Today's Budget Hearing
NASA’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2020
2:30pm
Witness: Jim Bridenstine
Subcommittees: Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (116th Congress)
Live-stream can be found here: https://youtu.be/Bpkpd8gk1hc
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While NASA is in a hearing asking for money SpaceX is reviving its Raptor engine on the Starhopper down Texas way. Great illustration of the difference between SpaceX and NASA.
I’m not seeing your point? Certainly SX has participated in many similar events, substituting “venture capital” for ‘Congress”?
But venture capitalists are not on an annual budget cycle. And they don’t spend their time posturing for the voters.
Some of us actually do work, you know…
I’m not sure if I see the point myself, but it does raise some. It would be interesting to know the relative amount of time, in person-hours or -months, that goes into preparing and making these presentations. It would be interesting to know how many of the technical details the audience understands and how many they leave to their staff. I’d also assume the investors don’t make speeches which are poorly disguised as questions, or other posturing for the camera. Congress is known to do that. That’s not to imply presentations to potential investors aren’t a sales pitch. I’m just curious about the level of effort involved in them, compared to the usual reporting and budget justification government agencies do.
It’s likely a downward sloping curve based on your track record and personal wealth. Jeff Bezos doesn’t have to pitch Blue Origin to anyone, just find engineers to build it. Same with Elon Musk, his personal fortune and track record means he don’t have to spend time pitching the Starship/Super Heavy, he is free to focus on building it. It’s why I expect NASA will to come to him if they want some type of lunar architecture using what are to him outdated test vehicles, the FH and Dragon2.
It’s called politics. Bezos and Musk only have to play a little bit.
I would guess that NASA has the necessary creativity in-house. Turn ’em loose…
‘We looked at commercial options – some are feasible but none of them keep us within budget or on schedule -Jim Bridenstine”
What nonsense and hypocrisy in light of the difference between Space X and SLS. It appears Jim Bridenstine is just another in a long line of NASA people leaders without a clue.
I’d be more charitable. Launching EM-1 on something other than an SLS wouldn’t be easy. I really don’t think it could be in fifteen months and for a sane price (given that it would have to be a crash program, it would cost much more…) It’s fair to say the commercial options wouldn’t make EM-1 happen on time and on budget. Of course, SLS isn’t going to do that either, and it would probably be worse.
The Dragon is presumably designed for up to six months passive storage. Why require the Earth entry module to carry 30 days supplies, increasing the entry mass? Combined with a hab module where the crew would live during the mission, a service module, and a lander it could do the lunar mission without Orion. Maybe two or three launches total.