The SpaceX model is ideal for low Earth orbit where technology and markets are mature, I think it has trouble at Mars if not the Moon.
SpaceX can launch a large number of Starships to LEO and have them fail because the turnaround time is a few weeks. You only get to go to Mars once every two years or so, so if it takes 10 attempts, that is 20 years. SpaceX's control system is completely remote control from mission control: they'd need to build something entirely different to work around Mars.
Right now Starship does not have an appealing lunar story. The baseline scenario that astronauts climb out of Orion, spacewalk to a Starship, then go to the moon on a Starship carries about the same payload as the original LEM with a much larger and taller vehicle that is likely to tip over or have its nozzles broken by rocks. It would be cool if you could land and return the full 100 tons but to do that you need to refuel. Some combination of:
-- land 100 tons and turn the Starship into storage tanks/living space/a workshop
-- using some of those 1-way journeys to stash fuel for return trips
-- producing O2 from rocks but using CH4 from Earth
-- producing O2 from electrolysis of polar ice
seem possible with various levels of risk. A H2 + O2 rocket could be fueled entirely from polar ice but not Starship. It's not so clear if it makes sense to use polar ice to make propellants or if it makes sense to use it to accumulate a stock of volatiles that are recycled on a permanent settlement.
Is there a rational defense for NASA's crewed space programs? The robotic missions: satellites, landers, telescopes seem superb, but the crewed missions seem very low value. Are crewed missions necessary cover for various black budget programs?
NASA is great, but the author's primary motivation seems to be "China is going to the moon and China is bad."
I'm also not sure that NASA needs "saving." It needs continued funding, and it would be nice if they were jerked around less by the whims of politicians, but I don't think it is in crisis. NASA has continued to produce valuable science, even given those difficult headwinds.
"If SpaceX can do it, NASA can do it."
Space Shuttle never achieved is core objective and project shelved. Space Launch System is way past deadlines and cost. As far as launching systems NASA has not kept up since Apollo.
I would argue NASA has achieved great progress in Space research. Hubble, Voyager, Mars rovers, Webb telescope have made great advances in discovery. I would have NASA change its core objectives to new research activities.
Related:
Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future
> NASA Is Worth Saving
> The US Is A Launch Superpower And NASA Seems Not To Have Noticed
> SLS Is Original Sin
There's your story. NASA might be worth saving, but first you'll have to sacrifice the Senators' pork.
It's going to be fun watching this guy melt down over the next four years or so.
The decades of the space program that lead up to (and included of course) Apollo 11 represented, I think, the highest level of optimism we could have mustered for the future — highest level of self-esteem we could have garnered for not just the U.S., but for the world (but perhaps especially for the U.S.).
As a kid in elementary school at the time we seemed to be a country moving to embrace science. Heck, even the Metric system was being speed-run (ran?) into the curriculum. (Until it wasn't.)
I would hate to shutter that.
To be sure, public interest waned after a few landings, the follow up Space Shuttle was a bit lackluster — and fraught with some unfortunately spectacular failures. ISS did little better in terms of public enthusiasm.
Is it the Cold War competition that is lacking today? Are we too mired in a gloomy outlook for our future, for our planet's future that we haven't the energy to be excited about anything any more?
I rather doubt that last bit — perhaps in fact we're starving for something to lift the public mood. I think too we were deep in a dark fog after Kennedy's assassination — maybe the youthful Beatles and the space program were two of the prime movers that pulled us (somewhat?) out of that funk (never mind it all despite Vietnam and all the fallout from that).
Perhaps we'll see the Chinese put their citizens on the Moon in the near future. Perhaps that will be our Sputnik moment for the 21st Century.
I kind of think we might need a healthy (one hopes) competition to lift our spirits, perhaps unify us again....
i am sorry to say this, but i would rather save the immunology system.
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My guess is that they’ll ship a few weather/gps satellites and then move to privatize both NASA and NWS. As was warned in Project 2025. The waffling funding is just buying time until then. Hand out to Elon. That’s why he came crawling back a few days later.
I opened this article thinking someone was getting rid of NASA; and to be clear, no one is. Nothing is happening to the organization or their work, this is just budget cuts. They will be focusing on human spaceflight and getting rid of green/climate research and general management.
No.
What else is there for NASA to accomplish scientifically speaking? land on the next planet but for what purpose?
They've got the James Webb out there but what has that revealed for us except better quality images. Do you care if you find out certain planet has O2, C, H20? I certainly don't.
You can argue that NASA has developed some tech that is used in our everyday live but I argue we could have developed that same tech without going to space.
I prefer the NASA vision statement from nasa.gov/about:
"NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery."
to Casey's "defend US interests on the civilian side of space."
SLS is an abject failure, indeed, but one whose faults are ultimately Congress's. I see no reason for human space flight to continue to "eat first" given that record of expensive failure. In contrast, astrophysics and planetary science remain--at least for now--world-leading.