If NASA were to re-open competition, one of the bidders could be SpaceX, which has already designed a basic spacesuit to support the private Polaris Dawn mission.
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If NASA were to re-open competition, one of the bidders could be SpaceX, which has already designed a basic spacesuit to support the private Polaris Dawn mission.
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SpaceX has saved NASA a ton of money on launch and ISS cargo/crew services. Rocket Lab and some CLPS providers are also shaping up to do so. I’d be down with getting Boeing and Lockheed out of space, though.
They did because NASA has been underfunded for decades
Imagine if they didn’t have to play political games and spend $5 billion (20% of their budget) on SLS+Orion. That’s TEN Discovery Class missions per year.
I think NASA should focus on scientific research and exploration, then buy commercial when it makes sense. Rockets are “solved” and they don’t need their own. Space suits… they really should have finished xEMU.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Boeing seems to be getting themselves out with their “we won’t do any more fixed price contracts” attitude.
Privatizing a government sector and then subsizing its for-profit commerical replacement is the opposite of saving NASA (or taxpayers) money. I’m all for companies getting into space, but they should be getting support in the form of publicly available fundamental science and technology development from a properly funded NASA, not bids to do the work for them at a profit to those companies.
NASA should let private companies do the “easy” stuff so they can focus on bigger and better things. And use the flow of private development money coming from venture capital or share offerings as a multiplier for their budget.
The numbers for Falcon and Dragon don’t back up what you’re saying. They were developed for less money than it would have taken NASA and are cheaper than other options. They’re also sold to non-NASA customers, which means a reduced unit cost from increased volume.
There’s also the issue of availability and readiness for all of those, where SpaceX wins handily.
Another example is the CLPS providers, which are expected to cover some of the development money and find more customers to make up that difference. They’re doing entire Lunar lander missions for less than the cost of an Atlas V launch.
You could make the same argument about anything else.
“Nutrition and proper healthcare are obviously very important, so there should be public backing behind them.” (Which btw I support)
I agree with you.
We’re paying for it anyway when a private enterprise develops this technology, but we don’t get to keep the results of any of that development. That’s my big problem with it. It’s like any other tragedy of publicly funded projects/programs that ultimately only profit a select few like healthcare, stadiums, and pretty much any software as a service or closed source systems sold to public sectors. Those are just a few, but I’m sure there are more. This stuff is too important to the public good to be controlled and horded by corporations. The scariest thing in the alien franchise wasn’t the xenomorphs, it was The Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
I haven’t seen the alien franchise, but I agree with the rest.
To me, it seems to be a problem with IP (“intellectual property”). Setting IP higher should in theory advance private research and investment, while causing scarcity to the public having to rely on these services. Low IP means more equality within society, but also slower research/progress.
Personally I think that spaceflight is only at its very beginning; And it should be heavily invested and researched into. And stronger commercialization of space flight can help with that, IMO.