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Comment by bumby | Hacker News Reader

NASA/DoD did lay some of the groundwork. DC-X was a vertical landing rocket meant for reuse nearly 35 years ago. Granted SpaceX has done amazing things that are more difficult (DC-X was suborbital), but I tend to think if NASA continued they would have got there. From my perspective, SpaceX’s major benefit is they don’t have to follow the same rules as NASA so they can do things quicker and/or cheaper.

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.

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The waste does not at all stem only from different risk tolerances. SpaceX launches NASA astronauts which means that they also need to comply to the same standards. Pork barrel projects like SLS is the real reason why everything NASA does is so expensive and late.

The statement that NASA would have achieved reuse eventually is weird considering that NASA still exists today, 35 years later, without succeeding.

>SpaceX launches NASA astronauts which means that they also need to comply to the same standards

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.

Does Falcon 9 fail more often than other rockets?

NASA spending 35 years pursuing pork projects instead of useful technologies like VTOL sounds like the very definition of waste to me.

I agree Falcon 9 is showing itself to be reliable and low cost. We probably agree about the pork piece too

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?

Isn't the point actually "SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, has accomplished some amazing feats in the aerospace industry?"

No, the point was about the differences in risk that facilitate that work. I agree that SpaceX has done wonderful things, but disagree about the overly simplified explanation.

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.

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