I’ve been worried about this for a long time, because there’s no obvious (at least to me) answer: How do we prevent them from becoming weapons? And not just weapons of war, but of domestic assassinations?
I agree with much of this, though I do think that Scott has always mischaracterized SLS as a useful national capability. My biggest problem with it is phrase "space exploration." It's pretty clear that getting back to the moon has never been a national priority, and isn't today.
Until we decide why we're going back to the moon, we can't come up with a sensible idea of how to do it. If we do a prize, it shouldn't be to just get back, but to set up a demonstrably economically sustainable infrastructure, not for "exploration," but for lunar development.
That is, the prize should be for (e.g.) maintaining a base at Shackleton of at least two dozen people for five years. That's the only way to avoid another flags and footprints event (and it's something that cannot be done with anything resembling NASA's current plans).
So let the Shelbys of the world continue to massively waste taxpayer money as the danegeld to allow us to offer a much smaller amount, risk free, to do something useful (since clearly getting back to the moon is not and has never been nationally critical).
My former Rockwell colleague (and current business associate) Dallas Bienhoff has a survey of all the planned new on-orbit systems, including a brief description of my planned intraorbital infrastructure.
A dual FH launch would give them a direct trajectory, at far lower cost.
And why does no one ever question the provenance of that $1B estimate per flight for SLS?
I wish that someone would describe the source of the estimate of $1B per flight of SLS. The first flight will have cost >$20B. The second one will likely cost another $4B if it flies two years later. Same for the one after that. https://t.co/O07TKCNffV
He’s managed to piss off both the Alabama and Texas delegations. To be fair, it’s not hard.
Meanwhile, Newt and others, including General Kwast, are urging a new approach. Trump would love it, but Congress would never approve it; insufficient opportunities for graft.