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Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

> American astronauts on American rockets from American soil Jim Bridenstine

Jim Bridenstine really knows how to talk politics. I must say I very impressed with his tenure so far, the NASA Administrator is not really all that powerful of a position but given how much opposition there was to him being a Trump selection he does do well.

This is such a vital step to make LEO a commercial domain. NASA is spending way to much money on LEO and to make any moon/mars future possible that needs to be commercial. NASA only want to launch max. 4 people per ship, but it can take 7. So the price could really be cheap pretty cheap to allow a fair amount of non-NASA groups to send up people.

Axiom Space got the contract extending the ISS and a more commercial ISS could operate more efficiently in the longer run.

Eventually, with the cost of Cargo Space transportation coming down, we could actually build Space Stations in Space and make them way bigger.

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I think NASA is usually a politically safe place to be. Airplane crashes are unpopular and media-friendly. Rocket explosions or shuttle crashes (esp. with people on them) often result in an Oval Office address. Nobody wants to be on the short end of that stick. Funding is spread out across the U.S. esp. Texas and Florida to ensure broad political support (or at least apathy), and scientists and engineers don't make too much fuss. It's like the military's baby brother.

For a long time, I was cynical about even the principle of going to space before we solved problems down here, but now I'm more stoic and appreciative. It's a tangible, tractable hope that gets people out of bed in the morning, and consciously keeping that candle lit is the very best of being human.

> Funding is spread out across the U.S. esp. Texas and Florida to ensure broad political support

Heh, maybe now. But when NASA was created, the reason Texas was involved at all was because Senator Johnson (future President Johnson) was the head of the committee that pushed the bill to create NASA.

Technically it made no sense for mission control and training to be in Texas. It would be far more efficient in Florida.

Florida was chosen because it is the best spot to launch rockets in the US from a physics perspective (closer to the equator is better) that still had easy access from the rest of the US (which is why Hawaii was ruled out even though it would be technically better).

But yes, as a side effect of the political posturing to get NASA funded, it ended up spreading the money around the country nicely.

SpaceX ironically is building its launch site for the future in Texas. Probably because the cap is already taken.

And because all the talent they need is there now because mission control was there. It's still closer to the equator than where Russia or China launch from, so it's still an advantageous site in that regard.

> (which is why Hawaii was ruled out even though it would be technically better)

Hawaii wasn't even a state when NASA was created. So there was never any serious consideration for using hawaii as NASA headquarters or launching site. The same goes for puerto rico which is much closer to the equator ( and the lower 48 ) than hawaii. It's not a state, so you can't put something as important as NASA or a launch site on puerto rico.

It's strange, but NASA is older than the state of hawaii.

> Hawaii wasn't even a state when NASA was created.

Technically yes, NASA predates Hawaii by 13 months, but it was well on it's way to statehood by then. The statehood act passed congress in the early 1950s, before the discussions about NASA began.

> Technically yes, NASA predates Hawaii by 13 months, but it was well on it's way to statehood by then. The statehood act passed congress in the early 1950s, before the discussions about NASA began.

Cape Canaveral was chosen as a launch site before the discussions about NASA began, too; the first planned launch was planned before those discussions (it was postponed) under the auspices of the early space program coordinated by NACA Special Committee on Space Technology prior to the proposal to build NASA to incorporate and replace NACA.

Remarkably, a spot in the close vicinity of Cape Canaveral was chosen by Jules Verne as the launch site for the moon travelers in his 1867 book From the Earth to the Moon.

> The statehood act passed congress in the early 1950s, before the discussions about NASA began.

The statehood act was passed in March 1959.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Admission_Act

And I wouldn't say it was well on its way to statehood. There were lots of racial, political, historical, etc issues at play. Were it not for the desire to grant alaska statehood, it's likely that hawaii would still not be a state given their demographic.

That was the last statehood act. The first one passed the House in the early 1950s but never made it through the Senate (because of the aforementioned racial issues).

> The first one passed the House in the early 1950s but never made it through the Senate (because of the aforementioned racial issues).

So it didn't pass congress ( house and senate )? "The statehood act passed congress in the early 1950s"

Also, it's my understanding that bills get considered by congress and once passed by congress, then it becomes an act ( law ). So as far as hawaii goes, there has been one and only one statehood act. But I may be wrong here.

Yup. Right now we're seeing LEO technology move from "only well funded nation states can do this" to "BigCo will sell this to you as a service".

A similar transition happened in the 1500s when we went from only nation states (though they weren't called that back then) being able to justify the cost of transportation to the Americas to any old bunch of Christian extremists being able to afford to make the trip.

I really hope I live long enough to see state sponsored and then commodity travel to places other than our planet.

NASA Administrator is such a bland boring title. I wonder if that's intentional, to indicate the focus shouldn't be on management but rather on the engineers, scientists, and astronauts.

It's common in federal departments. Each department has an "Administrator" who then represents the entire department to those closer to the President, and represents the President to those farther away.

"President" was supposed to be the most boring title. It was chosen because the role was supposed to be simply that: To be present, while the rest of the federal government did its thing.

As the government evolved, the title gained more meaning. I sometimes wonder if the leaders of younger countries that use it understand its original meaning.

> "President" was supposed to be the most boring title. It was chosen because the role was supposed to be simply that: To be present

President doesn't come from the word "present" [1], and has been used for millennia (2ish) more than you're implying.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/president

Maybe you meant centuries, and not millennia? English, even it's oldest forms, hasn't been around for millennia. Anyway, as your own etymology link demonstrates, the word's first use in its present meaning, as an executive leader of a republic--especially of something the size and importance of a nation state--is first in the US Constitution. Prior to that it generally meant leaders of more modest organizations: "heads of religious houses, hospitals, colleges and universities."

I meant linguistic usage - it has had a very similar definition (head of something) for millennia.

Wait until somebody wants to send giant advertisement signs to LEO.

When money is involved, somebody will find a way to ruin it.

There have been a handful of companies that have proposed this, but fortunately once everyone does the math, they figure out how pointless it would be.

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