Technology
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isn't a large part of it funded by taxpayer money?
It looks like about 1/3 of Blue Origin's total funds comes from government contacts. Now keep in mind, that means Blue Origin is providing a service in exchange for that money, it's not just handed to them.
is nasa somehow incapable of providing any service that blue origin provides?
NASA just realistically isn't a launch provider. SLS began development in 2011 and has only flown twice since 2022. It's has cost them almost $32 billion to develop. It even uses quite a bit of older hardware despite all the development costs.
Compare that to SpaceX's Starship. It started full development in 2019, has cost $15 billion to date, brand new everything, fully reusable, developed arguably the best engine ever made, has flown multiple times now (to varying degrees of success).
i'm going to chose to believe that you'll agree w me that these deficiencies were intentionally manufactured "reagan-style".
Yup, the same way they have crippled the US Post service. They destroy everything that is good so their friends can privatize and take over to reap huge profits.
I'm not too familiar with the politics behind all of this, especially around that time. My understanding is that it's mainly a difference in approach to development. NASA has to worry about appealing to politicians and the public. So they spend more time and money to make sure to get it right the first time.
SpaceX doesn't have that same kind of worry, so they can develop quickly and fly test vehicles often to learn quickly.
There's pros and cons to both sides imo, but that's why I think it makes more sense for NASA to use private launch providers while they focus more on the missions themselves.
since president nixon, there's been a well documented trend of gov't programs intentionally starved of federal resources, with the goal of justifying private industry taking over services those programs once provided themselves. spacex is probably the most modern manifestation of this trend.
those "pros and cons" are a false framing intended to steer your opinion away from the question of why nasa can't do this themselves anymore.
the last time nasa did this themselves, humanity got smartphones and modern medicine but when spacex does this, the only thing that happens is an epstein oligarch gets A LOT richer.
I thought total cost of SLS program is above 100billion alredy. And all that to fly bunch of people around the moon
That's for the entire Artemis program. SLS is just one part of that. I guess since I was comparing it to Starship it'd be fair to include Orion which would bump it up to $44 billion.