Senate passes NASA authorization that calls for second lunar lander contract
The Senate today passed a new NASA authorization that requires the agency to award a second manned lunar lander contract in addition to the one it gave SpaceX for its Starship spacecraft.
The bill also recommended a $10 billion increase over five years in this specific lunar lander program to pay for that second contract.
None of this is law yet, as the House must agree also. In addition, as this is an authorization, not an appropriation, the extra money has not been appropriated, which means it does not yet exist. And should it be approved at these recommended numbers, it means that NASA will be forced to stretch out the creation of both lunar landers, as the money appropriated is still less than required to build either.
I suspect that this budget shortfall will not delay SpaceX’s Starship significantly, as that company has obtained sufficient private funding to build it regardless. More likely the second lunar lander will face longer delays, unless its builders decide to do what SpaceX has done, and obtain private capital to get it done fast.
Note too that this recommendations follows Congress’s general policy of imagining money grows on trees and that there is an infinite supply. While it might be a good idea to pay for two landers, the country’s debt suggests otherwise. Maybe a wiser course would be for the government to only offer a tiny percentage of the capital, and demand the builders find their own funding, as SpaceX has done.
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The Senate today passed a new NASA authorization that requires the agency to award a second manned lunar lander contract in addition to the one it gave SpaceX for its Starship spacecraft.
The bill also recommended a $10 billion increase over five years in this specific lunar lander program to pay for that second contract.
None of this is law yet, as the House must agree also. In addition, as this is an authorization, not an appropriation, the extra money has not been appropriated, which means it does not yet exist. And should it be approved at these recommended numbers, it means that NASA will be forced to stretch out the creation of both lunar landers, as the money appropriated is still less than required to build either.
I suspect that this budget shortfall will not delay SpaceX’s Starship significantly, as that company has obtained sufficient private funding to build it regardless. More likely the second lunar lander will face longer delays, unless its builders decide to do what SpaceX has done, and obtain private capital to get it done fast.
Note too that this recommendations follows Congress’s general policy of imagining money grows on trees and that there is an infinite supply. While it might be a good idea to pay for two landers, the country’s debt suggests otherwise. Maybe a wiser course would be for the government to only offer a tiny percentage of the capital, and demand the builders find their own funding, as SpaceX has done.
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
P.O.Box 1262
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.
This contract would barely affect Spacex’s pace in the slightest, whether it was won, shared or lost. Lunar Starship is a unique, almost one-off craft sharing some commonality with production Starship, which is already on track to be privately fully funded with clear milestones to the final product.
The only value SpaceX garners from doing it at all is the ability to directly tap into NASA’s deep space long-term human support technologies. That’s a requirement for Martian flights, and so this may shave some time from developing it on their own.
It looks like some/ many senators want to spend ten billion of taxpayer dollars to ensure good press from the Bezos’s Washington Post. If true, that’s just pathetic and another data point in the story of the decline of the Globalist American Empire. The success of SpaceX in contrast to SLS has embarrassed the elites of this Empire, so they have to throw support and dollars at SpaceX’s competitors.
“It looks like some/ many senators want to spend ten billion of taxpayer dollars to ensure good press from the Bezos’s Washington Post. ”
That’s the smaller end of things. What Senator Cantwell has done is to rally Senate colleges to a defense of the status quo they created for the aerospace industry by at least 1987. The Aerospace contractors are vassals of those who provide them funding to employ workers in “the right districts”, who will know just whose tenure in the Senate they want, to protect their own jobs. The power is wielded by the source of the funding, not the funnels that pass it through to aerospace workers/voters. The Senate apparently agrees with Cantwell.
They want their vassals employed, to keep sending them back to their center of power on the Senate floor.
I think a fall-back option is wise….cut everything but NASA-the eternal whipping boy of Randians who ought to pave their own private roads to and from work.
A lunar starship should carry heavy rovers and be kept as a base. Come back with Orion as starship proves itself in this new environment over time. Two modes of ascent. This allows a mission to succeed even if starship crashes. We beat China either way.