NASA's Europa Clipper Launch

> (with some lobbying suspected)

The lobbying was from the SLS side. Congress was set on forcing Europa Clipper to fly on SLS regardless of technicalities and only backed off because the Europa Clipper team made it clear they'd want an additional $1B to make the spacecraft able to handle the exceedingly rough ride SLS provides. They were perfectly happy handing $2B of taxpayer money to Boeing, but were unwilling to spend another $1B on science.

On top of that, it's worth considering that SLS wouldn't be ready to fly right now anyway. As it stands, they can't even manage to build one rocket per year, the Artemis-2 rocket has already been delayed to next year, so, Clipper would've launched 2-3 years later anyway.

You don't think SpaceX did any lobbying? They just passively stood aside? Look at this story, about SpaceX, via the Project 2025 think tank's FOIA requests, searching for NASA employees who has written things critical of SpaceX:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757578

It's really hard to discuss any topic that brushes SpaceX tangentially on HN. I asked about the research, not about the rockets, but if one even mentions SpaceX in anything less than glowing terms they get six (so far) responses re rockets, all defending SpaceX, and not a mention of the research.

NASA and SLS are actually the property of the people posting; their mission is to serve all Americans. SpaceX is a private business, whose mission is to serve only itself and, in the practice of its owner's businesses, has zero regard for everyone else.

In that context it's bizarre that people are fans of the latter. In context of social media, where mass influence is bought, it's perhaps what we'd expect - that's not NASA's business.

> private business, whose mission is to serve only itself

Any private business's primary mission is to serve its customers - in order to even exist.

By theory and - especially these days - by practice, private business is there to enrich its owners.

One way it does that is to serve customers, another is to manipulate, cheat, and squeeze them of every dime the business can get, and then drop them for higher-margin customers. Just look at modern business.

>It's really hard to discuss any topic that brushes SpaceX tangentially on HN. I asked about the research, not about the rockets, but if one even mentions SpaceX in anything less than glowing terms they get six (so far) responses re rockets, all defending SpaceX, and not a mention of the research.

Everyone's just pointing out the obvious fact that SLS wasn't going to be able to do the mission on time or at cost anyway, so the delays were happening regardless, and Falcon Heavy was the only other option. You phrased your question with the assumption that SLS was going to launch on-time, added in the implication that SpaceX lobbied for the launch and caused research to be delayed by a few years, then decided to complain that everyone else was being biased.

>NASA and SLS are actually the property of the people posting; their mission is to serve all Americans. SpaceX is a private business, whose mission is to serve only itself and, in the practice of its owner's businesses, has zero regard for everyone else.

SLS is the property of Boeing, another private business. Its mission is to transfer vast sums of taxpayer money to Boeing under a contract whose terms remove any expectations of good performance and whose use in Artemis is legally mandated by Congress for no technical reason. The NASA Office of Inspector General has constantly been expressing serious concerns over how bad of a deal SLS is for the American people. We've also had genuine technological progress held back because Congressmen wanted to transfer money to SLS. Its ever inflating costs threaten actually useful science programs every year. I don't see how anyone who actually wants American leadership in space can support it.

SpaceX, as you have noted, is also a private business. With NASA being one of its biggest customers, they are obviously beholden to NASA's desires. Unlike Boeing, who has explicitly expressed their intent to refuse contracts which properly hold the company responsible for under-performing, SpaceX consistently insists on such contracts. Currently, they provide most launch services to NASA and have saved NASA billions over the years. They maintain a mutually beneficial relationship, where NASA gains all sorts of valuable data and capabilities from SpaceX's private development efforts, and SpaceX gains business from NASA.

If you're dismissing this as a social media influence thing, despite all the technical points presented to you, then all that shows is that you were just concern trolling in your original post and have no interest in actually having your question answered.

Some irony in this post.

> private business is there to enrich its owners

The value captured by the owners is a tiny slice of the value provided to the society. For example, the value I get from my iPhone is much much greater than the money I pay for it - it's just logical, I simply wouldn't buy it otherwise.

And the value received by the owners is the well deserved reward for creating the business - a very hard and low chance of success endeavor - but essential to our society.

Everything in my life is created by private businesses: from the clothes on my back, the food I eat, the car I drive, the house I live in to the computer I earn my living and write this on.

I lived in a society without private businesses, under communism, and everybody was cold and starving.

NASA is popular, SLS is not.

The simple answer is that people do not believe much of what the government does is in service of the people. SLS is a great example of this.

Literally everybody in the whole space industry who isn't directly profiting from SLS knew Falcon Heavy was by far the superior option. It not even a topic worth debating, its literally so fucking obvious. SpaceX maybe lobbied, but it was irrelevant, because anybody with a brain already knew the right answer 5min after Falcon Heavy launched successfully.

The only question was if the SLS lobby was able to keep forcing SLS. That was the only topic worth debating. You can even track this to the specific people in congress who are known to be in certain districts who tried to force this.

Here is some research you can go do, look at the price and availability of Falcon Heavy, then look at the price and availability of SLS. No more research is needed.

Funny how SLS that feeds literally billions of $ into the pockets of Boeing and Lockheed Marin 'serve all Americans' and SpaceX that makes a profit of a few 10s of million $ is 'private'. You see how that perspective is utterly idiotic right?

Manipulate, cheat and squeeze them for every dime is literally why SLS exists. Please for the love of good do some research on the topic.