Bridenstine’s visit to SpaceX a non-story
Link here. Essentially he just reiterated his desire to have the private capsules being built by SpaceX and Boeing flying by early next year.
Essentially, the announcements in the last few days by Musk and Boeing about their upcoming testing and launch schedule for both Dragon and Starliner respectively took the steam out of his SpaceX visit.
In fact, I wonder what the politics were behind this. It is almost as if both companies wanted to take the steam out of his appearance here. Most intriguing.
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Link here. Essentially he just reiterated his desire to have the private capsules being built by SpaceX and Boeing flying by early next year.
Essentially, the announcements in the last few days by Musk and Boeing about their upcoming testing and launch schedule for both Dragon and Starliner respectively took the steam out of his SpaceX visit.
In fact, I wonder what the politics were behind this. It is almost as if both companies wanted to take the steam out of his appearance here. Most intriguing.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Bob, do you think it could be a bit of PR by NASA to smooth over that odd tweet before the Starship presentation? Effectively trying to show the press that “Nah, we’re all buddies here! Things are going great!”
I agree that the presentation was pretty much a nothingburger. I was hoping to get some firm dates for the first manned missions, but I guess that’s asking for too much :)
I got a laugh of the picture of Jim B. sitting in the doorway of the Dragon Capsule, after 4 + years of development of the Dragon Capsule how many times do you think hes been shown that part of the ship? Probably not many new things to see from that angle.
In a decade or two, I suspect that NASA will stand for the national astronomical science academy and will continue with space science and nothing else. Everything else will be either commercial or part of military space endeavors.
I didn’t have the negative reaction you guys did. Bridenstine really gets it about commercial space; he wrote on the subject prior to becoming Administrator. I didn’t like–and don’t understand–the tweet either, but then I’ve seen a few tweets from my man Musk that are truly repellent. Bridenstine seems the most pro-commercial Administrator there’s been. Certainly better than “I’m not a big fan of commercial investment in large launch vehicles” Charles Bolden.
He spoke in support of Starship, and even brought up the fact of early underfunding of Commercial Crew by Congress.
He floated the idea of flying Orion on FH, and almost got his head handed to him for that transgression. He’s politically out-gunned by Richard Shelby, who is the de facto King of NASA and, as they like to say these days, “make no mistake.”
There’s the NASA administrator looking at a SpaceX capsule. Meanwhile in Boca Chica the same company is building the first magnificent real spaceship. Everything else has been capsules or spaceplanes. LOL!
Over on NSF, the most hilarious take I’ve seen so far:
“A curious meeting between the leader of the nation’s space program and the NASA guy.”
Considering that the visit was prompted by a comment by Bridenstine implying that SpaceX was taking too long to deliver astronauts to the ISS, it sounds to me as though the purpose of the visit was to reassure the public and SpaceX workers that the company is not falling down on the job.
I once worked in a solar astrophysics department of a company. When a new division head was assigned, he made an off the cuff comment that maybe the company should not be involved in counting sunspots. That division head did not last many more days, and his successor had to come around to my department to apologize for the comment. We were involved in sunspot-associated phenomena, and the number of sunspots was a byproduct; we also studied a number of other mysterious and interesting phenomena about the sun, often using space based x-ray telescopes.
Bridenstine did something similar, and for political reasons he had to take a valuable day out of his schedule to make similar amends. It isn’t only presidents who have to be careful of what they say.
The article said that “SpaceX was only devoting about 5 percent of the company’s resources on the new launch system and that Crew Dragon remains the California rocket builder’s top priority.”
‘Only five percent’ makes it sound as though a company that has many irons in the fire should be devoting more resources to a project with its developmental testing winding down and its operations not yet started. I’ll bet that Boeing has far, far less than five percent of its resources going toward Starliner, but I would not even think of suggesting that this means Boeing is not properly focused on its manned Starliner.