SpaceX in its short lifetime has had more catastrophic failures more often than the entire history of NASA.
To build “cheap” prototypes and learn from their failure is their whole business model. And it’s working. Their rockets don’t fail on missions, they fail while testing.
SpaceX has done nothing that NASA couldn’t have done had we funded it.
I disagree. NASA is a government agency and by nature it’s held down by bureaucracy and moves at a snail’s place. There’s no incentive for them to keep to a budget and timeline.
What NASA is really good at are robotics and observational science. I think they should be funded to put tech in space and on other celestial objects, and the dirty work of getting stuff off the ground should be delegated to private companies.
To build “cheap” prototypes and learn from their failure is their whole business model. And it’s working. Their rockets don’t fail on missions, they fail while testing.
In what way couldn’t NASA do the same if they were funded similarly. When it comes to large systems like this. National mail, healthcare, space access. Capitalism absolutely cannot be as efficient. Otherwise they would have replaced these systems outright and not sought to sabotage them. As they have globally.
I disagree. NASA is a government agency and by nature it’s held down by bureaucracy and moves at a snail’s place. There’s no incentive for them to keep to a budget and timeline.
There’s no nature about it. The US rocketed to a space powerhouse under bureaucracy and NASA. All that changed was the concentration of wealth and the realization how much more there is to be made by private control of space access. The wealthy paid representatives to kill it. Not bureaucracy. Bureaucracy can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. It’s been the only thing keeping us from capitalistic fascism for decades. We’re going to learn that the hard way.
