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NASA to lay off more than 500 employees
(www.nasa.gov)
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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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I hate to bring this up, but SpaceX (and I’m not giving Elon any credit here) as a private space company has done more significant advances than NASA has done in a long time.
NASA has no spacecrafts right now! American astronauts are riding SpaceX Crew Dragon to dock with the ISS. And before Crew Dragon’s first flight in 2020, they had to book Russian Soyuz to fly their astronauts into space.
Look at the SLS/Artemis, an over-bloated project in both time and money, while simultaneously managing to accomplish zero new innovation at all. It’s literally strapping 4 Space Shuttle’s rocket engines together (from literally the very same engines scrapped from the retired Space Shuttles) and using the same Solid Rocket Boosters (the very same defective booster design that caused the Challenger explosion) to get American astronauts back to the moon again (at least this is how it’s planned).
Where is the innovation? Where are the advancements? The same Space Shuttle rockets that are inferior to the Soviet rockets built in the 1980s, a country that has not existed for over 30 years!
At least SpaceX is trying something new with their Raptor engines. NASA is still stuck in their past glory, at least in terms of launch vehicles and spacecrafts. I’m not denying that there are some cool satellites and telescopes and stuff, but the heavy engineering that is going to blow everyone’s minds by achieving some incredible breakthroughs is not there anymore.
Most of the fundamental technology breakthroughs were achieved by NASA in the 90's but due to various issues, the space shuttle being the obvious one (thanks Nixon/Agnew), they were not followed up on. Also NASA has worked very closely with SpaceX essentially from the beginning, just another case of the government selling off technology to a private company because it's the only way things change in this country.
NASA has never built rockets or passenger carrying spacecraft. They have always contracted them out, yes even the Saturn V, with NASA oversight/management. Also you literally bring up Artemis so not sure what you're talking about.
You'll notice how they haven't had an accident since either but you can literally thank Obama for SLS.
Which itself is based on old Soviet and Aerojet Rocketdyne designs. Just like how Starship's design is inspired by the N1.
It was never there. Apollo only got funded as a way to 'peacefully' develop ICBM and related technologies. If China manages to land on the Moon before the US does again then perhaps there might be a similar program for Mars or an effort to industrialize LEO but while China is making progress in space they don't seem to be making it a priority and I would be genuinely surprised if they manage to make it to the Moon before the US/SpaceX does.
Edit: Also even if China did manage to somehow beat the US to the moon they don't have a fully reusable superheavy rocket (even their plans talk about the 2040's) so it would be a significant but ultimately very temporary victory.
Again, none of this disagrees with what I wrote. You aren’t going to see any breakthroughs soon, either from NASA or SpaceX.
However, I do find this comment a bit strange:
A fundamental design flaw is a fundamental design flaw. You can say that they have since fixed and strengthened the O-ring until the final cancellation of the Space Shuttle program, but that doesn’t change the fact that it poses significant risks to the crew. Just because a poorly designed car hasn’t run into accident, doesn’t mean it’s a safe vehicle. When the accident eventually happens, you’re more likely to be dead than alive.
Furthermore, solid rockets shouldn’t be used for manned space flights, especially for a country as rich as the US. The only reasons to use them is because it’s cheap, and easy to build, and can be stored for years, yes. But there’s a reason the Russians use liquid propellant rockets for their manned space flights. Solid rockets cannot be throttled, and if it explodes, there’s no way to abort the crew safely.
I mean ... you're disagreeing with what you wrote so I don't know what to tell you.
To begrudgingly defend SpaceX here, if Starship actually works as advertised it actually is a game changer. Their intended launch cadence makes things like Skyhooks a realistic consideration which in turn would make Sci-Fi levels of interplanetary activity possible. Even the semi-reusable Falcon 9 has made a big difference in the launch market, for better or worse, Starlink and the other satellite constellations would not have been anywhere near the realm of profitability without it.
For the Shuttle yeah but Orion has launch abort capability. I agree they shouldn't be used on principle but SLS is a jobs program that happens to build rockets, not the other way around.