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.
You just did. The counter reply is that true capitalism drove NASA. The original space programs were built with hundreds of contractors selected from thousands of bids. The entire purpose of NASA was to create a viable commercial space program.
Now we have two choices for some reason.
I beat this drum a lot.. but this is "monopoly" and "oligarchy."
when they'll finally manage to put it to orbit and come back without a dramatic issue, the space station will already be decommissioned, sad for Boeing
"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."
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.
It's kind of crazy how he can get away with increasing taxes, increasing debt, cronyism, price controls, demolish law and order and convince his base he's doing the opposite. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulled off forced nationalization of industry.
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.
>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.
What you need to know is that the Pentagon has ultimate authority in matters like this (regardless of the contractor’s equity structure) and it has wielded it time and time again throughout the Cold War. SpaceX cannot escape the command structure by “decommissioning” anything. If you use drugs and threaten US interests in jest, you are done. Those are hard rules. Perhaps Musk will wind up emaciated with footlong fingernails living on the top floor of a hotel in Las Vegas or Florida, but he will not still influence the assets at SpaceX in such a state, regardless of his wealth, passion, allegiance, intelligence, charisma, army of sycophants, children named after chemicals, etc. He can work out his relationship with personalities in the US government, but his arse is cooked in terms of command of dual-use orbital transit and communications systems. The people at SpaceX deserve so much better anyway.
They say “the only US alternative”, which is true, but it’s not the only alternative - nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m 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 Russia’s 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.
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.
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.)
>nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m 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.
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.
[flagged]
You just did. The counter reply is that true capitalism drove NASA. The original space programs were built with hundreds of contractors selected from thousands of bids. The entire purpose of NASA was to create a viable commercial space program.
Now we have two choices for some reason.
I beat this drum a lot.. but this is "monopoly" and "oligarchy."
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when they'll finally manage to put it to orbit and come back without a dramatic issue, the space station will already be decommissioned, sad for Boeing
"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.
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.
One thing I wanted to ask somewhere, Jared Isaacman was NOT a Musk pick, or am I not right?
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Wasn't it Musk that was calling for a smaller and leaner government?
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he got himself on gov watch list after that tweet for sure
Yeah I heard they're gonna start live-tracking his private jet flights
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.
It's kind of crazy how he can get away with increasing taxes, increasing debt, cronyism, price controls, demolish law and order and convince his base he's doing the opposite. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulled off forced nationalization of industry.
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I'm hoping Melon loses his SpaceX security clearances. He routinely commits federal crimes. Everyone else would have lost theirs long 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.
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.
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.
They may try to fix Boeing with SpaceX because they must take every effort to fix what went wrong there. They do have several other options though.
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.
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"it's still America"
Is it?
What would be the goal?
>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.
What you need to know is that the Pentagon has ultimate authority in matters like this (regardless of the contractor’s equity structure) and it has wielded it time and time again throughout the Cold War. SpaceX cannot escape the command structure by “decommissioning” anything. If you use drugs and threaten US interests in jest, you are done. Those are hard rules. Perhaps Musk will wind up emaciated with footlong fingernails living on the top floor of a hotel in Las Vegas or Florida, but he will not still influence the assets at SpaceX in such a state, regardless of his wealth, passion, allegiance, intelligence, charisma, army of sycophants, children named after chemicals, etc. He can work out his relationship with personalities in the US government, but his arse is cooked in terms of command of dual-use orbital transit and communications systems. The people at SpaceX deserve so much better anyway.
https://youtu.be/65_FeMUuCl0 https://youtu.be/0kpNkEdB1o0
The Defense Production Act exists.
The US would have no problem coming up with hundreds of billions. They wouldn’t need to, though.
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> The real plan
Ugh that is being way too generous. A private space industry exists despite their plans not because of them.
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no it does not seem likely, that's nonsense. the pentagon likes the spacex product just the way it is
They say “the only US alternative”, which is true, but it’s not the only alternative - nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m 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 Russia’s 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.
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.
Congress has forbidden NASA to cooperate with China for many years. It's been law since 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
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.)
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> American astronauts regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats
It's a seat swap arrangement, no money is exchanged.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-extends-seat-barter-agreement-wit...
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>nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m 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.