NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive:

1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting.

2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the second flight test and certainly now. They could have built a “dumb” second stage at any time, but aren’t that short-sighted.

3. Blue Origin? I’ve had high hopes for the guys for two decades now. Don’t hold your breath.

4. Anyone else? Really, really don’t hold your breath.

This whole “race to the moon, part II” is almost criminally stupid. Land on the moon when we can accomplish something there, not just to prove we haven’t lost our mojo since Apollo.

Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zero expertise whatsoever, I have a sense that this is a bit self defeating. To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy?

Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thing is the, “we’ve done it before, we can do it again” attitude. Which is somewhat opposite to “we already won!”

This gets back to why there is a "we need to start making things in America again" sentiment. We made a national policy decision and underwent an economic transformation based on financialization and globalization. Kept the design and services aspects of our greatest companies in the US but the nuts and bolts of manufacturing and assembly went overseas, relying on patents and IP law to control production from afar.

This approach was always going to have holes in it and sure enough we're now facing a difficult and uncertain endeavor, for example, to ever be able to make the best chips in the world on American soil again. (Or as in the headlines today, to source and process rare earths for all manner of production.) It turns out that, surprise surprise, there was tons of process knowledge and tons of capacity for innovation in the people who were closest to the actual work of production, now those people are no longer American and couldn't care less what America can and cannot do. So we're in a bind. Americans keep claiming they can build all the things but they haven't actually done so in many years.

There's no way to solve the problem other than to try, and that entails clawing back as much of the people, processes and materiel as you can by whatever means you can until you start cobbling together some genuine innovation. My gut tells me enough of the political class supports the idea that the financiers will just have to get used to capitalizing a lot of production on domestic soil again, politicians will of course be happy to print billions more dollars of free money and hand it to them for this.

100% Agree and it would never happen if not for some major changes. People want their cheap stuff made somewhere else.