Robert Siegel: "As NPR's Peter Overby reports, Capitol Hill has always been deeply involved in NASA's activities, and sometimes seem to regard NASA as a jobs program, as well as a space program."
Overby: "This year [2011], according to federal contract data, NASA will buy goods and services in 396 of the 435 congressional districts."
"NASA will often highlight the fact that its SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft support aerospace suppliers. For example, this agency website details the number of suppliers in every US state and says, 'Men and women in all 50 states are hard at work building NASA's Deep Space Exploration Systems to support missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.' There are 106 suppliers in Alabama, alone, according to NASA's site."
What advancements have its current flagship program (SLS) produced? Maybe they do produce some but congress clearly wants them to produce jobs not anything else.
Have you noticed that most critics aren't complaining about all of NASA, but mainly about SLS/Orion?
On reddit, what usually happens is that SLS defenders try to misrepresent attacks on SLS as an attack on all of NASA, parenthood, and apple pie. And so the world turns.
... it's pretty clear that the person who said that is unaware of the full scope of NASA's programs. But that's not the person you replied to. You replied to someone specifically criticizing SLS.
That's the point. Specifically, the point is to pay for aerospace jobs if we want to compete in the aerospace market. Nasa launch contracts are the carrot for companies like spacex and others to get in the market. Various contracts keep a larger pool of engineers in the market
The idea of paying for aerospace jobs lead to steady losses in the aerospace market, until deeply capitalistic (in a sense) SpaceX came and lowered costs.
Once again: the idea that USA would keep competing on international aerospace market of launch services wasn't working before SpaceX started launching Falcon-9. Maybe the market losses are because of paying for aerospace jobs, or maybe it's just a coincidence, but USA was practically pushed out from the market, until - heavily vertically integrated - SpaceX put the launch price on their website.
I think the idea of paying for aerospace jobs in this way doesn't work.
I'm not talking about NASA headcount, I am talking about NASA contracts which support private sector companies and aerospace engineers.
The USA wants to maintain the domestic capability to for launches, and this means funding technology and expertise. If you don't award contracts domestically, in 10-20 years the capability is gone. No domestic contracts => no jobs => no grads => no rocket engineers.
NASA's model has always been to award contracts to the private sector companies. This is why you have SpaceX, Boeing, Northrup, Lockheed launch capabilities.
>I think the idea of paying for aerospace jobs in this way doesn't work.
I'm not sure what you mean by paying for aerospace jobs. NASA funded private sector manufacturers before and continues to fund it now.
I agree the the US manufacturers were ripe for disruption, and SpaceX did a great job of doing just that. However, the entire market and jobs exist to chase these government contracts. Do you think that SpaceX would exist if it wasn't for NASA and DOD launch contracts? I don't.
Yes, I think we talk about different things. Main focus of criticism of alt-space, a.k.a new private space community is cost-plus schemas of payments, which encourage increases in costs. The big difference of SpaceX was offering a "function" for sale - there is a launch capability, which has price N dollars per launch or M dollars per kilogram on LEO, and NASA can take it or not.
This way the idea that all or many congressional districts should participate in NASA contracts - because then those congressmen support increasing NASA's budgets - goes out the window. Now congressmen - and congresswomen, of course - can judge NASA in terms of space progress vs. money spent, not in terms of distribution of money to jobs in their districts. From this point of view, your question is irrelevant - no, it wouldn't, as after forth launch Falcon-1 SpaceX didn't have funds to continue, and NASA helped, but that doesn't mean NASA doesn't have an ineffective policy.
Sure compared to those same scientists and engineers doing subsistence farming or something as an alternative. But compared to working elsewhere in society as scientists and engineers it's not so obvious what an alternative world would look like. There's always a hidden cost.
Launch technology isn't the only thing space research and exploration is about.
It's an important one for sure! But it's just not true to say NASA hasn't accomplished amazing stuff in the last decades with the funds and focus they're allocated.
Does NASA have mulitiple programs, some of which are more effective than others? Hint: SLS/Orion is not Planetary Sciences is not Earth Sciences is not Aeronautics is not Astronomy.
Hell no. Space exploration and expansion should absolutely NOT be in the hands of corporations but an government funded entity that contracts out work as we have now. If every government program should be profitable.
Space exploration and expansion shouldn’t be in the hands of the government in the first place. Let the private sector figure out how to do it, pay for it, and profit on it.
NASA is one of the biggest bangs (literally) for the taxpayer buck in the entire US federal budget. There are countless other agencies I'd be scrapping long before even thinking about scrapping NASA.
Robert Siegel: "As NPR's Peter Overby reports, Capitol Hill has always been deeply involved in NASA's activities, and sometimes seem to regard NASA as a jobs program, as well as a space program."
Overby: "This year [2011], according to federal contract data, NASA will buy goods and services in 396 of the 435 congressional districts."
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555781/congressional-suppo...
From 2019:
"NASA will often highlight the fact that its SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft support aerospace suppliers. For example, this agency website details the number of suppliers in every US state and says, 'Men and women in all 50 states are hard at work building NASA's Deep Space Exploration Systems to support missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.' There are 106 suppliers in Alabama, alone, according to NASA's site."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/an-alabama-represent...