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NASA Outsources ISS Resupply To SpaceX, Orbital
DynaSoar writes "NASA has signed two contracts with US commercial space ventures totaling $3.5 billion for resupply of the International Space Station. SpaceX will receive $1.6 billion for 12 flights of SpaceX's planned Dragon spacecraft and their Falcon 9 boosters. $1.9 billion goes to Orbital for eight flights of its Cygnus spacecraft riding its Taurus 2 boosters. Neither of the specified craft has ever flown. However, the proposed vehicles are under construction and based on proven technology, whereas NASA has often contracted with big aerospace companies for services using vehicles not yet even designed."
The world isn't a simple as you make it out to be. Patents and copyrights lock things up, but trade secrets lock them up even more. Government intervention to make people act against their own interests is a never ending spiral. There's no way to mandate that people do good science. It's interesting that you mention national security. Current legislation basically makes good science and engineering in rocketry illegal.. cause any improvement to a rocket is an improvement to the death count of a potential weapon using that rocket. I, personally, care more about the progress of rocketry than I care about the number of potential lives lost in a potential war fought with potential rocket-based weapons in the potential future, but other people think differently.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think it is an issue of redundancy; to have the ISS just depending on the Russians would be an issue. Now, I think they could have looked to the "arianespace", but I think Buy American is back into the default way the US Government does things. Tim S