NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

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.

>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.

You mean the 1970s as in Raegan when the space program stalled and became irrelevant and became mostly a way to funnel money to districts for certain congresspeople?

The space program stalled because pouring national wealth into gigantic single-use rockets was unsustainable. They tried with Shuttle but the material science wasn't there yet (heck it might not be even now, it doesn't seem that they've really nailed down the heat shield on Starship yet).

The issue with the shuttle wasn't the material science. It was designed around a mission profile of servicing spy satellites, which at the time had film which needed to be developed. The defense department gave NASA requirements which could only be satisfied by moving the orbiter to the side of the rocket, dramatically increasing potential damage to the thermal tiles and making crew escape basically impossible. This was all justified by the incredibly large number of flights that the shuttle would fly to service these satellites, and the money the defense department would pay for these missions. The shuttle was screwed late in production when digital camera technology allowed for spy satellites that didn't need regular servicing, eliminating most of the demand for the shuttle and rendering the infrastructure designed for it unsustainable.

Wait, TV signals weren't unknown in the '80s and '90s. Why were they using film instead of TV cameras?