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A comment on NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission. Parent comment

Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by rkomorn on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @06:30PM (#45662553)
I actually think getting the political will, money, and execution together would be the part that would be a noteworthy show of force (and I'd argue being unable to get it done would be equally noteworthy in the other direction).
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by bluGill on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @08:46AM (#45668247)
Fair enough, but IMO there are better places we should be focusing on getting political will together if we want to focus on something big.
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by rkomorn on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @09:10AM (#45668555)
Yes and no, I'd say. Going back to the moon is big but it's also pretty self-contained, in a way. It just costs money (and doles a bunch of it out to the contracted companies). It's also mostly time-boxed.

Healthcare, worker's rights, voting rights, infrastructure, etc, are all more important (so I agree with you there), but also all have way more consequences that are wider-ranging and longer-term (which I'd say contributes do the political dysfunction around those topics).

This should be an "easy win" by comparison, and the "PR" impact of success (or failure) will be significant.

Edit: that said, if you gave me a magic wand to pick any one of these topics for the US to succeed at, it wouldn't be going to the moon.

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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by alistairSH on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @09:08AM (#45668530)
But a show of force for who? We're not in the middle of a Cold War. Are we trying to upstage India or China? And could we get the same political ends via something more useful/with better returns?
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Re:NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission by rkomorn on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @09:30AM (#45668864)
For everyone (including India and China).

Could we get the same ends via something more useful? In theory, sure, but it seems pretty evident that the answer in practice is no, since our congress has mostly been gridlocked for the past 16 years.

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