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NASA is Pushing #americanmade Spacecraft

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 19, 2013
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Keith’s note: Correct me if I am wrong but I do not seem to recall an official NASA Twitter account using the #americanmade hashtag for tweets about SpaceX, Orbital, Bigelow, or SNC spacecraft. Is this part of a new NASA media strategy for commercial space? They don’t use #russianmade when they tweet about Soyuz or Progress launches. Just wondering.
Keith’s update: @Bernard_Stedman Just Tweeted: “@NASAWatch So will there also be a #europeanmade hashtag for @NASA_Orion’s service module I wonder ? !”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

9 responses to “NASA is Pushing #americanmade Spacecraft”

  1. Tombomb123 says:
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    Keith I think it’s a reference to the comment made by astronaut Serena Aunon at the end of this video https://www.youtube.com/wat… in which she says “it’s an American vehicle, of course it’s an upgrade.”

  2. Mark_Flagler says:
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    I would not be stunned to find that Boeing had something to do with this.

    • kcowing says:
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      I am certain that it is a fine spacecraft and that Boeing should be proud of it. It’s just odd that NASA suddenly starts with the #americanmade thing.

      • hikingmike says:
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        Yeah maybe Boeing just said, hey tag this too. Ok, nothing wrong with that. Or the twitter person just saw that tag the other day and decided to go with it here. Why not? They could use it in reference to the others next too. Or not. They probably don’t have a twitter tag policy… and it is a twitter tag after all, not too earth shattering. I bet not many people are fully consistent twitter taggers. It’s twitter, one of the most informal communications media around.

        I probably just put way too much thought into that than anybody needed to. Keith wins 🙂

  3. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    Guess you could read conspiracy into this but what the heck, NASA’s going to make the call wrt which commercial crew craft gets an ISS contract if any given the way Congress carries on. I don’t think they blow of a candidate simply because of pork paid to some politician. Hope not anyway. Like to see it decided on capability. Really like to see both capsules progress with continuing development money for DC since they currently have a longer development path than the other 2.
    Anyway, I’d think that any current or future U.S. astronaut would be over the moon to think they might actually get to space in a home-grown space vehicle rather than the cramped but venerable Soyuz.

  4. Yale S says:
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    I don’t know if Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo craft and Antares launcher would qualify as “American Made”. Not much there that is homegrown.

  5. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    For a while now, I’ve felt that CST-100 is preferred in some NASA circles over Dragon as Boeing is an old, reliable firm not that disruptive, boastful and unpredictable force of nature that is SpaceX. Simply put, I think Musk’s ambition has really made some at NASA afraid of his company so Boeing’s relatively quiet and conservative approach is something to which they can flock without reservation.

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      I’ve speculated in the past that once Congress does force NASA to down-select, it’s possible that picking CST-100 may actually end up being the best outcome, even if it wouldn’t be my first choice. SpaceX would continue developing Dragon anyway without a NASA contract (just a lot slower), but Boeing would drop CST-100 and never look back. So NASA picking Boeing may accidentally end up with two crew vehicles anyway.