“that it will take a billion dollars in government money to configure the Falcon 9 and the Dragon space craft for human space flight.”
So it will take a billion dollars to get this company so they can get ready to accept a few billion more.
If they want to be successful as a private industry then they should compete as a private industry. Not on the govt teat.
Just like Rockwell, Boeing, General Dynamics or any number of private companies have been able to grow without outrageous government subsidies and development contracts through the years? /s
While there is a robust commercial demand for LEO capability, the lion's share of that demand still comes from the US government. It only makes sense from a tax-payer perspective that a responsible government would look to the private marketplace to pare down costs, something that has eluded NASA all these yeras. If you look at SpaceX ability to perform the last 6 years, no NASA program has come close to their record of achievement. They project that they'll be able to provide LEO at $1200 per kilo. That's simply amazing.
And more to the point, in just a few years of development, they have overtaken the Russians in lift efficiency. The fact that they ignited the rocket engines, shut them down, corrected a problem, and reinitiated the launch clock in just a few hours shows that their command and control exceeds that of NASA.
If SpaceX can deliver payloads more efficiently than NASA or the Russians, give them props.
Thats an effective Conservative argument, what the Republican Senator from Texas is using is a Left wing Liberal argument, that is more what I have a problem with here.
It goes along some of the lines I hear Conservatives Bashing Obama with, “Why isn’t he doing something”, NO That is not the tack we take, we do not want everybody relying Uncle Sugar Big Government coming in like superman to save us all, we want people to rely on THEMSELVES.
Conservative should stick to principled Conservative arguments.