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Commercial Space Crew Supporters Posit a Conspiracy Theory Involving Funding Shortages
MarkWhittington writes: The Space Access Society, a group that advocates for government funded, commercially operated spacecraft, examined the annual fight between supporters of the heavy lift Space Launch System and supporters of the commercial crew program in a recent communique. In the view of the SAS and other commercial crew supporters, Congress, on the behalf of the big rocket supporters, has been shorting funding for the commercial crew spacecraft in favor of the SLS. On the surface there seems to be no reason for this, as the two undertake different missions. The Space Access Society posits a conspiracy theory so immense that at first glance would seem to be in the same class as the Apollo moonlanding hoax, The SAS accuses Space Launch System supporters of trying to arrange the premature end of the International Space Station to free up funding for the big rocket and related projects.
I suppose you could call it a 'conspiracy' since there are people clearly conspiring to get the priorities they feel important funded. Most people would call it 'politics as usual'. And yes, the recipe calls for pork, lots and lots of it. Not very healthy, but very tasty. Humans will typically go for what tastes good, not what is good for you.
Whatever the hell that is.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The SLS exists to give pork to established NASA contractors. SpaceX is trying to get stuff into space cheaply.
SpaceX is centralized in a few districts so it gets relatively little support. On the other hand, the SLS has pork divided up over the whole country. Thus, if you are a politician, and want pork, you want to support the SLS. The fact that the SLS makes no scientific or financial sense whatsoever, does not factor into the decision to vote against SpaceX. To bring pork to your district, SLS is the correct program.
Unfortunately, SLS has went the way of many of the more recent military purchase programs. Yes, the F-35 can be built, but why? Yes the SLS can be built, but is this really the best way? do we really need it? Given SpaceX's development trajectory, will the SLS ever be needed? Really needed?
"It's the public republican stance/platform that all science and technology should be defunded in favor of creationism and weapon-capable vehicles like the heavy rockets"
No, it's the Democrat position that all science and technology should be defunded because man's hubris white privilege respect for the Hawaiian volcano gods.