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Comment by Kukumber | Hacker News Reader

Decades of trying to get help from private sector, as a result NASA stagnated, and China took the lead

As a result, the only option for NASA to compete with China is to take back the role of leader with public money and public R&D with public and state funded universities

It was a mistake to seek help from Musk, Bezoz and that Virgin dude who wants to create space tourism

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But SpaceX, at least, is successful, and NASA is behaving like it’s 1982.

Let’s ask a different question. SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc areis not currently going to the moon. Would SpaceX be having this much trouble if it went to the moon? What would a SpaceX moon launch look like?

SpaceX is developing a version of its Starship intended to land astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS

Blue Origin worked on a "Blue Moon" lander and later teamed up with LockMart, Northrop-Grumman, and Draper on the ILV lander proposal.

SpaceX would have failed if they didn't receive the billions of government subsidies

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su...

Calling a contract to provide services a subsidy is intentionally disparaging.

Building space refueling and seed moon base infrastructure has such a huge startup cost that it’ll be nearly impossible to make it profitable, which is critical to a for profit company. NASA has no profit motive thus they can fund the basic infrastructure for interplanetary travel and colonization dramatically improving the economics for everyone and creating incentive for everyone to use it. Final note we should have redundant heavy lift capability independent of private companies as a national security goal. The only keys to interplanetary space being in Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos hand should creep us all out.

Final note, in real dollars these programs of NASAs are a blip on the federal budget. All the hand wringing bothers me since it’s not proportional to the scale.

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