are there any other viable domestic rocket companies that launch as often as SpaceX does?
There is absolutely nothing these over-hyped “space” companies can do that the US couldn’t do far better and far cheaper through NASA itself - you know, just like they did when they sent astronauts to the moon?.
that’s a fair point but it was also politically necessary to spend half a billion or more per launch to “show the ruskies who the real superpower was” - and a lot of the tech was still being developed. now, 50 years on, the tech is much more established, materials science has matured, and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending and pork barrel politics - look towards the SLS program. vastly over budget with not much to show for it. rounding down, you could buy every single launch SpaceX has made this year and still have a few billion $$$ in spare change left over for the cost of SLS… and it’s flown, what? once?
it was also politically necessary
There’s absolutely nothing “necessary” about a nationalist pissing contest between two vile empires. I know that’s an irrlevant tangent… but anyway.
and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
No, it isn’t. The US just did what it has always done… develop technology with public funds and then hand it off to the crony class to exploit for privatized profit at everyone else’s expense. Nothing about it is cheaper or more efficient - those are easily debunked myths.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending
Duh… that’s how space exploration happens - through gratuitous spending. Whose money do you think Phoney Stark is burning through? His own?
Getting NASA involved is going to lead to results other than merely corporate parasites getting rich off money that could have been far, far better spent - that’s pretty much it.
NASA’s first launch of the heavy lift Artemis, vs Space X’s Starship’s disaster of a “successful test” are different paths (and seems largely because the cut costs on protecting the lunch pad with water).
Falcon and all the previous space x rockets seem much less influenced by Musk than the Starship. Same as the Tesla Truck, I feel the Starship project is more vanity than engineering, and might not succeed the way Falcon etc. did.
