How NASA Engineered Its Own Decline

Franklin Foer: “Last year, 95 percent of the rockets launched in the United States were launched by SpaceX. NASA was a mere passenger. Musk has crowded low Earth orbit with satellites (nearly 8,000) that are becoming indispensable to the military’s capacity to communicate and the government’s surveillance of hostile powers. Even if Trump had pushed to dislodge Musk, he couldn’t. No rival could readily replace the services his companies provide.”

“That Musk has superseded NASA is a very American parable. A generation ago, NASA was the crown jewel of the U.S. government. It was created in 1958 to demonstrate the superiority of the American way of life, and it succeeded brilliantly. In the course of landing humans on the lunar surface, NASA became the symbol of America’s competence and swagger, of how it—alone among the nations of the Earth—inhabited the future. NASA’s astronauts were 20th-century cowboys, admired in corners of the world that usually abhorred Americans. The Apollo crews traveled to the heavens on behalf of ‘all mankind,’ a phrase that appeared both in the act that created NASA and on the plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11. Even NASA’s engineers, with their skinny ties and rolled-up sleeves, became the stuff of Hollywood legend.”

“NASA was born at the height of liberalism’s faith in government, and its demise tracks the decline of that faith. As the United States lost confidence in its ability to accomplish great things, it turned to Musk as a potential savior, and ultimately surrendered to him. This isn’t an instance of crony capitalism, but a tale about well-meaning administrations, of both parties, pursuing grandiose ambitions without the vision, competence, or funding to realize them.”