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0 pointsjltsiren2y ago0 comments

Access to space is a vital enough national interest that it cannot be left to the whims of a single company. The alternative to giving money to the competitors would be installing a politruk in SpaceX and authorizing them to override any decision made by the company. Spending a few billion dollars a year inefficiently is probably preferable to that.

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lupusreal2y ago

What you have here is a false dichotomy: Giving money to ULA or nationalizing SpaceX to penalize them for success.

Here's a third option: Give that money to Rocket Lab so they can develop their capabilities instead of giving it to ULA for their executives to snort it up their noses.

jltsirenOP2y ago

Public money goes to companies that can make plausible bids when the government has a need for some capability. For the Commercial Crew Program, that was in the early 2010s, when SpaceX was the upstart with a new unproven rocket. Rocket Lab has won some government contracts, but probably less than $1 billion in total, because it has been in serious business with big rockets only for a few years.

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lupusreal2y ago

What you have here is a false dichotomy: Giving money to ULA or nationalizing SpaceX to penalize them for success.

Here's a third option: Give that money to Rocket Lab so they can develop their capabilities instead of giving it to ULA for their executives to snort it up their noses.

jltsirenOP2y ago

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