Senate Passes Bill to Boost Competitiveness of U.S. Space Industry | Hacker News Reader

Senate Passes Bill to Boost Competitiveness of U.S. Space Industry

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54 pointswalterbell11 comments

This bill sounds fine based on the summary, but if the senate wants to boost US space competitiveness maybe don't play politics with NASA's funding.[1] Let the scientists draft and decide missions, let the engineers decide feasibility and utility, and let the astronauts and robots carry them out. Do what you can to reign in costs, but don't turn NASA into a bureaucratic pork bonanza.

1: Just one such example http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/12/15/nasas-3...

There's some merit in what you're saying. NASA shepherded the Thor IRBM into the Delta launch vehicle over quite a long period, probably because NASA administrators don't have an 18-month tenure like Air Force Generals do. NASA could make incremental improvements for years, and that led to the occasional major improvement.

Compare tje Delta's LEO capability to the Air Force launch vehicle, the Titan, and you'll see the difference.

To be globally competitive in the long run, ITAR restrictions around space vehicles need to be reassessed. Right now to work for a US aerospace company you need to be a US citizen. This excludes a huge part of the available talent pool [1].

[1] http://paulgraham.com/95.html

So true. It's very frustrating the way things are currently restricted. ITAR is really over-reaching in a lot of areas.

The same is true of our nuclear weapons industry. My father moved to the US from Iran and many of our family are interested in nuclear weapons engineering, but CANNOT come to the US to work to follow their passion because of these laws.

Why is it that only Americans have a right to participate in nuclear weapons engineering just because they happened to have been born in the "right" place?

The general improvements they mention do look good for the U.S. space industry. It says something about the recent state of congress that my first question is quite cynical: What compromises and hidden gotchas aren't we hearing about in this bill?

Does this mean the Commercial Crew Program, where Space-X finishes their manned launch capability, is back on?

Commercial Crew never stopped. Congress is not funding it well, though.

That's the point. Congress cut funding so NASA and ULA could catch up to Space-X. Does this bill add funding?

That's not why Congress is funding Commercial Crew insufficiently. They're up to a different game. Delaying Commercial Crew won't help ULA much—the looming (latest) threat to ULA by SpaceX is reusability of the Falcon 9 first stage, and that is going to happen soon regardless of Commercial Crew. Also, NASA doesn't need to "catch up" to SpaceX—NASA is wants SpaceX and Boeing to get these vehicles flying by 2017 and has loudly and sincerely requested full funding for the Commercial Crew Program to that end.

There's another pair of elephants (well, pigs) in the room that together are devouring $3 billion worth of resources per year that could be better spent on other space investments, including the Commercial Crew Program.

What, did they declare the United Launch Alliance an illegal monopoly or something, and then break it up?

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