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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 7 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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bahmboo ◴[21 Oct 25 19:15 UTC] No.45660320[source]▶
"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator.

A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.

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WalterBright ◴[21 Oct 25 19:23 UTC] No.45660416[source]▶
Having a deadline is how things get done. With no deadline, nothing gets accomplished.
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bahmboo ◴[21 Oct 25 19:26 UTC] No.45660462[source]▶
This is a political deadline with no grounding in reality.
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oceanplexian ◴[21 Oct 25 19:37 UTC] No.45660629[source]▶
JFK proposed we go to the Moon in 1962. We did it in 1969, 7 years later.
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1. ambicapter ◴[21 Oct 25 19:57 UTC] No.45660904{3}[source]▶
Crucially, not during his term (or his life, but that's irrelevant).
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2. leoc ◴[21 Oct 25 20:12 UTC] No.45661059[source]▶
Also at the cost of a really stupendous amount of money.
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3. adventured ◴[21 Oct 25 20:57 UTC] No.45661609[source]▶
~$260 billion in today's dollar for the whole Apollo program. Cut out what we don't need to figure out in the present. Maybe a $100-$150 billion cost spread over five years. Trivial sum against a $40 trillion economy. If the only thing we needed to get back to the moon was $30 billion per year in expenditures for five years, Congress would sign off on that instantly.

I think the US is lacking the organization, culture, and on-a-mission mentality today, not money. I believe the money is the easiest part of the equation, the rest can't be faked or supplied at the click of a button. The US is no longer a serious nation hell-bent on accomplishing great/difficult things. Congress knows if they supply the $30 billion per year, what we'll get in the end is a broken program that won't achieve the set aims, and it'll just take 15 years at $40 billion per year instead, without a single Moon landing. They know full well how dysfunctional the US is, everybody is just acting when the cameras are on.

4. felipeerias ◴[22 Oct 25 08:32 UTC] No.45666295[source]▶
The moon landing would have probably happened during JFK’s second term, if he hadn’t been assassinated and if the Apollo 1 tragedy hadn’t set the project back significantly.
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5. ambicapter ◴[22 Oct 25 12:39 UTC] No.45668159[source]▶
I don't think his assassination had anything to do with Apollo 1, so I take it it probably would've still happened even if he were alive. Similarly, I don't think his assassination set back the project (ChatGPT says it probably reinforced support for the program, if anything, fwiw).

So, I imagine if he hadn't been assassinated, they probably would've landed on the moon around the same time, which would be after a possible 2nd term (unless he lost re-election and then won again).

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6. Symmetry ◴[22 Oct 25 13:23 UTC] No.45668753[source]▶
I wouldn't have counted on the new administration continuing to go to bat for the funding needed for Kennedy's vision without Kennedy's martyrdom.
7. ambicapter ◴[22 Oct 25 21:14 UTC] No.45675225{3}[source]▶
Can't edit but when I said

> so I take it it probably would've still happened

I'm talking about the Apollo 1 fire.