Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Yeah, but even us nerds like competence for our money. I mean look at the shuttle. It never lived up to its original specs because the tiles (which cracked and fell off periodically) were heavier than they'd planned. It was sold as "Mass transit in space" and "reusable" but it cost a half billion to refurbish between launches. Of the five nominally space worthy ones that were built, two (40%) had catastrophic failures with loss of life of everyone on board. Of the 355 people that ever flew on the Shuttle over 135 missions 14 individuals died, a fatality rate of ~4%.
There are things that NASA does well, but manned space flight would not appear to be one of them. And yeah, some of the "missions" are just stupid and/or PR, like putting a schoolteacher in space - even worse when you kill her in the attempt.
NASA still does good work. Not the manned missions though.
I've been to Boca Chica TX and have been within 100 yards of a SpaceX "Starship". It feels like the future. The energy is off the charts. It's amazing. Reminds me of the scene of the Abrams Star Trek reboot where they're building NCC-1701.
I've also been to Cape Canaveral. Very Disney. Nice exibits. I crashed the kids shuttle simulator a couple of times. They were very exicted about their female administrator (coulple of years ago), and the diversity that will define the Artemis return mission to the moon is truly first rate. (I mean, "yay", right? Very important for a billion dollar one time use rocket to go a place we've been to repeatedly.)
They have a biologist who makes sure the turtles are safe during launches. Lots of solar panels on the facility. (This was covered in the bus tour)
It's a museum.
(Manned spaceflight may be stupid though. If I was launching into space today, I'd probably go SpaceX, NASA, Russian, then the also rans...including Boeing.)