U.S. Is Losing Race to Return to Moon
nytimes.comI think this is an astonishingly dumb take. Regardless of what you think of Musk, SpaceX is building a fundamentally important reusable lift technology that can be the underpinning of some many future developments. Who cares if China gets to the moon first? This is how NASA historically gets into a mess with its launch system - political pressure, conflated goals and requirements (see the Space Shuttle - does it launch people?, military payloads?, oh goodie - let's do it all). If anything I wish NASA would do more to make sure we have a decent starship competitor which its hard to see blue origin being anytime soon (but I am not an expert on this topic)
Yes, but there are several additional dimensions of perhaps-malicious idiocy that you didn't call the NYT on:
- The reason that NASA is stuck in this mess with Musk is that "their own" SLS, Orion, Lunar Gateway, & Co. program is a landfill of Congressional pork, trying to pretend to be a moon mission. And Washington has been talking smack about actually returning to the moon. And now China appears to be calling them on that cheap talk.
- Compared to the costs of SLS & Co., SpaceX's "one of his largest ever" contract for getting to the moon is small change. Has the NYT heard the old saying about "fast, cheap, and reliable"?
- Any manned Lunar mission must start with heavy lift to LEO. SpaceX utterly dominates that market. And has for years. On all 3 of the available, cheap, and reliable dimensions. Even if Starship could only do unmanned heavy LEO, having it operational would just make Musk an even-more obvious choice for that part of things.
- Musk has an available, reliable crew capsule - which is another difficult must-have for any manned Lunar mission. Vs. NASA's Orion capsule has been to orbit once, uncrewed, 3 year ago. And had major heat shield issues during the reentry.
The idea that private space will be able to compete against china without serious US gov't support is a joke. America finds a way to only fight wars it can afford to lose. I think it's because after ww2 and the cold war we sold less weapons. So the system (not any 1 human) learns that losing a war is better than winning
I want to share this rant by Casey Handmer (Former NASA JPL). I'm sharing the main tweet here, you can read the whole thread in the link:
https://x.com/CJHandmer/status/1969634998144888999
> It's absolutely insane that this @nytimes article would quote Doug Loverro saying "I was not firm enough in pushing what I should have pushed" when in fact the reason he abruptly left NASA in May 2020 (after just 6 months on the job) was that he was caught providing illicit inside advice to Boeing regarding the Human Landing System contract during the blackout period, despite which Boeing's entry was so poor it was withdrawn. How much harder could he have pushed?
> It gets even crazier.
> The article also quotes Douglas Cooke, who oversaw the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA from January 2004 until September 2011, and who is thus directly responsible for Constellation's abject failure, cancellation, the debacle of the Ares I-X rocket, and the origins of the SLS program, and who as recently as late 2021 was still advocating for a retvrn to the Constellation architecture (https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1448008434478108676).
> Dan Dumbacher rounds out the trio of former NASA executives brave enough to go on the record, as the Deputy Associate Administrator of Exploration Systems Development from October 2010 until July 2014, ensuring this article quotes exclusively from former NASA leaders who have proven beyond doubt they cannot run a rocket development program, and who, having spent 20 years and $100b on their own failed system that somehow forgot to develop the lander, are now throwing stones at SpaceX for spending less than $3b (along with $10b of their own money) and having developed a rocket that's roughly 100x cheaper and 4x more powerful than SLS in less than 1/4 of the time.
> I don't want to hear from Loverro, Cooke, or Dumbacher unless it's a detailed explanation of how, exactly, NASA managed to screw up SLS as badly as they did. Perhaps they can ask for an internship at Starbase to get the elite program management exposure and experience they so evidently lacked when the nation entrusted them with the future of the light cone?
> According to public disclosures, none of these former NASA officials, who now work as independent consultants, receive money from Boeing. And yet whenever their opinion is solicited, they seem to advocate for mission architectures that support Boeing's proposals, Boeing's contracts, and Boeing's interests, despite NASA's own Office of Inspector General finding over and over and over again that Boeing and NASA's program management have collaboratively presided over an extremely expensive comedy of errors.
> Not just expensive - as I have now warned for many years - corrosive to US technological dominance and security, as China moves decisively towards the Moon.
> “This is not anything against SpaceX — they have done incredible things,” said Douglas Loverro, who served as the head of NASA’s human spaceflight division early in Mr. Trump’s first term. “But the further you move from known technology, the longer it takes to go ahead and get something done.”
> Landing such a tall rocket — Starship moon lander will be about 165 feet, compared with the Apollo Lunar lander that was 23 feet tall — means it can carry much more cargo, but it creates greater risk that Starship could topple once it arrives on the moon, Mr. Loverro said.