TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Well, the problems are rooted in the way the Government has done things from the start.
Traditionally Government space is either in house or sub contracted and then partially done in house.
This is done on both sides of the governmental space program the military/intelligence and the exploratory. the problem is that this is a very slow process and it tends to involve a lot of politics and sweetheart deals and the whole thing can be canceled because a powerful senator or president can come in and say so.
Case in point
President Bush in 2004 Starts the Constellation program, A methodical goal set and program set including rockets, new stations, new capsules, new space suits and goals for landing on the moon and mars... then 2010 President Obama cancels it. 6 years of work is tossed because the new administration steps in.
Of course Congress keeps the most public and geewiz parts on life support but mostly to keep money flowing to their districts. Basically "choose some "path"" is the problem.
The paths they choose tend to get dead ended by a change in admin and the results tend to be large expensive programs that work for a bit then get tossed or just keep working because there has not been a accident and the price has been paid for.
The other problem is that Government launches are set to 4 categories, Military support ( intel, navagation, coms, and testing), R&D for more of the same as well as space warfare concepts and finally exploration and research. the problem here is that the Military doesn't want to be sharing to much of their toys and Modern society runs on Satellites and commercial communications / GPS with it's hyper accurate time keeping.
So the need to Launch Commercial satellites comes up and well should AT&T or UPS be needing to Pay NASA or the USAF for putting a commercial satellite up?
Europe says YES, So Does Russia and NASA tried it but being frank it never actually works. I mean yes they get the satellites up but it's not self sustaining the governments have to supplement the cost of launches and frankly they should have better things to spend their budgets on.
The Cost of a Government launch is expensive because again the way government does things. yet the need for launches for commercial industry is guaranteed to expand.
people want high tech and to get that high tech you need more space assets.
Eventually Commercial Enterprise was going to step in and venture capitalists are not going to pay for a launch like a government will and sure enough A few did. More over not only did they step in and start looking for business, furthermore they started looking at ways to expand beyond just communications and navigation and started looking at mining and colonizing and tourism. Yet all came back to the key problem just getting into space.
So sure enough Actual companies not governments started looking at it and started building rockets. Cheaper less complicated Rockets that could show a profit. And well The DOD suddenly saw this and as the DOD likes to put up satellites and operates on a budget that keeps getting cut. If they could pay less to put the same load on a commercial rocket as they would have put on their own they rationally figured hay why not? They could shave their rocket program to weapons and absolutely mission critical stuff and use more of their budget for the toys they really want. And Now ATK is stepping in and Saying " You know we built those and if you're sitting on them we could actually use them and add to our bottom line."
Of course the problem now is that if they were to just turn them over to ATK then ATK could really under bid and that could nail in the coffin the builders who are needed for the occasionally needed really impressive rockets. Like ULA who right now is under stress because they just delayed a major Atlas launch twice and are facing political lashing over the use of Russian Engines As well as Competing against it's self as Lockheed pushes for missions for Orion well Boeing pushes CTS100 for more missions and Delta IV is competing against it's own Atlas and the rising Falcon heavy and the SLS which keeps getting delayed and saps money.
basically the Government has been breast feeding the Space industry and now is worried that Its time to switch to formula or even send it off to college
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