The Stark Politics of SpaceX’s Starship

How politicians can starve innovation

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Hours before the unveiling of SpaceX’s Starship rocket prototype, a groundbreaking Saturn-V-sized fully reusable rocket, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine took to Twitter and made a statement that shocked much of the space community. He called on SpaceX to show the same “enthusiasm” for its Dragon spacecraft, a delayed NASA-funded capsule that ferries crew to and from the International Space Station.

The statement caught the space community off guard, who were quick to point out the apparent hypocrisy of publicly shaming SpaceX while failing to call out its Commercial Crew rival Boeing, whose own craft faced far worse delays. Others noted that NASA’s SLS rocket program, also led by Boeing, was far further behind schedule and over budget, with nary a peep from NASA.