22 thoughts on “The Empire Strikes Back”

  2. First, Congress can legally protect the Space Launch System — the only rocket able to send astronauts to the moon in one launch

    Stopped reading after this. No time for lies.
    Send to orbit around the moon, maybe. Not tried yet….

    Using SLS as the sole (or even primary) method for getting astronauts to the Lunar surface isn’t much different from Ralph Kramden’s AFAICT.

    What a Tuul. Space News ought to be ashamed.

  3. Denigrating actual innovation and success and attempting to valorize corruption and failure – another typical day on the progressive plantation.

  4. Good lord that thing is an embarrassment. I see Richard Malcom is enjoying himself in comments, good.

    This reality makes it ludicrous to suggest, as Trump space advisor Gene Autry has done, that NASA simply contract out a human Mars mission to SpaceX. To put it bluntly, the company has not demonstrated the technical competence required to execute even less demanding missions.

    Maybe Mr. Peter should bone up on the definition of “blunt”.
    Perusing his substack I see he chimed in on Oct 28th with:
    No need to split hairs—Trump’s a fascist.
    Hey it only took him 10 days after Applebaum’s Atlantic groundbreaker to catch up!

    2. I did love this line, so, so much:

      To put it bluntly, the company has not demonstrated the technical competence required to execute even less demanding missions.

      I mean, sure, other than launching nearly 90% of all mass to orbit globally this year while landing and reusing nearly every first stage used, or launching a majority of all humans sent to orbit, or launching and operating the literal majority of all operational satellites in Earth orbit, or yeeting the most massive planetary probe ever built to Jupiter, or parallel parking a 40 story rocket stage back on its launch pad, I just cannot imagine what sort of less demanding mission this sorry pack of aerospace goofs could possibly undertake.

  5. such proposals would give Musk a de facto monopoly over America’s commercial space industry

    Has Space News heard of United Launch Alliance?

  6. “If President-elect Donald Trump and techno-oligarch Elon Musk get their way, ”

    How does he even know what their “way” is?

    1. Good grief. Glad I didn’t read that far down. Found out about that from a 2nd source. The question is whether I put SpaceNews in a timeout and for how long it needs to sit facing the corner.

  8. “To put it bluntly, the company has not demonstrated the technical competence required to execute even less demanding missions.”

    And NASA has? Have they demonstrated that humans can survive 0g long enough to get to Mars and back? If so, will they then be able to re-acclimate to 1g? They’re the ones with a space station.

    Not that they probably couldn’t find astronauts for a one way trip, it’d be nice to know.

    1. Another question to ask is even if at one time NASA did demonstrate technical competence; what evidence exists that NASA still has that technical competence today?

      At worse, SpaceX is at least as competent as NASA up to Apollo 8 and, on the downside, more competent than post Apollo NASA starting with the age of the Space Shuttle. SpaceX can launch a larger Orbiter and return it to a precision landing and recover the first stage completely intact. NASA has never managed that level of technical competence.

      Also, SpaceX hasn’t killed an Astronaut. I suspect that can be suffixed with “yet”, but NASA killed 3 of them before it accomplished a moon landing.

  9. I hope that presstitute held out for a great payday for that piece of paid for crap.
    Some people will do anything for money.

  10. I’m curious about how TDS combines with anti-Elon derangement to drive some space folks completely over the edge.

    The thing they love, space exploration or space development, is in the best position it’s had since the 1960’s, and it’s all due to people they absolutely loathe with every fiber of their being.

    1. Being a leftist has always required a pretty high tolerance for cognitive dissonance. That’s as true for leftist space cadets as for leftists generally. Since the pandemic/Covid Reich, the mental gymnastics the Cult of Woke has required of its adherents have exponentially risen to Simone-Biles-at-the-Olympics levels of difficulty. Millions have fallen off of the uneven parallel bars or the balance beam of mandatory cult political orthodoxy and landed with a splat on the mats. The resulting jolt has shaken them out of their erstwhile mindsets. That explains, among other things, the rightward shift of the electorate in – literally – every county in the country and Trump’s win of the popular vote in the recent election. As the 2nd Trump administration actually arrives and proceeds, the general improvements to the national condition, including that of the nation’s space efforts, should see continued mass apostasy from the Cult of Woke including many still-addled lefty space cadets.

  11. “Peter Juul is the director of national security at the Progressive Policy Institute. He has worked and written on national security, defense, and space policy in Washington, DC for almost twenty years.”

    Well, there you go. The author is a commie and this op-ed was their single contribution to Space News. Paid or unpaid, it is ok for them to run an op-ed from the opposition. Everyone should be able to read their positions and then make up their own minds.

    Three points. The first is that many people have been pointing out for a long time that all the contractors working for NASA are also private companies, so it isn’t like everything at NASA is an in-house job.

    “as he looks to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget — the equivalent of all spending outside Social Security, Medicare and interest on the national debt”

    The second, did any of these functional retards ever think of the trade offs in achieving their preferred level of spending? The deficits and debt are existential threats to our civilization. Surely, the people with IQs over 140 can comprehend that if normal people can? No, of course not. What did they think would happen when we ran out of money and their magic money printer broke the fourth wall?

    Last, NASA’s funding will be just fine. It looks like Trump is positioned to make a big investment in space. SLS hopefully wont be around but its mission will. There will be lots of contracts that wont go to SpaceX. Earth Sciences might suffer a little bit in the short term but long term, their missions will become more affordable. Congress has set an anchor on what they are willing to spend on NASA but I wouldn’t be surprised to see spending increase.

    1. The second, did any of these functional retards ever think of the trade offs in achieving their preferred level of spending? The deficits and debt are existential threats to our civilization. Surely, the people with IQs over 140 can comprehend that if normal people can? No, of course not. What did they think would happen when we ran out of money and their magic money printer broke the fourth wall?

      This time they’ll lithobrake correctly. It’s merely a matter of doing it right and getting that soft landing.

  12. The second, did any of these functional retards ever think of the trade offs in achieving their preferred level of spending? The deficits and debt are existential threats to our civilization. Surely, the people with IQs over 140 can comprehend that if normal people can? No, of course not. What did they think would happen when we ran out of money and their magic money printer broke the fourth wall?

    This paragraph is pure gold and I ask permission to use it everywhere.

    The answer of course is that the more absurd the dogma, the more devout the disciple. Ostensibly higher intelligence requires stronger self-deception and therefore demonstrates greater virtue.

    Or, alternatively, we’re all grifters at heart – my personal fortune is largely the result of government contracts and is suppressed interest rates. But the more cognitively dissonant among us must rationalize to themselves that their theft is not only an ends to a means, but that the means themselves are moral provided they are accompanied by the proper incantations.

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