Recommendation to President Biden: Get 40 Space Launches for the Price of One

Howard Bloom’s Space Development Steering Committee advises Joe Biden’s NASA to make a radical switch. Stop building rockets, buy launch from private companies, and concentrate on building the infrastructure we will need to bring life to the moon and Mars. Oh, and make every vehicle reusable.

For example, says Bloom, the Biden administration can get Americans to the Moon at one fortieth the cost of the Trump plan. And it can get us there faster.

How? The Trump administration’s Artemis moon program used a rocket called the Space Launch System. The Space Launch System was originally due to take to the skies in 2016 and is still nowhere near its first flight. Worse, the Space Launch System is a massively expensive rocket that NASA intends to use once, then throw away.

As a result each launch of the Space Launch System will cost two billion dollars. Explains Bloom, “For that price, you can buy 21 launches of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon Heavy rocket, 33 launches of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket, or 40 launches of SpaceX’s upcoming 100-passenger Starship.”

In other words, SpaceX has proven that NASA can achieve its goals with reusable rockets — rockets that can be used over and over again the way trains, planes, and automobiles are reused…