Put space policy on the presidential to-do list, Jay Barbree, NBC
"Forty-five years later, one of the relative newcomers to the space business, SpaceX, is receiving roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars from NASA -- while one of the shuttle program's longtime contractors, ATK, is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply."
Keith's note: It is beyond odd that Jay Barbree focuses on the money spent on SpaceX but ignores the billions that NASA spent on Ares 1's first stage - which is now being used as the first stage of Liberty. Ares 1 was, itself, a derivation of another government-funded research program to develop the Space Shuttle SRBs. Given th ebillions spent on SRB and Ares 1, SpaceX is an incredible bargain by an order of magnitude.
"Most space veterans agree with those goals, Mr. President, but with a cautionary note: Don't prop up t.e newcomers while giving short shrift to America's most experienced aerospace companies. This happened before, when the White House took the contract from the experienced and gave it to the inexperienced. In 1967, the Apollo 1 astronauts paid with their lives in a launch-pad fire."
Keith's note: Contrary to Barbree's ill-informed statement, North American Aviation was far from being "inexperienced". Once again, it is odd how Barbree focuses on one company and a fatal accident but does not bother to mention Morton Thiokol (bought by ATK to form the basis of its solid rocket business) and its involvement in the Challenger accident which resulted from the very same SRBs that from the basis for the basic Ares 1/Liberty design.
Liberty should be allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits. Yet Jay Barbree continues to write this one-sided, badly-researched revisionist history. Indeed, the things he writes are downright misleading and are fraught with inconsistencies and glaring omissions. Does NBC simply not care enough to provide Jay Barbree with a research assistant or fact checker?