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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 2 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.49s | source
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teekert ◴[21 Oct 25 19:37 UTC] No.45660624[source]▶
Why does this sounds so... Entitled? NASA regresses so far that they are now unable to do anything by themselves... Now suddenly there is a new moon race and they start pointing to a public company that is not sticking to a schedule. A company that does some impressive things, and has helped them out (probably not out of the goodness of their hearts, but hey), and is doing things they could not.

I would be an adult about it and respond reasonable, perhaps even ask NASA for help, publicly. I'm afraid Elon is about to give them the finger and drive around on the moon by himself, two fingers pointing at NASA head quarters. I would smile about that a bit, I admit.

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jotux ◴[21 Oct 25 20:00 UTC] No.45660928[source]▶
>NASA regresses so far that they are now unable to do anything by themselves...

I keep running across this perception and I don't understand where it comes from. Overwhelmingly, like since the 1970s, NASA has not built anything per it's appropriations from congress. Their job is to 1) Define mission requirements and objectives, 2) Oversee contracts to execute those missions, 3) Test and verify elements of those systems, and very distant 4) do some in-house research and development for cutting edge technology (still mostly contracted out). ~75% of their budget is contracts to private companies to execute missions.

NASA's job, as defined NASA directors over the years and by congress via appropriations, is to come up with ideas and fund private companies to execute them.

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1. robotresearcher ◴[21 Oct 25 21:30 UTC] No.45661977[source]▶
> since the 1970s, NASA has not built anything

NASA JPL built all the Mars rovers, and Mars Helicopter. JPL is operated by Caltech, but it is a NASA-branded laboratory that builds and operates planetary exploration robots itself.

This pedantry just to honor the amazing work these people have done.

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2. gimmeThaBeet ◴[21 Oct 25 23:53 UTC] No.45663283[source]▶
Not sure if any of my anecdata when I was a contractor are relevant anymore given current circumstances, but among all the NASA facilities I worked with, JPL really seemed to be doing its own thing, mostly for better. They were a bit quirky to work with though, because they did seem to do so much more in-house than elsewhere. So I don't know if it's that independence or their zip code that has made them such a target, but I wonder if it has been that they have less political capital from moneyed interests keeping them off the chopping block. But any gutting of JPL is probably irreplaceable damage.