I argue that he's literally showing us how high we can go with SpaceX.
But, as the wealthiest man on the planet he's more likely to just be given what he wants: more self-indulgence. When you surround yourself with yes-men and sycophants, actual help isn't likely.
Further, it's entirely right to call this out when his actions impact the rest of the world greatly and the man has obvious problems. To then try and turn it around on me as if I'd done something wrong by pointing out the Emperor has no clothes? Well, I could offer you some choice words, but I'll hold my tongue. However, in my estimation, you could do with some self-reflection and probably a bit less "taste of boot on your tongue".
Speaking of the moon, NASA's SLS is projected to cost several orders of magnitude more than a super heavy launch, and is only aiming for the moon as opposed to Mars.
If there's one place that Doge could really, actually stop a lot of waste and fraud, it's at NASA. Of course, that would be the conflict of interest par excellence, and face a bunch of opposition from red-state congressmen with huge contracts in their constituencies. Objectively speaking, though, it's a huge waste of taxpayer money.
At 0.3% of the federal budget - if NASA was 100% waste, fixing it wouldn’t make a dent.
The “waste” is really just a different risk tolerance. You could make many of the NASA requirements go away, but nobody wants to be the one who signs up for that when the next disaster happens.
The statement that NASA would have achieved reuse eventually is weird considering that NASA still exists today, 35 years later, without succeeding.
Sorry, this is false. When NASA engineers have raised the question of non-adherence to NASA standards by CCP contractors, they were told it wasn’t their role to dictate those kinds of requirements. You can see this in a number of mishaps, like when a strut failure resulted in a lost rocket because they didn’t want to follow well-established and codified aerospace supply chain quality standards. NASA is buying a service with CCP, not a product. This says nothing of the political requirements NASA must work through that contractors do not.
>The statement that NASA would have achieved reuse eventually is weird considering that NASA still exists today, 35 years later, without succeeding.
NASA does, but that NASA VTOL rocket program was cancelled in 1996. My point was that the tech was feasible for NASA, but not a priority.
NASA spending 35 years pursuing pork projects instead of useful technologies like VTOL sounds like the very definition of waste to me.
You’re missing the point (which seems to be a common thread on this) so before I spend too much time constantly reiterating: 1) What do you think is the goal of NASA and 2) What do you think is fundamentally different about CCP?
For example, the commenter uses the word “waste”, probably because they lack a nuanced understanding. NASA operates under different risk constraints than SpaceX. For example, they have to manage political risk which is why centers are spread across politically important states; that prevents funding from drying up. When a project is managed across different geographic locations, it creates funding stability at the cost of inefficiency. SpaceX doesn’t have the same problem, so they can skirt many risk reduction requirements, as well as consolidate operations to maximize efficiency. From that standpoint, both sides of the public/private partnership have unique roles. But people tend to want to color such things in oversimplified terms because it hits well on social media.
There are other differences in risk, but I’m already tired of typing.
Like most things, when people have an overly simple or dichotomous take of a complex issue, it usually belies an incomplete understanding. The OP started off with a claim that showed they don’t understand how the CCP works, and just kept digging.