Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/former-nasa-chief-turned-ula-lobbyist-seeks-law-to-limit-spacex-funding/
Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/former-nasa-chief-turned-ula-lobbyist-seeks-law-to-limit-spacex-funding/
17 Comments
If SpaceX kept it’s promises then I’d be upset, but they have consistently oversold themselves at the tax-payers’ expense. Apollo took 9 years to get to the moon, Falcon Heavy first launched in 2018, don’t tell me it couldn’t have been done in that time.
Awful proposed bill. NASA actually gave more money to companies not named SpaceX and they still haven’t delivered.
It will not go to the ULA. If anything it will go to Blue and Rocketlab.
Bridenstine was a terrible administrator
Can someone point me to the text where it says this?
EDIT: Apologies, I wasn’t being clear. I don’t mean the text in the article, I meant the text in the proposed legislation.
There is competition. It’s just that nobody is able to actually do what space-x can because shareholders are afraid of potentially wasteful experiments, and space-x doesn’t have to worry about that, because Elon owns up to 70% of the shares, and Elon demonstrably doesn’t give a fuck.
Bridenstine looked good because Obama’s programs came to term under him.
If you look at the French program, Rocket Lab, and the chinese program; they are very much running with many spacex lessons. Rocket lab 3D prints engines, and I’ve seen videos of the chinese doing the same. Rocket lab also does a cool thing where they carbon fiber weave not only their fuel tanks, but the tanks are also the rocket body.
The chinese just did the landing on a barge thing, and of course Bezos has his thing doing the same sort of stuff.
All of this means that SpaceX isn’t really doing anything super special anymore. Maybe they keep pushing the envelope, maybe they don’t.
These launches should be very open bid. Not just give money to Boeing or something and hope they don’t screw it up. At this point, they are able to produce these rockets in short order and, thus aren’t mega projects. It should be, bid, win, deliver, get paid final payment, or bid, win, not deliver, be excluded for 5 years. These bids should be fairly simple. X number of Kgs, into the following orbit, within the following timeline, and a few others like max Gs, vibration, etc, with the following dimensions. Done. Not have bureaucrats dictating the metallurgy in some bolts or whatever. Any more than I would insist on a certain kind of transmission be used in a household moving truck.
Even things like ion engines are starting to be commodity hardware. Bordering on COTS.
Thus, NASA should only be doing what other companies aren’t doing well, or at all. Pushing the envelope.
The basic idea of preventing a SpaceX monopoly is sound.
The proposed implementation however is terrible, at least at the current point in time.
Right now, all other US launch providers combined could not support half of the missions that SpaceX do for NASA annually (Vulcan is currently grounded and has a huge backlog anyway, Atlas V is sold out, New Glenn cadence is still low, and no other medium+ lifters are operational yet).
Therefore, limiting SpaceX to half of their current amount would not satisfy this law – it would be more like limiting SpaceX to a quarter of their current amount and spreading another quarter to everyone else, and the remaining two quarters just don’t happen anymore.
If you want to do something like this, it needs to have a more nuanced approach with proper on-ramping for other providers, not just a cold turkey cutoff.
Competition is important, but given the current state of affairs with these companies, the only thing you’re going to accomplish by giving SpaceX less money, is significantly decreasing your spaceflight tempo.
Nobody is ready to take on the launch rate or lift capacity that SpaceX can currently handle. New Glenn will be great once BO gets it up on a regular basis, but it usnt there yet. ULA and Boeing are, quite simply, embarrassing themselves at this point.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[BE-4](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8b6wr3 “Last usage”)|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8b7tsw “Last usage”)|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[COTS](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8ao9ew “Last usage”)|[Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract](https://www.nasa.gov/cots)|
| |Commercial/Off The Shelf|
|[CRS](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8aoaey “Last usage”)|[Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8ajlv7 “Last usage”)|US Department of Defense|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8avqcy “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ITAR](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8ba62x “Last usage”)|(US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8ayzof “Last usage”)|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8avqcy “Last usage”)|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[RTLS](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8b6wr3 “Last usage”)|Return to Launch Site|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8b5fgk “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SRB](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8aj5jl “Last usage”)|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[SSTO](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8bb3l1 “Last usage”)|Single Stage to Orbit|
| |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8bb3l1 “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8aj5jl “Last usage”)|United States Space Force|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8bb3l1 “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1rj3rc0/stub/o8b7tsw “Last usage”)|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|methalox|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
—————-
^([Thread #12209 for this sub, first seen 2nd Mar 2026, 21:23])
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Brilliant…limit funding for the only entity that is actually successful with space travel. 🤯
How about limiting lobbyists?
Anything that keeps money out of a Nazi’s hand is good
> Almost everyone in the space industry agrees that Starship offers a cumbersome solution to get two humans to the lunar surface, especially if the goal is to do so as quickly as possible rather than building a sustainable transportation system over time.
That “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Per Space Policy Directive 1, the goal of the Artemis program is to build a sustainable transport system and ensure a permanent human presence on the Moon.
The people who want Artemis III to just be “Apollo 11 redux” are acting in ignorance of that directive.
Old space will never, ever, ever be competitive unless they start to innovate again. At the moment they’re just trying to be “not SpaceX” which is a poor idea, given BO and Rocketlab will eventually be able to provide similar services as SpaceX, and at that point, Old Space will cease to have a rationale for existing.
People try to project onto NASA some conspiratorial agenda to give SpaceX cash, but the reality is that SpaceX is almost often the lowest bid with the lowest overruns and best deliverable. Just take a look at Crew Dragon vs Starliner, or Cargo Dragon vs Cygnus.
“If passed into law, this language could effectively prohibit SpaceX from launching crewed lunar missions from Earth on Dragon or Starship for NASA in addition to its existing portfolio.”
That doesn’t sound like a great plan…Â