In the same way that the apocryphal Chinese curse and 2024 made a very good start to be interesting, I could argue that both were quite interesting. But as well as being exciting, 2025 appears to be prepared to be an exciting year. Oh, and there are promises that Canada, the UK, and Germany are all getting ready to leave their 10-year stupor of woke, including the Trump presidency taking over and everyone Trump has promised. Yes, it seems like it, but getting ready to get is really interesting.  ,
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We now have this generation’s D. D. Harriman in Elon Musk, about to start Starship once, and with any luck move Starship into operation and reduce cost-to-orbit considerably, but sometime in the next few weeks, Jeff Bezos ‘ Blue Origin may launch the New Glenn spacecraft for its first planetary test.
Have you taken note of the naming pattern it? The past rocket, New Shepard , calls back to Alan Shepard, the earliest American in place. It’s suborbital, and Shepard’s aircraft was suborbital. New Glenn is intended to be an orbit rocket, and John Glenn was the first American to circle.
I am a total Elon Musk lover, so go ahead and try to abstain, but just strive. All you need to do is check out my Amazon bill to see that I also like Bezos ‘ work. ( Hint: my Prime account saved me just over$ 1, 000 in the last year. )
What I really am is a staunch Heinleinist, and I think the highest moral accomplishment is anything that helps the life of both one’s family, community, or country as well as one’s species. ( To see Heinlein make exactly this point to the midshipmen of the U. S. Naval Academy, read” The Pragmatics of Patriotism“. ) And while I admire Musk no finish, for SpaceX and the Boring Company and Tesla and another, I am glad that he has some free-enterprise contest.  ,
During Apollo, I was a great NASA lover too. Also am, to some extent, but — look, NASA, going back to the Space Shuttle, has suffered from the same condition that plagues the rest of state: flying missiles isn’t their primary business. Making Congress delighted is their main goal.  ,
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What makes Congress content is unique for each congresscritter, but quite regularly, no matter what else they may believe, one of their primary motivations is getting more cash into their parliamentary district. The logical conclusion is that the ideal state contract supports a bigger, more wide national government with great buildings and bigger budgets in D.C. and the surrounding states. It has jobs in all 435 legislative districts, every one of the 50 states, and supports a bigger, more wide national government.
NASA was the only game in town for a very long time, at least for the United States, with the exception of long-standing defense contractors who were reliant on expensive contracts and whose lobbyists screamed fearless little girls whenever they attempted to cut costs because cutting costs on cost-plus means cutting profits. Under Nixon and then Carter, there was pressure to reduce costs at the same time.
The Space Shuttle, which started out as a reusable personnel transportation vehicle, had to be accompanied by a heavy lifter for heavy loads like the then-classified Keyhole satellites and, secondarily, for components of a space station, which would later turn into the third leg of the stool, an orbiting laboratory. What Shuttle turned into a portmanteau meant to fulfill all of those requirements, and it did so dangerously and horribly at a high cost.
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Follow that with the Space Launch System, which costs more, does less, and is largely based on technology developed 50 years ago for Apollo. But by God, it put jobs in Mississippi, and that was important.
So we ended up in the odd situation that Russia— yes, that Russia, under Czar Putin — had a monopoly on U. S. astronauts getting to the Space Station, and was selling us a very large part of the rocket engines for U. S. rockets.
Before launching the” @SpaceX,” people forget that the United States relied on Russia to send astronauts to the International Space Station and Russian-made rocket engines to launch pretty much everything else in orbit. https: //t. co/LGQFRBzwca — ALEX ( @ajtourville ) September 17, 2024
This was done before DOGE, but it demonstrates the DOGE argument that Musk was making: SpaceX launches more mass annually than the Shuttle ever ( CHECK), despite the fact that the goal was to reduce costs and divert money. ( It was so unlimited that Musk almost broke off with him before the first successful launch. ) No one at NASA or ULA is losing money with SLS.
By risking going bankrupt, Musk is now positioned in a way that could make him the first trillionaire, as Vodkapundit Stephen Green points out. Which is great. But monopolies, even if the monopolist is a paragon of capitalist virtue, breed , complacency and excess.
Now, with any luck, Bezos is going to launch New Glenn, and Musk’s SpaceX will have some real competition.  ,
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With more rockets built by people who want to follow Musk into the ranks of trillionaires, space will become more than just a place for business. NASA can get out of the launch business, and ULA will need to find a way to find a way to do so cheaply ( or ramp up its lobbying budget mightily with DOGE snapping at its heels ).
And that will be good for everyone.
