Nov 9, 2020 03:53 AM
I moved this post from the Crew-1 thread since I'd like that thread to be for posts regarding the Crew-1 flight. But the implications of political changes in Washington for the future of American spaceflight is a worthy topic in its own right.
The new crowd in Washington bring with them a whole agenda full of incredibly expensive plans (medicare for all, "green new deal" etc.), each of which has a far louder and more strident activist constituency than human spaceflight. So if something has to be cut in the budgetary process in order to fund the new schemes, nasa is almost certain to be on the chopping block.
I expect lots of brave talk about American space goals. But Artemis is almost certain to be pushed back from 2024 and might never happen at all. Even if it does, it will be reduced to a mere stunt without any follow-up human presence on the Moon. Mars will remain a fantasy.
So it's starting to look like SpaceX and whatever Blue may or may not come up with might end up being the only game in town. At least when it comes to human deep space exploration.
I expect that even a shrunken nasa will still hire seats on the Crew-Dragons, because they will be cheap and will allow nasa to act like it's still a major spaceflight player. The Space Station will probably stay up there because it's already constructed and has lots of international participation. But it's getting older and older every year. I don't expect that it will ever be replaced when it's eventually deorbited.
So the United States looks destined for a progressively less and less ambitious future in Low Earth Orbit, but nothing further than that.
So hopefully SpaceX can make enough money on its Falcon commercial satellite business, its Crew Dragons and its eventual worldwide Starlink internet network, to fund continuing Starship development. But if nasa bows out of the deep space business, SpaceX will lose perhaps its biggest Starship customer, serving nasa Moon bases that are now less likely to ever exist.
(Nov 7, 2020 08:18 PM)C C Wrote:(Nov 7, 2020 02:24 AM)Yazata Wrote: Crew-1 is still on the schedule for a week from tomorrow, Saturday 11-14 4:49 PM PST, 7:49 PM EST, 00:49 UTC on 11-15.
Space is a good place to be right now. And astronauts should probably enjoy it while it's still possible. The nostalgia of that old time para-religion (er... Marxist) slogan that wealth is a finite resource is probably returning.
The new crowd in Washington bring with them a whole agenda full of incredibly expensive plans (medicare for all, "green new deal" etc.), each of which has a far louder and more strident activist constituency than human spaceflight. So if something has to be cut in the budgetary process in order to fund the new schemes, nasa is almost certain to be on the chopping block.
I expect lots of brave talk about American space goals. But Artemis is almost certain to be pushed back from 2024 and might never happen at all. Even if it does, it will be reduced to a mere stunt without any follow-up human presence on the Moon. Mars will remain a fantasy.
So it's starting to look like SpaceX and whatever Blue may or may not come up with might end up being the only game in town. At least when it comes to human deep space exploration.
I expect that even a shrunken nasa will still hire seats on the Crew-Dragons, because they will be cheap and will allow nasa to act like it's still a major spaceflight player. The Space Station will probably stay up there because it's already constructed and has lots of international participation. But it's getting older and older every year. I don't expect that it will ever be replaced when it's eventually deorbited.
So the United States looks destined for a progressively less and less ambitious future in Low Earth Orbit, but nothing further than that.
So hopefully SpaceX can make enough money on its Falcon commercial satellite business, its Crew Dragons and its eventual worldwide Starlink internet network, to fund continuing Starship development. But if nasa bows out of the deep space business, SpaceX will lose perhaps its biggest Starship customer, serving nasa Moon bases that are now less likely to ever exist.
