But haven't people wanted NASA to be more streamlined, and efficient? Not sure if that is reducing staffing, or changing its mission. SpaceX making such leaps and bounds over NASA had to be a shot across the bow.
This is the same argument people made for DOGE. "Don't we want the government to be more efficient?" Yes, nobody is going to argue the opposite. But there are ways of doing this that are rational, then there is the way this is happening. Using a chainsaw for fine cutting only works when you are an expert at chainsaws. Otherwise you're just chopping chunks off something with a dangerous tool.
Of course this is assuming they actually want these agencies to be more efficient and not just die, which is a big assumption.
Pretty sure DOGE was always an excuse to point fingers (and make cuts) at any program the administration didn't like.
I mean if you were tasked with "government efficiency" don't you think the lowest hanging fruit would be the Pentagon budget? But, sure, go after air traffic control instead.
>SpaceX making such leaps and bounds over NASA had to be a shot across the bow.
SpaceX, which has been awarded tens of billions in government contracts from NASA, is making leaps and bounds over NASA? I think in 2022 almost 50% of SpaceX revenue was NASA contracts. All those leaps and bounds over NASA are literally NASA funded.
Not to speak for the other commenter, but there's a perception that private industry (SpaceX specifically) has been more agile in getting some things done than NASA had been; specifically, getting a purpose-built ISS taxi (the Dragon) built, tested, and launched.
In some ways, this isn't wrong. It's easier to get a private company to do that than to get NASA to do it, because there's not some congresscritter from Alabama or wherever constantly trying to direct aspects of the project into their state, or to make the project serve their patrons' interests.
Of course, you could also say that up until recently, Elon himself was just as much of a patron, but still.
>specifically, getting a purpose-built ISS taxi (the Dragon) built, tested, and launched.
I still don't understand this. NASA funded the development of dragon and a few other companies through their Commercial Resupply Services (CRS 1 and 2) contracts. It's right in the name, Commercial Resupply. NASA isn't building anything in these contracts, just defining requirements and overseeing execution and spending.
>In some ways, this isn't wrong. It's easier to get a private company to do that than to get NASA to do it
But this is wrong. NASA came up with requirements and awarded money to multiple companies (which is how high-risk contacting works -- hedging development by funding multiple companies), one of the companies they funded has been pretty successful, some of them unsuccessful, some are still in development.
The whole argument and perception that NASA and Spacex are somehow competitors just makes no sense to me. It's like saying something like, "The US Navy needed a new frigate and funded the development of it from HII and NASSCO. HII made an amazing new frigate, and NASSCO failed. OMG HII is so amazing why don't we just pay them to be the US Navy?"
> NASA funded the development of dragon and a few other companies through their Commercial Resupply Services (CRS 1 and 2) contracts. It's right in the name, Commercial Resupply. NASA isn't building anything in these contracts, just defining requirements and overseeing execution and spending.
Exactly. They're not building anything. When NASA builds something you get a bunch of agencies also trying to hitch on. Requirements get diluted and less focused. Senator Hypertension from Alabama or Louisiana or wherever won't let the funding get through committee until they build the facility for testing it in a swamp.
The thing about Senator Hypertension, though, is that he completely lacks a sense of irony, and thus, also thinks government is inherently wasteful and that some private business can do anything government can do, better, no matter what the task is. So he's also okay with letting some well-capitalized company owned by a billionaire - I mean, a scrappy underdog of a company built with good-ol' American know-how - get a contract to do it instead of NASA.
And in doing that, he's willing to forego his swamp facility.
In addition NASA has transferred knowledge and technology to SpaceX in an attempt to help them achieve success (or due government order, as I am not certain).
Sure everyone wants NASA to be efficient but cutting it's funding to the lowest since 1961 isn't doing that. You don't "fix" NASA by shooting it in the head.
Specifically NASA is an exploration and science mission while SpaceX is a lift and transit provider for organizations like NASA. Historically NASA did their own lift and transit because no one else could and they seeded and researched the capabilities that SpaceX and other private ventures do today. This is a fine arrangement because commoditizing delta V is not exploration and science, it’s the means to it.
I’d note SpaceX is by far the most successful but by far not the only player in that space.
The brain drain and funding attack is on non military goals of NASA as well as on college and specifically graduate level people in the United States because they don’t ideologically align to the president. It’s a cultural revolution America style.
SpaceX's entire mission is to get people to Mars en masse. They revolutionized spaceflight precisely as a part of that mission, not as an ends in and of itself. For instance the Polaris Dawn mission [1] sent humans further into space than we've been since the Apollo Program, intentionally traversed the Van Allen radiation belt, and carried out the first commercial spacewalk, executed experiments and so forth. And all of this was carried out by SpaceX.
That’s Elon Musks goal, but it’s not what they do. They lift and transport. Even the goal of lifting and transporting to mars is lift and transport. You could argue it’s all means to and end, but they’ve not done the end and they have only ever done the means and will continue to do so - making it a lift and transport company :-)
SpaceX’s mission is very explicitly not shareholder aligned, which is why Musk explicitly said he would never take it public or sell his majority stake.
The mission is mars and the money making endeavors (starlink) are to bring in the cash to do that.
It's hard to believe that by now Musk still hasn't realized what a ridiculous idea this is.
That realization could explain his weird pivot into e.g. buying Twitter and far-right politics. A midlife crisis triggered by discovering that his childhood dream was just a fantasy.
Streamlined and efficient normally means removing unneeded excess, or removing programs that didn't align with the overall goal. Convincing all your smart people to work somewhere else isn't streamlining, it's eliminating all possibility of future progress.
SpaceX was responsible for ~87% of mass delivered into orbit last year. They are clearly on a whole 'nother level.
The thing that's exploding is Starship, which is still under development. Their production vehicles are among the most reliable in history. Falcon has a 99% mission success rate a 95% landing success rate and Falcon Heavy has a 100% mission success rate.
You do realize that while Starship mishaps are making headlines, the Falcon platform is in the background printing money with basically zero major issues, right?
NASA would have wanted to get rid of SLS itself (but probably stay some of the subordinated parts) because there's a good reason why it's nicknamed "Senate Launch System"
