The one where you missed who the head of the committee that was reducing the funding was? How about instead of your political BS we discuss real issues like all political parties agree on the size of NASA budget but some people (Obama) prefer to keep spending the money on low earth orbit instead of allocating it to moving to new endeavors. Or better yet, keep politics out of the thread.
Dragon is the only ship that can survive re-entry. Russia's Soyuz, Europe's ATV and Japan's HTV have virtually no capability to bring equipment back to Earth. It is a very critical capability since it is important for the experiments on-board Station to be brought back to Earth. Of course, Shuttle and Apollo can bring stuff back, but we don't have them any more.
People call this a great vindication of "Commercial Space" strategy. The name is a little confusing because NASA (the government part) doesn't build vehicle itself. All NASA's vehicles had been built by private companies. What is new is the way the contract is written. The traditional way is called "Cost Plus". The vehicle belong to NASA. Private company build the vehicle according to NASA's requirement. Their profit depends on how well they do. The new way is call the "Space Act Agreement". The vehicle belong to the private companies. NASA purchases the service. But to get this thing started, NASA provide technical help and provide seed money. For the example of SpaceX, SpaceX built Falcon 1 rocket with their own money. Then they built Falcon 9 rocket with their own money. They built the dragon with some of NASA money. So far, they had spend 1.4 billion dollars, out of which NASA had provided 400 million. If done by the old ways, NASA would have to spend 4 to 10 times as much to get the same thing. If I have more time, I will describe why traditional ways of government spending is so inefficient.
The one where I owned your arse. The head of a House committee is going to be a Republican since the House has a Republican majority and will elect a Republican to head every committee and thus craft every committee report - including this one. I think you should learn how gov't works before making your posts.
By the way, this shouldn't be a Republican vs Democrat thing. Supporters of New Space (including SpaceX) - - Administrator Charles Bolden - Newt Gingrich - President Obama - republican representative Dana Rohrabacher - Tea Party in Space Critical of New Space (I would argue many of whom actively stealthily trying to kill off this new effort): - Pretty much all congressional senators and representatives who have significant NASA/Space industry workers. Some of the most up-front are: - Senator Shelby of Alabama (R) - Senator Hutchison of Texas (R) - Senator Nelson of Florida (D) (who had since changed his position since there will be a lot of new jobs created by the new Space in Florida) - Representative Wolf of Virginia (R) - Representative Hall of Texas (R) - I don't know what is Romney's position ( I doubt that he knows himself since this is just too little of an issue), but his space advisors are mostly in camps that are highly critical of new space.
For those that are interested, Dragon will splash down in 20 minutes. Come to here for live streaming: http://spaceref.com/
See the problem with talking to you is no matter how many times things are in your face you just revert back to "republicans" "Obama" rhetoric. The Senate committee was pushing for the exact same thing. I can handle the possibility someone might have read slanted news at some point but your ignorant take that this was Obama's pet project and he was able to pull off something historical despite attempts to torpedo it are just insane. You didn't own anyone except yourself.
No one makes it out to be except Sweet Tard 42. My whole contention is this is basically a nothing. It is a makeshift solution that will be functional entirely too late to serve any purpose. The idea that SpaceX is revolutionary seems hyped by the media as this is just business as usual for NASA granting a contract to build something.
SpaceX/Solyndra/Tesla/GM are all indicative of Obama's neo-corporatist philosophy, once advocated by Michael Dukakis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartism The government picks winners and losers, decides which companies get our tax dollars, and makes sure unions get their percentage. Much of the money gets recirculated into campaigns. It's basically the Chicago style patronage system on a national scale. The problem is eventually you run out of other people's money to play around with. We're supposed to thank Obama you see, for giving SpaceX a half billion dollars of our money. Call it venture socialism or public equity. http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Elon-Musk-Shows-Us-How-to-Thrive-in-the-Government-Directed-Economy
Can you just keep this out of the space thread? mc mark can look uninformed and tout this as private, but everyone who knows anything about NASA gets to laugh at him. We know that almost everything NASA does and has ever done since and including Apollo, is done with large contracts to private companies. You obviously dislike this way of operating a space agency but Obama didn't start it, and it has nothing to do with his policy.
Obama's policy is to redistribute tax dollars to corporations and call it capitalism. I dislike space agencies period, but this is worse in some ways. The taxpayer takes all the risk when their money is loaned/given out to a "private" company like SpaceX. If they fail they just declare bankruptcy and walk away (see Solyndra), A government contract is a fee for service, it's not ideal either but it's completely different than a subsidy/loan. This program, TARP, the Export/Import bank, there's so many government slush funds these days it's hard to keep up. Just giving dump trucks full of our money away to favored companies. "Saving the auto industry", "investing in the future", "preventing economic collapse", blah blah blah, whatever justification for corporate welfare helps them sleep and night.
As if funneling tax dollars toward innovative projects/programs hasn't been the way things have functioned in this country for the last century or so. It's fine if you think the government could be more selective, but IMHO sometimes you need the government to take risks that private venture capitalists wouldn't. I highly doubt any venture capitalist firm would have spent millions (sometimes billions) to fund: - Research on how to mass produce juice from a mushroom (penicillin/antibiotics) - A building-sized box that does arithmetic (computers) - Point-to-point communication to help store and retrieve information like a library (Internet) - An entire satellite constellation to replace maps/compasses (GPS) There will always be stinkers like Solyndra, but all it takes is one good innovation to spawn a multi-billion dollar industry.
You were owned because you could not present anything to support your argument. No link, no quote, nothing. And I didn't claim it was Obama's pet project. Only about the budget and the Republicans comparing it to Solyndra. So really, you are just manufacturing b.s. here. And just FYI - the rep points given to my post said, "pawned". I guess that's not owned, but close enough.
Your short term memory thankfully isn't contagious. Look back at this thread and see that your buddies were the one who first brought the partisan bickering in here with their salvo against Obama. When people respond to it you decry the whole "obama" vs. "republican" thing. What a piece of work you are. Go after them, not me.
no argument there The government shouldn't be in the business of selecting at all. The problem is all the innovation that could have been accomplished with those wasted tax dollars is unseen. And I don't accept the premise that those innovations would not have occurred. What makes the government qualified to determine what innovations to invest my money in? Why can't I give my money to a venture capital firm rather than the government picking winners and losers for me?
I don't want to get between your argument with another poster. But I think the "media hype" is no hype at all. If any thing, main stream media didn't quite get it. It shall be more hype. But over something else. The hype shall be over how a new paradime had arrived. Currently, companies represented by SpaceX (the so called New Space companies) causes extreme bi-polar reaction to the aero-space industry. It illicits extreme excitement and adoration from one group while cause extreme criticism and fear on another group. This is a water-shed moment. The fact that she can perform berthing with Station and return is not the reason everybody is so excited. It is how she does it. Her accomplishment so far is amazing. Developing new space vehicle is extremely difficult. Almost every new vehicle fails in its first three attempts. Falcon 1 failed the first three times. But it had been perfect afterward. But its next vehicle, the much bigger Falcon 9, was perfect from the very first time. Her third major program, the Dragon space ship went 2 for 2 so far. NASA had been in this business for 60-70 (?) years, and very other national governments and all the "Old Space" companies, they all encountered problems after problems in the very first few times a new vehicle is starting operational. SpaceX seems to have find a way to avoid that. It is also the speed of how they proceed from program to program. SpaceX is barely a 10 years old company and they already had three successful programs under her belt. It is how efficient she is. She is already the Most cost-efficient rocket company in the whole world. Better than all national governments and any other existing aero-space companies. She is already the lowest cost provider in the world. And it is by a great margin. It is late, it will bring some data to better illustrate my point tomorrow. As a result, as young as she is, she already has more than 4 billions dollars under contract. Most of her customers are private companies. She has 1.6B contract so far from NASA, the rest are from private satellite companies. And she is signing up contracts left and right. It is also her future direction. It is late, I need to go to sleep. I will bring numbers to better illustrate what I am talking about tomorrow.
You sure that is the way you want to go? Yes, US government (NASA) selected SpaceX as one of two companies for its COTS program (provides supplies to Space Station). In yesterday's press conference, Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX) said SpaceX won't have survived without NASA. Yep, SpaceX fits your definition of corporate welfare perfectly (not my definition though). But are you sure that is where you want to go! The following is the launch manifest of SpaceX's rockets: http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php Look all those contracts she signed with companies/governments from Malaysia, Taiwan, Canada, Europe, Thailand, Argentina, Israel, Mexico. And those are just the one that have the launch nailed down. There are other contracts that in works that hasn't got the launch nailed down yet. In addition, you are going to see more and more new contracts being signed and payment being made every few weeks. That is what happens when you are the most efficient and lowest cost provider in the world. All of SpaceX's factories are in USA. Without SpaceX, those contracts wouldn't have gone to other US companies. Prior to SpaceX, the lowest cost provider is China. Again, SpaceX seems to fit your definition of what not to do. Except, as they gobbling up world's commercial space contracts, it seems to be the opposite of being a failure.
What would you base that on? What evidence do you have that private business would've been willing to put up that much money on projects that didn't have much of an immediate return? Let me add another to the list. The interstate highway system. Do you think private business would've been willing to put up the money to build a system like that?
