How the U.S. became highly reliant on Elon Musk for access to space
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/07/nx-s1-5425266/spacex-musk-trump-starlink-starship
How the U.S. became highly reliant on Elon Musk for access to space
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/07/nx-s1-5425266/spacex-musk-trump-starlink-starship
23 Comments
A lot of words to effectively say “they were innovative and not afraid to develop products fast in a stagnant industry”
Not much mention here of the years of budget and schedule over-runs by traditional aerospace contractors allowing SpaceX/commercial space to undercut them by innovating.
Multiple vendors is always more ideal for the customer. You don’t want to get in a position where there is no alternative. This is a local optimization problem that can have long term consequences.
Lobbying the government to privatize the industry is how it happened.
When the federal government learns to put efficiency over bureaucracy, NASA will pull back out ahead. (Which will be never.)
Until then, private space companies are the way forward. Whether yous like it or not.
We may all dislike Jeff Who but he at least has the sense not to get too closely into bed with the orange shitgibbon. He will be happy to charge double what SpaceX does to provide an alternative once he actually has a flying rocket.
Its almost like the government has been steadily defunding NASA for dozens of years….
Everyone is going to pile on Elon as is fashionable on reddit these days, but in summary:
1. The *Columbia* disaster happened.
2. The Bush Administration announced Project Constellation to replace the Shuttle – which was increasingly important as they were now one orbiter down (technically they weren’t two down because *Atlantis* was built to replace *Challenger*).
3. The Obama Administration cancels Project Constellation and announces SLS to replace the Ares I and Ares V. NASA retain Orion, but cancel Altair.
4. Commercial Resupply and Commercial Crew is announced with SpaceX/Dragon, Orbital ATK/Cygnus (CRS) and Boeing/Starliner (Commercial Crew) being successful (and Sierra Nevada failing in their bid with Dream Chaser). It is noteworthy that both the Cygnus (on Antares) and Starliner (Atlas V) vehicles were bid to be launched on boosters with Russian engines.
5. The inevitable happens and the Shuttle reaches end of life. NASA now has no way of launching astronauts to the ISS and are dependent on Russia.
6. Russia annexes Crimea. Relationships between the US and Russia cool.
7. Commercial Crew is a success, with both SpaceX and Orbital ATK successfully launching payloads to the ISS.
8. SpaceX starts landing Falcon 9 boosters, reducing the cost of putting payloads into orbit. This starts impacting the business case of ULA in launching commercial payloads (also true with ESA and the Ariane 5). Delta IV is retired except for the Delta IV Heavy and even that is basically fully booked out for all remaining launches. ULA continues with Atlas V which is cheaper to operate.
9. SpaceX starts launching astronauts as part of Commercial Crew. Starliner is continually delayed.
10. Russia invades Ukraine, threatening the supply of engines to Antares and Atlas V. Blue Origin struggles to complete development of BE-4 which is needed for Vulcan.
11. SLS finally launches Artemis I. And there’s issues with Orion’s heatshield which were discovered as a result.
None of this is the fault of SpaceX or even the US Government. It’s just that SpaceX has profited due to the inability of their competitors to actually reliably put payloads in orbit.
It’s very simple. SpaceX was better and faster than all their competitors who had become stagnant and complacent from years of practically free government contracts.
Big defense contractors don’t want reusability since they would make less money, one idealist with money gets it done in a few years and cleans the house in launches. That’s how, lmao
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[ATK](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnh07d “Last usage”)|Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK|
|[BE-4](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwodrm2 “Last usage”)|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwr5gms “Last usage”)|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[COTS](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwntgpv “Last usage”)|[Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract](https://www.nasa.gov/cots)|
| |Commercial/Off The Shelf|
|[CRS](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnh07d “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)|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnrr0l “Last usage”)|European Space Agency|
|[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwoyuti “Last usage”)|(US) Government Accountability Office|
|[GTO](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnn8ip “Last usage”)|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwoyuti “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ITAR](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnsreh “Last usage”)|(US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwryzwg “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[NG](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnhmww “Last usage”)|New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin|
| |Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane)|
| |Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer|
|[RD-180](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwoyuti “Last usage”)|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage|
|[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnhmww “Last usage”)|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwrtva4 “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwrj1j7 “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwp9pw1 “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwoyuti “Last usage”)|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwp0ps9 “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[hydrolox](/r/Space/comments/1l6b45h/stub/mwnn8ip “Last usage”)|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|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 #11424 for this sub, first seen 8th Jun 2025, 13:36])
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We got Jeff bozos to blame for some of tgat what the hell has he been doing with blue orgin
It’s hilarious how people are mad the company is out there saving the government billions of dollars while giving the government new capabilities.
The mentality used in articles like this seems strange to me. For one, they make it sound like we’re dependent on a company for “access” to space.
Right off the bat this is ridiculous. There are launch providers all over the world, and the US has had launch providers since the 1960s.
The problem that they seem to have completely left out is that these legacy defense contractors price gouged our government for decades, and politicians allowed it because they were getting kickbacks. NASA themselves wanted SpaceX to success so they could get cheaper flights, which actually worked out.
Boeing and Blue Origin dropped the ball. Too late and too expensive. Musk/Shotwell advanced the tech and made launches cheaper. Yea he’s a nutcase.
Constant neglect of space travel, cutting of funding, cost overruns, popular misconceptions claiming that space is “too expensive”.
Maybe if you people hadn’t let Nixon ruin the space program we wouldn’t be in this mess.
This article and everyone commenting on this thread is missing this one truth:
Elon’s going to Mars.
To do that he needs thousands of rockets built quickly and cheaply. He’ll need electric vehicles. He’ll need tunnel digging machines, he’ll need planetary communication systems. Anyone notice a pattern? Coincidently, the market demands those things too.
He will do this in the US or any other county that will have him. Any profit made along the way is used to further that one goal.
The moment I learned that SpaceX would be delving into reusable rockets, I knew that it was over for some of the old timers who relied on making things more expensive instead of less.
well yeah, no fucking shit. They dismantled nasa
SpaceX has the “unfair advantage” of being a private company. (And being competent, lol.) When a project like a reusable Falcon 9 or Starship experienced/experiences very public failures they don’t have to worry about a corporation’s upset shareholders or NASA’s angry taxpayers. The engineering teams just keep driving forwards.
The fair advantage they had is they were a new and lean company without a bloated internal management structure full of fiefdoms. If a SpaceX engineer had a problem with his Widget A interacting with someone else’s Widget B he just walked over to the other engineer’s desk. Also, they were allowed to fail without bad consequences. Old-space and NASA have the classic problem of “no one gets in trouble for saying no.” Saying yes to something that goes wrong can cost them their job. Or a promotion. Afaik SpaceX has avoided management bloat and engineers still interact freely. That’s contributed to the constant rapid changes in the Starship design.
To be clear about one thing: A key criteria for a launch company is whether they reached orbit. So it’s easy to say the SpaceX Starship hasn’t reached orbit – but the reason why is crucially different. On 5 of the 9 flights the ship/upper stage was within seconds of reaching orbit but the engines were programmed to intentionally shut down before that happened. This is a safety precaution that guarantees the ship will reenter at the planned spot in the Indian Ocean without relying on a deorbit retrofire of the engines. Yes, two of the ships failed to maintain attitude control once in space and coasting so they tumbled during reentry. But three of them made successful reentries, the largest manmade objects ever to do so. All three made the difficult flip/burn landing maneuver and made a soft touchdown on the ocean surface.
The failures of the ships of two recent flights to reach orbit and the failure of the most recent one to maintain attitude control are indeed worrisome. Those 3 had very significant design changes from the 3 successful ones, though. Overall, though, don’t be mislead by a lot of media stories that make it sound like all of the Starship flights have been failures.
The US is reliant on our scientists. The budget can come from anywhere.
To be fair … The US was dependent on Europe and Russia before SpaceX came along for a lot of launches. SpaceX didn’t just beat US legacy aerospace. And I for one am happy to see a successful US company leading space rockets.