Recently SpaceX completed a historic all-civilian flight.
Joe Biden had no comment.
As CNBC reported, "After SpaceX completed a historic, private spaceflight on Saturday, CEO Elon Musk took a pot shot at President Joe Biden who had yet to remark on the company’s and the civilian flight crew’s accomplishments."
In all fairness, Musk’s comment was just a response to a tweet from one of his followers.
"One of Musk’s 60 million followers on the social networking platform Twitter asked him, 'The President of the United States has refused to even acknowledge the 4 newest American astronauts who helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for St. Jude. What’s your theory on why that is?' Musk replied, 'He’s still sleeping.'"
Undoubtedly, Joe was napping or puzzling over all the choices Baskin Robbins offers.
Why?
We think it’s because praising SpaceX would only serve to contrast the success of Musk’s private sector space flight operation with the failure of NASA.
NASA has gone from a pioneering spaceflight innovator to the world’s most expensive travel agency. NASA is now reduced to watching companies like SpaceX fly its astronauts into space.
In fact, one of Musk’s most innovative breakthroughs only serves to highlight NASA’s failures.
When NASA was King of Space, the boosters that launched the spacecraft were fire-and-forget. What went up came down and sank into the ocean to provide recreation for the fish. That works fine with a mortar, but when applied to sending men to the moon, costs add up fast.
If families tossed the station wagon after every visit to see grandma it wouldn’t be long before the kids had only a hazy memory of what the old girl looked like.
The same applies to the moon.
NASA priced itself out of even the cost-is-no-object federal market. Musk proposed to build boosters that could be used more than once. At NASA that was crazy talk.
For the bureaucrat, reusing boosters is all cost and no benefit.
There are no awards in the federal service for saving money.
Someone looking to spend less is not a team player, since leftover money in the budget means Congress won’t give the agency as much next year.
Not being a bureaucrat, Musk has already successfully used 28 boosters on multiple space missions, recovering the boosters 92 times.
Ray Lugo, who formerly directed NASA science missions, told Florida Today in 2017, "It’s potentially a big cost-saver and it will make a difference, provided you can re-fly multiple times. If this works, over the long term it will be difficult for anyone that throws boosters away to compete." Another former NASA administrator estimates SpaceX can cut 75 percent of the cost of a rocket by reusing boosters.
NASA certainly can’t compete and it’s putting pressure on Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin which has yet to recover a booster.
Fans of big government always denigrate the private sector by contending there are just some things that only government can do, like space flight. Only, our government isn’t doing space flight anymore, because it priced itself out of the market.
The market rewards efficiency and innovation, while government rewards government employees. And maybe that’s why Joe Biden ignored the success of the SpaceX mission which not only sent all those non-government employees into space, but also raised $210 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker's bureau. Read Michael Reagan's Reports — More Here.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)" Read Michael Shannon's Reports — More Here.