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Comment by thegrim33 | Hacker News Reader

>> is exactly why the US is stuck with SpaceX

For the last 20 years NASA has intentionally run their Commercial Crew Program, which has the stated goal of developing/fostering/funding the development of commercial providers for launch vehicles.

They, by plan they explicitly laid out and implemented, decided to rely on American commercial providers. And that's what they got. And in doing so, the program ended up producing the most prolific/successful launch vehicle in history.

>> It's only through the miracle of the vanity of billionaires that there's even a realistic second choice (Blue Origin) that might develop

Yes, this is another company which the NASA commercial program explicitly funded in order to get them to develop another launch vehicle.

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SpaceX is an amazing success story, both as a commercial story, and as a story of government-industry cooperation. NASA should be proud and commended for fostering SpaceX.

The question is why does SpaceX stand alone? Why did ULA stagnate? Why can't NG make SRBs that don't have nozzles that fall off? Why can't Betchel build a launch tower on time? What is it about government contracts in these other areas that led to all of this under performance?

The US benefits by having SpaceX around. It would benefit even better by having many SpaceXs around.

Oh, and also I believe it's generally understood that NASA provided very little funding for New Glenn. They gave BO a lot of money for HLS, but that's relatively recent (2023). New Glenn has been in the works since 2013 and was mostly bankrolled by Bezos, with some USAF/DoD money kicked in.

>>> SpaceX is an amazing success story

100%, and something that is underappreciated and often taken for granted nowadays, especially on our little forum here.

>>> It would benefit even better by having many SpaceXs around.

That made me chuckle, sounded to me a bit like "our house would benefit from having a few cats around". Perhaps the reason why there aren't too many SpaceX-like companies around is that it's truly among the hardest companies to ever create.

If we're going to do public/private cooperation, we still need the whole competition thing.

If we don't have it, either we're subject to monopoly, or just a State owned company, at which point, why not just cut out the middlemen and go full Nationalized?

Boeing and others do complete in that area.

> Why did ULA stagnate?

ULA is the old guard made from Lockheed and Boeing. SpaceX is the snappy upstart moving fast and breaking things. Having the freedom to fail with experiments is a totally different methodology from any failure seen as very bad. SpaceX has never been involved in loss of life. If they ever have that happen, I'd imagine they'd be forced to stop moving as fast and quit breaking things.

Big space stagnated because they could. Their friends in Congress directed them lots of money and lots of political cover, and they both profited handsomely. Why would they change? They never had so, and I might argue that they still don't. Cost-plus contracts, years spent in expensive consulting and planning, all these mean they make money whether they go to space or not. Every five or six years, they trot out a "new" plan that purports to solve all the problems of the old plan, with exciting presentations and hired speakers, and the then-current administration sees a way to drum up political support, and the lobbyists and Congress see a way to make even more money and political favors.

And now it's over 50 years since we last landed on the Moon.

> Why can't NG make SRBs that don't have nozzles that fall off?

To be fair, we just saw two of them work fine, with no nozzle fall-off-ages

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