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SpaceX's Mars Vision Puts Pressure on NASA's Manned Exploration Programs (marketwatch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Entrepreneur Elon Musk's announcement late last month accelerating plans for manned flights to Mars ratchets up political and public relations pressure on NASA's efforts to reach the same goal. With Musk publicly laying out a much faster schedule than NASA -- while contending his vision is less expensive and could be financed primarily with private funds -- a debate unlike any before is shaping up over the direction of U.S. space policy. Industry officials and space experts consider the proposal by Musk's Space Exploration to land people on the red planet around the middle of the next decade extremely optimistic. Some supporters concede the deadline appears ambitious even for reaching the moon, while Musk himself acknowledged some of his projected dates are merely "aspirational." But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration doesn't envision getting astronauts to Mars until at least a decade later, a timeline NASA is finding increasingly hard to defend in the face of criticism that it is too slow.
In what world does NASA have less access to money than SpaceX?
The problem is that government agencies waste money. If you don't believe it, go work for any city, county, state or federal agency in the USA. Keep a critical eye out for waste and inefficiency. In less than 3 months, you will see why NASA cannot keep up with the private sector. If you cannot see it after 3 months, then you are a perfect fit. Enjoy your new job.
NASA for decades has been primarily a program to send pork back to all 50 states, by using cost-plus contracts and making sure that as many congress-critters as possible can point to jobs they brought to their district. One report put ARES/SLS spending at $19B to date, and Orion at $13B to date. So we've spent nearly half the adjusted cost of the Apollo program with no hardware in flight yet. And the same report puts NASA overhead at 72% of Orion cost. NASA isn't really trying to return us to space as much as they're trying to run a jobs and pork program. Now I love NASA, have since I was a kid. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize an out of control government program thats been taken over by MBAs and politicians.