Forget orbit, SpaceX has paid for it's ISS contract about 3x in savings over Soyuz. Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now.
You're not optimizing for the same outcomes as Congress. NASA is a jobs agency.
Robert Siegel: "As NPR's Peter Overby reports, Capitol Hill has always been deeply involved in NASA's activities, and sometimes seem to regard NASA as a jobs program, as well as a space program."
Overby: "This year [2011], according to federal contract data, NASA will buy goods and services in 396 of the 435 congressional districts."
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555781/congressional-suppo...
From 2019:
"NASA will often highlight the fact that its SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft support aerospace suppliers. For example, this agency website details the number of suppliers in every US state and says, 'Men and women in all 50 states are hard at work building NASA's Deep Space Exploration Systems to support missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.' There are 106 suppliers in Alabama, alone, according to NASA's site."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/an-alabama-represent...
They're the next stop for Bezos, btw. This ain't over.
On reddit, what usually happens is that SLS defenders try to misrepresent attacks on SLS as an attack on all of NASA, parenthood, and apple pie. And so the world turns.
There's a logical train here, that I think you're attempting to work around.
1. Nasa is a jobs program 2. A jobs program that produces good tech? 3. Yeah, but what did SLS produce? 4. You know that SLS is not NASA (is what I should have said). But I actually said was close enough.
3 makes zero sense unless the poster believes NASA ~= SLS.
I find it fun that we're saying the same thing (NASA != SLS), yet here we are arguing.
And if I were to go out on a limb, I suspect if you asked person 1 what they were mad about, it's probably the human spaceflight program, not science.
None of that is a disparagement of the scientific research NASA does. But for congress, the value is a way to send money home.
Once again: the idea that USA would keep competing on international aerospace market of launch services wasn't working before SpaceX started launching Falcon-9. Maybe the market losses are because of paying for aerospace jobs, or maybe it's just a coincidence, but USA was practically pushed out from the market, until - heavily vertically integrated - SpaceX put the launch price on their website.
I think the idea of paying for aerospace jobs in this way doesn't work.
I'm not talking about NASA headcount, I am talking about NASA contracts which support private sector companies and aerospace engineers.
The USA wants to maintain the domestic capability to for launches, and this means funding technology and expertise. If you don't award contracts domestically, in 10-20 years the capability is gone. No domestic contracts => no jobs => no grads => no rocket engineers.
NASA's model has always been to award contracts to the private sector companies. This is why you have SpaceX, Boeing, Northrup, Lockheed launch capabilities.
>I think the idea of paying for aerospace jobs in this way doesn't work.
I'm not sure what you mean by paying for aerospace jobs. NASA funded private sector manufacturers before and continues to fund it now.
I agree the the US manufacturers were ripe for disruption, and SpaceX did a great job of doing just that. However, the entire market and jobs exist to chase these government contracts. Do you think that SpaceX would exist if it wasn't for NASA and DOD launch contracts? I don't.
This way the idea that all or many congressional districts should participate in NASA contracts - because then those congressmen support increasing NASA's budgets - goes out the window. Now congressmen - and congresswomen, of course - can judge NASA in terms of space progress vs. money spent, not in terms of distribution of money to jobs in their districts. From this point of view, your question is irrelevant - no, it wouldn't, as after forth launch Falcon-1 SpaceX didn't have funds to continue, and NASA helped, but that doesn't mean NASA doesn't have an ineffective policy.
It's an important one for sure! But it's just not true to say NASA hasn't accomplished amazing stuff in the last decades with the funds and focus they're allocated.
NASA does plenty to keep its name in good scientific standing and accomplishment.
I don't think SpaceX would be as strong if not that early NASA funding. "SpaceX contracted with the US government for a portion of the development funding for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which uses a modified version of the Merlin rocket engine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX
So by your thinking, they could have only invested in old-school-reliable-expensive rocket companies, because less risk is involved...
So funding a space company that doesn't yet have required capability but can be helped to get there - is not dumb.
BO said historically NASA gives contracts to multiple companies, and BO wanted funding too (in addition to SpaceX.
BO “argued that the agency was required to make multiple awards" because it had previously stated a preference for multiple awards”
They also got court injunctions preventing SpaceX from starting it's program, kinda deflating your whole 'just wanted to play along' narrative