Elon Musk Wants SpaceX to Replace Russia as NASA's Space Station Transport
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
However, a lot of people don't realize that the commercial crew program is not fully funded by congress. There's a little bit of funding for developing certain novel aspects of manned spacecraft, which has been doled out to the current commercial crew hopefuls (SpaceX, Boeing, and SNC). But, even if any or all of those companies deliver a capable manned spacecraft there's no guarantee whatsoever that there will be money available for a contract.
One of the important things that Musk is doing here is drawing attention to that fact.
Now on the flip side it seems that SpaceX is putting their relationship with NASA as a priority. You would think they would want Russia as a client in the future as well but I think that will never happen now.
Plenty more money from pretty much anywhere else in the world to be had in terms of payloads, but in a practical sense I suspect it's a lot easier to launch US-based payloads then ones from overseas - shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
While I certainly don't disagree, we're talking about a company who's business is shipping sensitive satellites into orbit, so they're probably better positioned to know how to undertake shipping them round the world than most people!
Well, maybe not on Earth, but definitely on Kerbin.
Russia is flush with cash, and while their economy may contract, they're not exactly doing badly...
Further, what makes you think Putin and his government is unpopular at home? (hint: they aren't)
Regardless, this is about sending things into space which isn't the realm of ordinary citizens, but governments. The Russian government certainly is flush with cash.
The Russian "government" per se won't run out of money, since there is no clear border between public governance and corporate governance anyway. Essentially the state does what the oligarchs tell it to do, and everyone else does what the government tells them to do. If it weren't for the legendary corruption, this might actually be a powerful system...
In Russia there's not only "some poor". Health services are reported to be almost inaccessible without bribes, and people do behave as if a war or catastrophic inflation is coming.
I also think that Russia had a little something to do with the problems the Ukraine was having over the last few years. In a region renowned for corruption it is hard to tell if Janukowitsch and his friends robbed the country blind with or without outside help...
And unhappy people are more likely to say anything than happy people.
I've heard the same thing about the US many times.
I strongly doubt he is interested in being polite to Russian rocket industry.
Elon: I'm here for 3 ICBMs. The price is $21 million, correct?
Russians: No, the price is now $21 million for 1 ICBM. You don't have that kind of money? You can't play with the big boys.
Elon: on the plane ride home How hard can it be to build a rocket?
The Russians also had a salvage tug off the Space Coast leading up to the CR3 resupply mission (it was the most powerful salvage tug in the world at its commissioning). Take that for what its worth.
He didn't notice, and it was amazing.
Because I really want something that replaces, "Full Stack Engineer" with "Knows python AND java-script". Because every time I hear that parse I cringe, 75% of the Linux Stack is C, how is a full stack engineer skating by without knowing it?!
That reads like something you'd see in history books 100 years from now, after we've already inhabited other planets.
Now that all said, yes some competition is needed and SpaceX can only be a good thing. But even if the better solution on many levels, including politics. It is still a very young platform that will take a few a bit more time to get that level of not only knowing that it works. But also knowing what can go wrong.
It is often in engineering better to have a part that you know exactly how it will fail than a better part that you do not know exactly how it will fail. That is what separates safely engineering design in contrast to IT people who are more conditioned to new is better mentality. So when you read about some 8 bit system running on a bit of kit that your dad would of deemed old, it is not because the latest is better, it is because it just works and all possible fault outcomes have been worked out fully.
What did he do? He thought of trying for the fourth and final time. It worked!! In his own words, Elon said with tears in his eyes, that if the fourth launch had failed, he would have been broke. The next day he got a call from NASA. That saved SpaceX. I know hero worship is not very healthy, but can't help but marvel at Elon's vision.
The larger question though is if that is beneficial for the market as a whole. The idea of NASA not doing stuff internally is to benefit from the cost efficiency of the market. If NASA uses mainly SpaceX, they run the risk of creating a Halliburton like symbiosis and in that case you wonder why they don't do stuff internally rather than giving a share of taxpayer money to private shareholder and destroying the whole market by over-favoring one company in particular.
SpaceX is based in Los Angeles.
Even when we do invade somewhere to take out someone like UBL, Saddam Hussein, or Noriega; when we're done we clean up, rebuild some infrastructure, and leave.
No other nation on earth in history has restricted the wars it fights in such a principled way, rather than using them as excuses to just take more territory.
He's suggesting that it would be safer for the person with the most visible points to not trade with the person apparently in second place. And oh, how convenient! I have just the resources you need, and I'm certainly not a threat to your supremacy [on your turn].