Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich argues that SpaceX is in a prime position to play a larger role in space exploration, and indicates that the U.S. government shouldn’t be tolerating Boeing’s consistent failures when it could work with SpaceX instead.
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The following is an excerpt from the above video:
Instead, it now looks like what’s going to happen is that SpaceX, the private company created by Elon Musk, will go up and rescue them early next year and bring them back home. SpaceX has a very good track record of safety, and has been working very diligently by itself. It launches more satellites than the entire Chinese program, and it is growing at a remarkable rate and developing remarkable new technologies. In fact, they are building a starship which will be capable of going to the moon or to Mars, and which will really represent a revolution in our ability to get things done.
I’m very proud of the way SpaceX has worked, because many years ago, Congressman Bob Walker, who was the chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, joined me, and the two of us offered an initial amendment to spend $400 million building a reusable rocket. NASA took the money, hired a firm who couldn’t do the job, and they failed.
About a decade later, Elon Musk came along and built a reusable rocket, and he’s learned now how to literally get 10 or more launches out of each rocket, which, of course, brings the price down dramatically. The most deflationary cost-lowering impact of the last 10 years is the fact that SpaceX took 90% out of the cost of going into space.
