NASA didn't just give up on the Space Shuttle. That program was a failure. They tried to make it do everything, and it did nothing well. The CIA stopped using it for spy satellites in the 80s because the risk was too high and it was too expensive. After the launch of Hubble, NASA's justification for the shuttle was that it protected astr…
NASA didn't just give up on the Space Shuttle. That program was a failure. They tried to make it do everything, and it did nothing well. The CIA stopped using it for spy satellites in the 80s because the risk was too high and it was too expensive. After the launch of Hubble, NASA's justification for the shuttle was that it protected astronauts in space, which is reductive and circular reasoning.
The support for this program is why we haven't returned to the Moon. NASA spent its budget on this, and as a result it kept having its budget cut. It stopped being a relevant program. The only thing Musk is guilty of in this regard is that he showed that NASA was just another sclerotic agency with a bloated bureaucracy protecting its own interests. It hasn't been the adventurous and experimental place it was in the 60s for decades. It hasn't been willing to take risks since Challenger, yet it also stagnated and assumed it was safe, leading to Columbia.
Private space flight is the future, and Musk is leading it, whether we like that or not. Now he needs competition. That's the only way we reach the Moon, another planet, or even begin to sniff at asteroid mining.
NASA didn't just give up on the Space Shuttle. That program was a failure. They tried to make it do everything, and it did nothing well. The CIA stopped using it for spy satellites in the 80s because the risk was too high and it was too expensive. After the launch of Hubble, NASA's justification for the shuttle was that it protected astronauts in space, which is reductive and circular reasoning.
The support for this program is why we haven't returned to the Moon. NASA spent its budget on this, and as a result it kept having its budget cut. It stopped being a relevant program. The only thing Musk is guilty of in this regard is that he showed that NASA was just another sclerotic agency with a bloated bureaucracy protecting its own interests. It hasn't been the adventurous and experimental place it was in the 60s for decades. It hasn't been willing to take risks since Challenger, yet it also stagnated and assumed it was safe, leading to Columbia.
Private space flight is the future, and Musk is leading it, whether we like that or not. Now he needs competition. That's the only way we reach the Moon, another planet, or even begin to sniff at asteroid mining.