How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaireā€”and is now struggling to rein him in.

  • Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    10 months ago

    NASAā€™s budget isnā€™t the only reason SpaceX has been able to innovate faster. NASA is incredibly risk averse, as their failures reflect onto the US government and by extension their budget. Even when safety isnā€™t important such as with unmanned rockets, NASA doesnā€™t want news headlines blasting them for their rocketā€™s tendencies to blow up. SpaceX, by being a private company, is free to take risks and have rockets explode (if theyā€™re unmanned that is) without much repercussions as theyā€™re a private company, not the US government. Theyā€™ve had 7 unmanned rockets explode and several more reusable landerā€™s fail in their course to develop cheaper, reusable rockets, which had NASA done themselves would have been a national embarrassment, but because it was a private company they were free to take those risks to learn from their mistakes