Because Boeing and SpaceX have never received any public money ever.

Since when is Boeing trying to go to Mars?

They just announced it recently, I think

Its capitalist though, Leon. Winning a government contract through a bidding war is still essentially capitalism. Its not like these are government agencies going into space.

Oh, well, SpaceX still wins. Boeing ain't got nothing on Musk.

They're contracted on the SLS, which is capable of sending payloads to Mars in theory.

TrPrado, you are taking an extremely contentious issue that has a history of getting quite heated and leaving it out in the open.

The market will play a major role in finding the winner to Mars. Boeing is a pretty brave company, not just this but also securing deals selling planes to both Iran and a GCC country (Qatar). This is a sort of risk governments can't afford to take.

Yes, they are brave. But Boeing isn't focusing on going to Mars entirely, SpaceX entirely exists to do so, and SpaceX has better engineers and a better CEO imo. SpaceX is so awesome.

Yes, but it's hardly a big win for capitalism, otherwise every aerospace company would be doing it. I'm a huge fan of what Musk and Bezos are doing in space, but they are the exception rather than the status quo. If SpaceX were publicly traded there's no way they could invest in such long term goals. The profit motive is inherently short sighted, which is why Boeing and Lockheed haven't innovated in space in years. If anything, the level of innovation we're seeing currently is a rare win for public-private partnerships.

SpaceX would not exist without the ISS contracts. It accounts for a minor number of their launches, but a major stream of revenue. Three consecutive failures of Falcon 1 had completely bankrupted the company. NASA's COTS contract saved them.

I think having that competition will push SpaceX to do the task more quickly or more efficiently, so competition will help in this, even if SpaceX are going to win by and far.

Uhhhh Prado,

Boeing doesn't sell planes to Iran

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/22/494984109/u-s-officials-approve-deal-with-iran-for-boeing-planes
It happened recently. Technically it's with Iran Air.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/world/middleeast/iran-airbus-boeing-aircraft.html?_r=0

*Googles*

Oh look, Boeing is selling planes to Iran

Iran had been desperately needing to upgrade its fleet for years - the sanctions had prevented it and Iranian air safety had been plummetting as a result. They jumped as soon as the sanctions were lifted to get that deal done.

Yeah, I had forgotten those sanctions were lifted

Easy to do given they were such a minor thing that nobody cared about

Speaking of space policy (were we?) I found this article rather interesting. Clearly one side had done a lot more homework than the other.

http://www.spacenewsmag.com/feature/u-s-election-2016-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump-weigh-in-on-u-s-space-policy/

I think you'll find that's true with most issues, Leon lol.

And HR, I didn't know which sanctions were lifted. Never delved into it at all. I just looked into what we got in return for it. That's what most US sources focused on.

"I think you'll find that's true with most issues, Leon lol."

Yeah, but TrPrado said that type of thread should be locked, so he should want this thread locked too.

Stop leon. You're salty, I get it. But you gotta learn to pick your battles and the way you frame them.

This thread seems excessively heated. I think we should all space out for awhile

"Yeah, but TrPrado said that type of thread should be locked, so he should want this thread locked too."
Strange, I thought you'd be happy I proved you can make threads that encourage conservative ideas without them getting locked.

"Strange, I thought you'd be happy"

well that was pretty idealistic

But really, I've recently been gaining quite a bit of respect for Boeing.

Tory Bruno is doing wonderful things for ULA. Exactly what they need to compete with SpaceX.

If they hadn't made moves, they would've been left in the dust. It was necessary for business. Its not just contracts they'd be losing, but talent as well.

For the uninitiated, ULA is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin so that they don't compete for space launches. They have a great track record of reliable launches and high prices.

The rocket explosion at SpaceX was a good tipping point to signal the potential to throw a hat in the ring.

Yep. SpaceX just needs more time to fine tune things, and then they'll drive prices way down.

It'l be interesting if they'll be able to match NASA though. After all, when it comes to space the public agencies are way, way, way, way, way ahead.

The public agencies aren't funding space efforts anymore though. NASA has become much more dedicated to environmental research.

NASA still leads the world in planetary science. It will be interesting to see whether that is still the case when the Red Dragon missions happen. SpaceX will need access to NASA's deep space network to communicate with the thing, but they are funding it themselves. It's really quite unprecedented that a private company will try to land on another planet and they will lose money doing it.