> Capitalism doesn't work if you don't let companies that aren't delivering fail.
This argument only works in competitive markets. This market is more or less a natural monopoly due to the massive upfront R&D investment and learning-by-doing requirements. NASA has to constantly wrestle with this 'force' in order to keep it an oligopoly.
If it fails to do so, it should stop the experiment and go back to in-housing everything. Only with an oligopoly (or better) does the American public benefit at all from privatization.
All current problems notwithstanding, SpaceX in 20 years of existence delivered a lot of progress to the aerospace abilities of the whole world. No matter what they'll do next, SpaceX already shown a number of important achievements.
Hope they'll continue.
Also I'm not sure if Boeing's goals are more aligned with NASA's than SpaceX's ones with those of general public - and that public would probably disapprove such things as SLS.
This is the first time ever that we've had competition in the form of multiple companies that can deliver astronauts to orbit.
As for NASA "in-housing" everything, that's always been a continuum. Mercury is probably the last spacecraft that you could really say NASA designed internally that flew. Even operationally, for the last part of the Shuttle program, most all of the operations were done by the United Space Alliance.
That said, I agree that NASA has a role to play to encourage diversity and competition, and IMO they've done that with Orion, Dragon, and DreamChaser. Just because SpaceX could use some competition doesn't mean it has to be Boeing.
This argument only works in competitive markets. This market is more or less a natural monopoly due to the massive upfront R&D investment and learning-by-doing requirements. NASA has to constantly wrestle with this 'force' in order to keep it an oligopoly.
If it fails to do so, it should stop the experiment and go back to in-housing everything. Only with an oligopoly (or better) does the American public benefit at all from privatization.