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Commercialization

Taking Credit For Other People's Hard Work

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 3, 2019
Filed under ,

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

11 responses to “Taking Credit For Other People's Hard Work”

  1. Michael Spencer says:
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    Well, Keith, this post will surely stir the natives.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      True, given that President Trump didn’t have to keep paying the bills. ?

      Actually when you get down to it, President Trump has really only made three changes to NASA. He put ARM out of its misery. Restored the Moon’s surface as a NASA goal, and is encouraging the development of commercial systems to reach the Moon, first robotic, then human. All are good moves and I am sure the next Administration will take credit for the latter two when they come to fruition.

      • fcrary says:
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        I try to stay out of things like this. We are far too close to the events to know who actually did what. Can we actually say if commercial transport to the Moon was Mr. Trump’s idea or Mr. Bridenstine’s or someone else’s? We can say some things; ARM predates Trump and Bridenstine, so we know it wasn’t their fault. But to really know who did what, we’ll probably have to wait for a history written decades after all the principal actors are dead. That’s also one reason why dislike naming things after living people.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Yes, we will need to both see who suggested the commercial transport to the Moon and also if it works. Actually we also need to see if Commercial Crew works. It looks very promising but this is still just the first Demonstration flight and it’s not over yet, although I am cheering for its success.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          When the administration created that tech group that Musk and Bezos joined .. probably put a bug in his ear .. they both later quit that group and it was disbaned?

  2. RocketScientist327 says:
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    Republicans are their own worst enemy.

    #TRUESTORY

    Dr. Michael Griffin actually came up with the “commercial” idea/program as a token to go along with CxP. This was under George W. Bush. Sadly, CxP was nothing more than a pork barrel program that could have made it with much more funding than NASA was ever going to get.

    Enter 2009 and President Obama is elected and NASA panics. CxP is a Senator Shelby, Hutchison, and Nelson (D) production. Mikulski (D) was brought in once the JWST pork slice was protected and SLS was born. Nelson gave the “Monster Rocket” speech and SLS had nine (9) years of… power-point and paper.

    Meanwhile, back with “commercial” SpaceX chugs along and RpK fails and Boeing picks up the slack for CST-100.

    edit: Keith is right – Republicans tried to kill “Commercial” from 2010-2015. Lori Garver does not get enough credit and General Bolden… well you are a general sir… so //SALUTE//

    SLS – not even a photo op

    Trump gets in and claims victory – smart politically as most of America doesn’t pay attention anyways and thinks SpaceX is NASA.

    Commercial Victories
    Falcon 1
    Grasshopper
    Falcon 9
    Falcon Heavy
    Dragon #1
    Dragon #2
    Referb 39A
    Referb LC-40
    Referb LC-4 @ Vandenberg
    Landing on ships (Laughed out of former Congressman Lamar Smith’s office in 2012 when I said this)
    Landed on ships (Stood outside former Congressman Lamar Smith’s office in 2016 with Falcon Booster on ship (yeah he was angry))
    CST-100 drop tests
    Atlas V Man rated
    Antares Rocket

    I am too old and too tired to argue with the morons in my party. I am a conservative and the power brokers inside the 495 really do not give a flip about NASA anyways. It is all lip service.

    The beautiful thing is that even if NASA goes away we have true reusable launch capability. To be clear – SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Boeing would not be where they are without NASA buy in and investment.

    Honestly speaking – and Keith maybe one of the crack posters here can follow up on this – but someone should do a breakdown year by year starting with CxP to date with SLS wrt allocated tax dollars and juxtapose that to all “commercial” investments.

    Frankly I am happy that the President is pushing the commercial aspect of space.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      This, now somewhat dated, article has a lot of that data.

      NASA’s Commercial Crew Program By the Numbers
      October 24, 2016 Doug Messier
      http://www.parabolicarc.com

      The bottom line is that from 2009 to 2017 the commercial crew program was shorted over $1 billion (requests minus actual appropriations).

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      “The beautiful thing is that even if NASA goes away we have true reusable launch capability”

      On the other hand, without NASA there’s be no place for HSF to actually go.

  3. Bill Hensley says:
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    Come on, Keith, they all do that. When was the last time you heard a President say, “Thanks to the foresight of my predecessors, this remarkable program that I inherited has been a resounding success!”

    • fcrary says:
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      Truman? Possibly Johnson (either Lyndon or Andrew). Maybe Adams. It’s been a while… And I note that those four were all vice presidents under the previous president.

  4. Colin Seftor says:
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    OK, now you’ve done it Keith! You credited Obama with helping keep
    commercial crew/cargo alive (and it doesn’t help that you also gave credit to Bush). Now Trump is sure to kill it!