Commenters on there think he was forced out for not selecting Boeing as one of the lunar mission providers.

The aerosapace community of "old boy firms" is very tight-knit. So tight-knit that there are people with stars on their shoulders who---even though these processes are ostensibly open-bidding---will start asking questions about someone's national security clearances and loyalty to the country if one of the blessed firms doesn't get a contract. After all, if one of the "old boy firms" goes bankrupt, there goes America's capacity to construct missiles and rockets in wartime, and then where would we be?

It would be a funny legacy of this White House administration if it succeeded in breaking up the traditional aerospace cartel by appointing someone so green to a NASA executive position they actually weren't aware of the politics here and ran the contracting process as if every player were on equal footing. It'd be the first I'd ever heard of it happening in aerospace. ;)

Aren't NASA's budget and their subsequent aerospace contracts mere drops in the ocean compared to the DoD budget and their contracts? It seems like a PR and politics problem more than a real risk of NASA bankrupting Boeing.

While this is true when considering the total sum of the DoD budget, I think it would be more fair to compare the DoD's R&D budget -- which stood at something like $60B vs. NASA's $21B total... which really makes you wonder.. Anyway, along with people with stars on their shoulders, you can also piss off a congress-person who has a large NASA facility in their district..

The person in question ran the National Reconnaissance Office before NASA human space flight, so he is defiantly not “green”.

Defiantly, or definitely?

The exact opposite is true. Bridenstine is/was a politicians and Loverro had a lot of experience and had political positions before. He ran military and spy space programs.

I'm blown away by this administration on spaceflight, in the best way possible. Space Force is a huge step forward for building capabilities in space, on the military side. On the civilian side, Bridenstine is shaping up to be the greatest Administrator in NASA history.

Under his watch we're getting multiple, re-usable, private launch architectures and human spaceflight capabilities.

Plus, significant infrastructure in lunar orbit, forcing the ISS budget out of LEO.

All under complete American control.

Space Force is just shuffling the deck chairs and creating new management slots.

Space Force has far more visibility, and an institutional need to collect more budget, spend more on personnel, and build their fiefdom.

As they do that, they'll consume more and more private services, and help spur more and more industry in space. For me, that's a huge, huge win.

> building capabilities in space, on the military side

That's a total failure. Absolute, complete, across-the-board failure of the human race.

Just a few decades ago the militarization of space was universally acknowledged as inappropriate and this was codified in international law.

> Just a few decades ago the militarization of space was universally acknowledged as inappropriate and this was codified in international law.

That's a hell of an interpretation...

I'd instead say that the world powers recognized that nukes in space would be destabilizing, and banned that specific thing. Space has been militarized since the 60s.

Just to back this up, the Soviets mounted at least one cannon to a space station (Salyut 3 in 1974), and tried to launch an orbital anti-satellite weapons platform (Polyus in 1987).

There are satellites for watching and communicating, but no weapons.

Of course, actually there are weapons on some of the satellites but everyone pretends that there aren't to maintain stability. Publicly putting weapons in space is destabilizing, stupid to the point of evil.

Since the 50s.

I love your idealism, but you're living on a planet full of humans. I don't _like_ this very much, but it's obvious that other superpowers (China) aren't going to be hemmed in by idealism, so we need to make sure that we are in a position to (at the very least) defend ourselves in space.

Heck, even in the most idealistic portrayal of the future (Star Trek TNG) there's plenty of war in space.

Star Trek is teleplay (I'm a huge Trekker: I have a replica of a tricorder signed by Shatner himself, in front of me, at SVCC (Thanks Woz!). He smiled at me and said, "Nice to see ya'." I still have the silver sharpie marker he used. Touched by his own hand. One day I'll meet a kid wearing a Starfleet uniform and Vulcan ears and bequeath 'em that pen, but the tricorder is getting buried with me when I die. Hardcore ST4LIFE.)

Now then, you can't hold up Star Trek as something to help decide policy in actual space.

If anything "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the sci-fi to look to. I don't want to give a spoiler though, but, uh, whoever gets to the Moon first effectively rules the Earth.

That accounts for local space around the Earth, now Alan Dean Foster was the first sci-fi author to point out that war is impossible in space due to fundamental physics. I don't have the time to go into it now but it's not hard to work out once you clear away the mental/emotional dross.

In sum, "war" in "space" is a mental concept not grounded in physical reality. People have been watching too much fiction and are all screwed up in the head in re: the realities of space and physics.

If we wind up with "war" in "space" it will be a kind of theater that the powerful use to cow the naive.

Moon is a Harsh Mistress is definitely what I look to too, also. Even if the US is becoming more authoritarian over time, it's far from the worst Great Power. We do deeply, deeply shitty, immoral things constantly.

Compared to the Soviets, Mao, German Reich #2 / #3, Napoleonic France... the world could do worse for the First nation to take the moon.

I don't talk about it much because it seems ungentlemanly, but FWIW I'm an American exceptionalist too. I agree with you that, if someone has to be top dog, it should be us rather than the commies, etc.

But I strongly suspect that we won't be able to colonize space without fixing our personal problems.

...Bad example. The point of TNG was to demonstrate how humans overcame conflict and are exploring space to find new species and help solving conflicts.

Whoever controls the gravity well controls the world - I'd sure as hell rather that be my team, and not the other team.

There are no effective international institutions. The human race hasn't figured out any way to unify on a global level. There are no world police - just scattered teams with nukes at each others' throats.

If history is any indication, being on the losing team means being on the wrong side of obliteration and conquest. Being on the winning team matters - a lot.

This is the prisoner's dilemma, without any benefit to cooperation. The US has the wealth and the industrial base to spread throughout the solar system faster and more aggressively than anyone else.

Whoever militarizes space first controls every other nation's access to space, and has the ability to deny access to opposing nations.

I'm thankful the US is doing it before China.

> please don't say anything that further demonstrates your ignorance.

I'll leave that to you, shall I?

> Space Force is a huge step forward for building capabilities in space, on the military side.

Probably in violation of international treaties, but who cares about those.

> Under his watch we're getting multiple, re-usable, private launch architectures and human spaceflight capabilities.

The commercial crew program was begun in 2010 under the Obama administration. Probably the only reason it still exists is nobody has mentioned that to Trump. Giving credit for a 10-year-old program to Bridenstine, who's been at NASA for two years, is utter nonsense.

I don't mean to take anything at all away from Obama pushing COGS, as opposed to the old Constellation strategy. That was an incredible, bold move.

Besides SLS, though, it didn't move meaningful industry outside of LEO. It was an important step, but didn't fundamentally move us past the post-Apollo Space Shuttle funk. The Asteroid program was potentially interesting for getting mining going, but small in scale, with long timelines.

Artemis is the first time NASA has run on aggressive, tight timelines since Apollo. They're shooting for achievable, inspiring objectives -- quickly. And this time, we'll have THREE architectures that can get any American or American ally to the surface of the moon for a price.

Gateway guarantees long-term government spend in Lunar orbit, just like the ISS guaranteed long-term government spend in Earth orbit. Artemis aligns government spend towards the industrialization and militarization of space, on terms beneficial to the US.

Noo, Trumps big on Space. Dont try to baffle Trump supporters with facts. It does not work.

Trump, big on Space, fact.

And Space is really important this year, because whats going on on earth is fscked up beyond all recognition.

This seems to clearly demonstrate that NASA's reason for existing is pork, with space an afterthought. Sad.

I mean, one of the reasons the US military is so big is because politicians demand bases to be built in their state. Since the federal gov pays the salary of every uniformed public servant, and those servants use that salary in the local economy, it's basically a year after year windfall for local coffers.

It's not just big government agencies that are vehicles for pork, the whole government's been that way for a long, long time.

I learned this in sim city 2000 when I ran the local economy into the dirt. Didn’t realise the simulation was this accurate though.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy was developed on a budget roughly equal to 10 days worth of NASA's annual funding.

NASA's budget also includes astronaut training, educational outreach, and a ton of other programs. There's a categorical breakout of the NASA budget here: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy2021_...

To mention a few more, the NASA budget includes human operations (ISS), and the entire science enterprise (Earth, Planetary, Astrophysics) - things including Hubble, JWST, Curiosity.

This seems like a pointless comparison. Why should one SpaceX program be compared to all of what NASA does?

It would be like saying "angry birds was developed with 10 days worth of Microsoft's annual budget".

This is a meaningless comparison.

Do you have a source for that? If true, that's absolutely amazing.

This article quoted Musk as saying the falcon heavy cost "over $500 million" and that it had been awarded contracts worth $500-750 million that recouped its investment. So let's pin it at $600 mil for this comparison. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-o...

NASA's 2020 budget of $22.6 billion from here: https://www.planetary.org/get-involved/be-a-space-advocate/b...

22.6 billion * (10/365) = $712 million

In which case, he was in a no-win situation. Choose the economical providers and accomplish the mission on time and budget, or satisfy the porkers and blow the budget and schedule.

Everday Astronaut has a great video "SLS vs Starship"[1] which does a great job of explaining why SLS is designed the way it is.

TLDR: NASA realized that they needed "big rocket" capability. But because they get jerked around by the president, Senate and Congress every 4 years or so, the only way to get it was to design a program that was "unkillable", a program that was both ultra-conservative and spread the pork around widely.

1: https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/

Optimize for the game you're actually playing, not the ideal game you imagine it to be.

Musk plays those games too. That's why you have a factory in Nevada, and a future factory in Texas.

It could possibly be that there is a East coast launch site and a West coast launch site, and its easier to drive these things shorter distances to the launch pad.

This is in no way unique to NASA.

Given the creation of the new Space Force, it's hard to justify NASA on defense related stuff, and given the build up of the private space industry, it's probably going to be even less important. Deep down, I personally want NASA to still be important, I still think exploration has value. But that has always seemed like a side benefit from working on the "important" stuff.

> Given the creation of the new Space Force, it's hard to justify NASA on defense related stuff...

The "new Space Force" is just a renaming of existing assets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command). Hell, it's still under the Department of the Air Force and its Secretary.

Space Force budget is skyrocketing. New assets are on the way.

My guess is that it's purpose is ABM.

> Space Force budget is skyrocketing.

As with the staffing, that's largely just a transfer from the Air Force.

https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/first-budget-request-for-...

> Most of the funding for Space Force in the F2021 request simply reflects shuffling funds into the new account structure, but an Air Force official said today there is a $900 million increase compared to FY2020.

Seen through the most charitable glasses, the purpose of Soace Force is that any major-power shooting war is now likely to involve rapid space-based asset degradation.

Fighting such a war without a unified command over the theater in which that action unfolds seems destined for failure.

And failure to preserve or triumph in space substantially degrades planetary military capabilities.

So really, Space Force is an expression of "space is important to all the other military things we do now."

ABM is pointless. Too easy to saturate aka ddos it.

>Given the creation of the new Space Force, it's hard to justify NASA on defense related stuff

NASA is a civilian agency. It isn't and never has been justified by anything related to military defense.

It was my impression the Boeing had tried and failed to create a safe crew capsule. I am not sure if SpaceX succeeded.

I was thinking of posting the same thing. Especially since his resignation cites political risks...

The Ars Technica comments on any Eric Berger article are usually pretty awesome. But don't start with this one, there's not much rocket scientists can add to political rumour and speculation. Start with "Rocket Report" which comes out every Friday morning.

> [1] https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/

It looks like the departing chief hadn't had the job for long. Might be a hot potato at the moment...

The "Sr. Vice President of Production and Launch" at SpaceX has also just departed from SpaceX. Berger writes in the piece below that "[t]he timing is not great, with the most important launch of SpaceX's history looming on May 27, a crewed flight of the Dragon spacecraft."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/relativity-hires-spa...

For the spacex engineer my first thought is not that he has something to hide but that he is taking on a new challenge with potentially much larger returns for him personally if relativity scales up than being part of the by now huge spacex team. Also the 3d printed approach is i think just an interesting challenge in itself :)

I implied no such thing, relax.