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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

>These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer

I work in defense. Bingo.

>These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer

Glad some one said something about this. It seems like public and private sector has some how magically merged in US. Shall we remind what happens when you privatize some thing public like prison.

How much of this pork can be carved up by companies like SpaceX?

What about drones, missiles, fighter planes, etc.?

SpaceX doesn't have the domain knowledge of a defense prime to be able to really compete with them, at least certainly not today.

Drones, missiles, fighter planes are chock full of proprietary software developed by the primes and hardware developed either by themselves or often Tier 2 or Tier 3 suppliers. Replicating that isn't done overnight and would be an immensely challenging uphill battle against entrenched corporations with decades of experience and very close ties with Washington, which makes competing with NASA look like a walk in the park.

SpaceX would need to hire former lobbyists, managers and engineers from primes and their suppliers and play a really long game to try to get there. Doesn't seem feasible in less than 10 years and even that is an outrageously optimistic timeline.

SpaceX not competing against NASA, instead it was was always competing against commercial launch provider such as ULA.

SpaceX absolutely competes against NASA in SLS case - SLS is so absurd even deep pockets of USA taxpayer can't prevent SLS losing in comparison to SpaceX solutions. Of course, NASA can use more regulatory heavy handing - they had approximately that unfortunate experience with Beal Aerospace - but we'll see if NASA will get to it in the current situation. So far the forecast isn't that dark.

NASA is not the competitor. How can I tell?

Because if SpaceX wins, it's a NASA check they'll be cashing.

Anduril, the company founded by Palmer Luckey with funding by Peter Thiel, is trying to take that startup approach to defense contracting. They raised an additional $200M in venture capital last year. They build drones among other things.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/07/01/andur...

SpaceX has already flown classified payloads so they're at the trough with the others.

https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-nrol-108-spy-satellite...

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