Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

Your quite right and the problem goes even further back than most people think. The bit where Scott says the Prometheus and Dream Chaser were based on the Russian BOR which was based on the HL-20 goes back a lot further. If you trace it back through the various X-planes (X-38, X-37, X-40, X-33, X-30, X-24, X-23) you get to the X-20 Dyna-Soar. If you want - you can even go further back to the X-15. The X-20 is of more interest in this because it was also a Boeing project and just as importantly it also NEVER FLEW. Boeings situation is the result of decades of allowing them to screw everyone on these contracts. I'm Australian but was lucky enough to go to an American university on a scholarship where I did aerospace in the late 80s. I was there when the Challenger exploded. In fact I was in Orlando when Columbia took off 16 days earlier. What many people are unaware off is that after Challenger Kelly Johnson (of SR-71, P38 and U2 fame) said don't build a replacement shuttle build the next generation of vehicle. What he lost the argument to the politicians cared about 1 thing - the voters in their districts keeping their jobs. You know places like Seattle, Huntsville (in Alabama) and other places where those projects employ people. This stuff has been going on for decades ever since companies like Boeing realised that being contracted into things like X-plane projects was actually very profitable. The most important thing isn't delivering anything that works its doing enough to get the next contract. Its just like university based research. The aim of any project isn't published papers or breakthroughs in technology its getting the next grant. So Boeing for decades have not been held accountable and the politicians from places like Seattle are NEVER going to hold them accountable.
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@mahbriggs It was X-20 not X-22. The X-22 was made by Bell, there were 2 built and they actually did fly. Further they provided data and experience that helped in the development of the V-22 Osprey and F-35B. Its not that the X-20 was a Boeing project it was one of the first of many projects and most had NOTHING to do with X-planes that just never went anywhere except towards getting the next research contract. It might be unfair to include the X-37 because program actually did produce reusable vehicles that have flown in space. If there's a giant question from that program its why wasn't a manned version developed from that. If there has been a colossal issue with NASA funding its been the endless programs where they keep redesigning things from scratch when they don't need to be. What made the Soyuz so great by comparison was that once they made it work they just kept making improvements step by step. For all the claim success that Space-X has made (and it is damn impressive) there isn't a massive amount of innovation. Look at the Apollo program they could put 3 into LEO and could land a rocket vertically (on the moon). What the impressive thing SpaceX have done is improve on that and do it better. They can put 4 in space and can land vertically back on earth and then re-use the rocket. Think how many billions would have been saved if NASA had gone from Apollo to crew Dragon directly instead of all the other stuff. Think how many billions could have been saved if they had adapted the X37 into a manned vehicle instead of all this other stuff. Think where we might be if instead of spending billions doing variations of stuff hat never delivered and we spent them going back to the Moon and beyond.
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@mahbriggs Fair enough. My point is more along the lines of "What are all these projects costing billions actually trying to accomplish?" Because when you consider the actual outcomes and results they aren't anywhere close to the PR.
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@mahbriggs I have a classmate who is now very high up at NASA. Circa 2000 when they were building the ISS I suggested what many others had on certain things and she belted me with the bluntest email I ever got. NASA does not decide anything it ever does. NASA proposes projects and Congress decides which ones NASA does and congress does what industry wants. It really is that simple. Go check out the SLS debacle, there's plenty of information on it. I don't mean the actual engineering either, I mean the management. Its become a classic government white elephant or pork barrel mess. The other thing I know about from personal experience is how university research is conducted. Its staggering how much of it has one purpose - get the next grant. For sure they all claim they are developing something or increasing our understanding of something BUT make no mistake they are always considering the next grant. On one hand there is nothing wrong with how NASA operates or how research is funded, but like any system it can be scammed and that's what Boeing is very good at. They aren't alone in it I watched professors simply scam funding.
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@mahbriggs As I said I'm Australian and we only just started a Space Agency. All they did was pack ours with bureaucrats claiming they were like NASA. It was insane. Even when they did hire an engineer they brought one in from France just to complete the insult. Arguably one of the biggest issues with every government in the world are the unelected officials building little empires of stupidity. We should have easily solved many of our societies issues - water, education, energy,... etc. BUT more often than not there is some insignificant rat determined to be a significant rat. Worst of all that rat has lots and lots of other rat friends.
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@mahbriggs This is what makes the world so scary right now. We actually have 3 bureaucratic empires on the verge of collapse and 1 that did collapse trying everything it can to mess everyone else around. There's America, Europe, China and Russia playing the spoiler. Europe was a bureaucrats wet dream from day 1 that they formed the Eurozone. America became a bureaucrats playground over time. China is an even better bureaucrats paradise than Europe and America because they public can't ruin their buzz every so often with those pesky elections. Russia still thinks it controls the Soviet Block. The problem with all that it just makes the landscape ripe for populists like Trump to waltz in and cause chaos.
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