours 35 min ago:
That was their excuse. But they probably knew it already
upfront, and of course Trump himself has done so and obviously
knows that rich people donate to both parties just to cover
their bases and that it means relatively little.
I think it's more likely that Jared was pulled at the
suggestion of some staffers that never liked him or Musk in the
first place but weren't able to get their way with Trump as
long as Musk was still around.
kranke155 wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
Basically they pulled a fast one on Musk, who believed that
with his giant (300$ million give or take) donation would be
able to get his preferred candidate to NASA.
The fact that he was quite competent and generally liked
doesnât matter to Trump, who seems set on defunding NASA
and having someone there who wonât complain.
lupusreal wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
He was.
Hamuko wrote 7 hours 26 min ago:
Wasn't it Musk that was calling for a smaller and leaner
government?
rlt wrote 34 min ago:
By my estimate, SpaceX has saved the US government 10s of
billions by reducing launch costs with Falcon 9, developing
Dragon, Starlink, etc.
wtcactus wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
DragonX is the smaller and leaner government.
mcmcmc wrote 44 min ago:
No, itâs a private for profit corporation.
oskarkk wrote 3 min ago:
NASA making their own rockets/spacecraft certainly wouldn't
make the government leaner. NASA was always using
contractors, but usually NASA was taking a bigger part in the
development/operation of rockets/spacecraft. For human
spaceflight, that changed with the Commercial Crew Program,
with the contracts for the development of the crewed
spacecraft that would be designed, produced and operated
entirely by commercial companies. SpaceX received $2.6
billion for the development of Dragon, Boeing received $4.2
billion for Starliner. So SpaceX was the cheaper option, and
they started operational crewed missions to ISS in 2020.
Boeing got much more money, and in 2025 they still don't have
an operational spacecraft.
Commercial Crew Program (and also commercial resupply flights
to the ISS) started during Obama presidency, so we can thank
Obama for commercializing space and making NASA leaner and
saving taxpayer dollars.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
He was never going to decommission Dragon. That was just playground
petulance.
There's nothing Putin enjoys more than watching two senior underlings
fighting like rats in a sack.
The US space and science programmes are useful collateral damage in
this.
tonyhart7 wrote 8 hours 37 min ago:
he got himself on gov watch list after that tweet for sure
AStonesThrow wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
Yeah I heard they're gonna start live-tracking his private jet
flights
DocTomoe wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
Well ... Boeing got themselves into the perfect storm. They need this
flight to work right, after the catastrophic first attempt. But the
longer they wait to get things right, the more eyebrows will be raised.
They need a good flight, now.
But they do not determine the schedule - it's determined by NASA, which
has about a thousand problems of itself right now, and cannot afford to
screw up either.
I do not envy anyone in that chain of delivery right now.
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