Why SpaceX non hire non-US Citizens even if Elon Musk himself is non American but South African citizen, I heard about ITAR but why?

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Steel said:

The problem with ESA is that only a few countries get noticeable benefits from its budget (the ones with large aerospace industries, so UK, Germany, maybe Italy and that's about it) so only a few countries have an incentive to fund it. For instance, what incentive does Spain or Poland have to pay into the ESA budget if they know most of that money will end up in another country? And let's not even mention the whole political fall out because of Brexit.

It's a much simpler situation across the Atlantic: NASA benefits the US, the US government funds NASA.

LOL. They want to have their cake (work for NASA) and eat it too?

The US is made of States, and the States are often as large (by any measure that matters) as EU member states. This is precisely why NASA is not vertically integrated... why NASA buys from many contractors, and why those contractors are in many States.

If the EU wanted a decently large space agency, they'd spread the facilities around to secure votes---just like NASA did.

I'm only partisan to the extent that I want my federal jobs program (NASA) to spend my tax dollars _here_. The EU does exactly the same thing with ESA. This is why ESA makes stuff like the SM for Orion---on missions where they partner, instead of efficiently just writing a check to NASA (or Boeing, or SpaceX, whatever), they supply hardware that is built in the EU. ESA is a jobs program, too, after all.

I'd think the best place for European advocacy over space would be to secure larger ESA budgets, not to demand that the US do what the EU would never do.

Edited August 25, 2017 by tater

[Elthy]

If you want to work that much for a country you could become a citizen of it. If you are qualified enough to work in aerospace they will propably take you with open arms.

BTW: ESA spreads its budget into its member states according to how much they contribute to the budget.

[Pawelk198604]

11 minutes ago, Steel said:

The problem with ESA is that only a few countries get noticeable benefits from its budget (the ones with large aerospace industries, so UK, Germany, maybe Italy and that's about it) so only a few countries have an incentive to fund it. For instance, what incentive does Spain or Poland have to pay into the ESA budget if they know most of that money will end up in another country? And let's not even mention the whole political fall out because of Brexit.

It's a much simpler situation across the Atlantic: NASA benefits the US, the US government funds NASA.

Brexit would not affect anything because ESA is not part of EU but separate organization, but some of eurocreats want take care of ESA too, but ESA was not interested.

I'm from Poland, my country is full member of it since 2011 i wonder does this mean that my countryman could apply for Astronaut positions during next selection?  

[tater]

1 minute ago, Elthy said:

BTW: ESA spreads its budget into its member states according to how much they contribute to the budget.

Interesting. The US doesn't do this (otherwise everything would be in the big States that pay the most in taxes like CA, NY, TX, etc). The EU perhaps needs to be a little more Federalist in that respect, throw bones to the large players, obviously, but secure the needed votes by making sure there are facilities all over that no one wants to lose.

Yeah, that's how the sausage gets made, like it or not.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

...the US government in particular is not going to let itself get into a 'missile gap' situation...

Hehehe, good one!

[YNM]

On the point of ESA : ESA is EU's space agency. The one that might not be linked to EU is the ESO. I'm not going to comment how budget is handled - if you're a proper engineer all you care is that the work is done properly AND people is with you on understanding - but almost every EU member does have something to send for ESA. For starters, most things that goes into the making of a satellite usually involve Airbus (formerly this ?), which AFAIK have it's operation scattered everywhere across the EU. Other smaller firms do exist, like this one. So if your EU country ever think "ESA is not giving us enough", then think about what your country could provide where others are lacking or where it's not being catered properly.

All that aside, if you aspire to work within aerospace sector, your options isn't just across the border - many satellites launched by europe, india and china have to use non-US satellite bus. Even, if you really want it and qualify nicely for it, I could only imagine you might be received with open hands on the other side.

Edited August 25, 2017 by YNM

[Steel]

35 minutes ago, tater said:

Interesting. The US doesn't do this (otherwise everything would be in the big States that pay the most in taxes like CA, NY, TX, etc). The EU perhaps needs to be a little more Federalist in that respect, throw bones to the large players, obviously, but secure the needed votes by making sure there are facilities all over that no one wants to lose.

Yeah, that's how the sausage gets made, like it or not.

But as @Pawelk198604 said earlier, ESA is seperate from the EU (and besides, the European parliament is a bit of a joke to many countries anyway), so these votes you keep talking about them needing to get don't exist. ESA can't be operated in a Federal way because there is no government controlling how it is funded. All that ESA truly is is basically a piece of paper that says all these separate space agencies will cooperate towards common goals as long as everyone pays into the funding pool. Thus, to get everyone to keep paying, they've got to get back out at least what they put in.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Steel

[tater]

5 minutes ago, Steel said:

But as @Pawelk198604 said earlier, ESA is seperate from the EU (and besides, the European parliament is a bit of a joke to many countries anyway), so these votes you keep talking about them needing to get don't exist. ESA can't be operated in a Federal way because there is no government controlling how it is funded. All that ESA truly is is basically a piece of paper that says all these separate space agencies will cooperate towards common goals as long as everyone pays into the funding pool. Thus, to get everyone to keep paying, they've got to get back out at least what they put in.

Sounds like instead of asking the US to change its laws, he should be advocating for a constitutional convention in the EU to just become a country and solve the problems of acting sorta kinda like a country, but only in some areas.

[Steel]

11 minutes ago, tater said:

Sounds like instead of asking the US to change its laws, he should be advocating for a constitutional convention in the EU to just become a country and solve the problems of acting sorta kinda like a country, but only in some areas.

Oh yeah, I'm 100% ok with the US having laws like that. I was just pointing out the fundamental differences between NASA and ESA.

Anyway I'm from the UK, so apparently the EU isn't our problem any more anyway...

[tater]

LOL. If I come off as attacking the EU, I'm not. What I want to see is real competitors and partners for NASA. Meaning the same sort of budget as a function of GDP. The more dollars/euros/rubles/pounds/yuan/etc we see spent on space, the better!

Imagine Skylon with a budget that was more than what NASA spends on coffee every year?

[Nefrums]

Yes. It would be great if ESA could get the same budget share as NASA does, and even that is not that large nowadays.

While the GDP of US is ~10% larger than EU, NASA's budget is about 200% larger than ESAs.

 

[tater]

6 minutes ago, Nefrums said:

Yes. It would be great if ESA could get the same budget share as NASA does, and even that is not that large nowadays.

While the GDP of US is ~10% larger than EU, NASA's budget is about 200% larger than ESAs.

 

The NASA budget is 19.5 B$. ESA is ~6.8 B$, so more like 1/3 of NASA's. 

On top of that, the US military also has space spending that exceeds the ESA budget (it's around 8 B$).

NASA spending is the same it has been for decades, it's only "not that large" compared to the height of Apollo.

Edited August 25, 2017 by tater

[Nefrums]

1 hour ago, Nefrums said:

NASA's budget is about 200% larger than ESAs.

 

1 hour ago, tater said:

The NASA budget is 19.5 B$. ESA is ~6.8 B$, so more like 1/3 of NASA's. 

 

Yes those two are very different....   

 

Edited August 25, 2017 by Nefrums

[tater]

More importantly, the USAF (among other services) spends 8 billion. This alone is enough to keep a launch provider in business. (on topic to issues surrounding SpaceX hiring).

 

[Pawelk198604]

I heard that people working on aerospace industry in USA cannot leave their country to work in another country, they must wait several years to do so.

 

It's resemble me labor law in my country Poland, when you work in IT industry or even advertising industry, when you quiet or being fired you must wait up to 3 years for work in other company in the same branch, but it's must be written in you employment contract prevision, gut former employer must pay portion of you last salary for that time 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

On 25.08.2017 at 7:30 PM, tater said:

The NASA budget is 19.5 B$. ESA is ~6.8 B$, so more like 1/3 of NASA's. 

On top of that, the US military also has space spending that exceeds the ESA budget (it's around 8 B$).

For all that money, KSP community would already be finishing the Mars colonization and preparing the conceptual design of a Venusian floating base.
Because we know how and don't know the word "impossible".

 

[KSK]

Spoiler

If this Science and Spaceflight forum is anything to go by, the KSP community would burn through that budget with nothing much to show for it other than the sinking realisation that being able to play a moderately complex game that includes an orbital-mechanics-made-easy feature, doesn't actually equip you to design, build and fly real rockets. 

There are some notable exceptions of course but they're outnumbered by the 'it would be easy if you just did this' armchair engineers around here.

 

Edited August 27, 2017 by KSK

[wumpus]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

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For all that money, KSP community would already be finishing the Mars colonization and preparing the conceptual design of a Venusian floating base.
Because we know how and don't know the word "impossible".

 

We would have also blown up several hundred human astronauts because we insist on launching rockets that are impossible to survive.
- unless you've found a way to "revert to launch" that NASA hasn't found.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

5 hours ago, KSK said:

If this Science and Spaceflight forum is anything to go by, the KSP community would burn through that budget with nothing much to show for it other than the sinking realisation that being able to play a moderately complex game that includes an orbital-mechanics-made-easy feature, doesn't actually equip you to design, build and fly real rockets. 

 

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

We would have also blown up several hundred human astronauts because we insist on launching rockets that are impossible to survive.
- unless you've found a way to "revert to launch" that NASA hasn't found.

Don't forget that KSP community knows about rockets and space flights much, much more than rocket scientists knew in early 1950s...

 

[insert_name]

51 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

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Don't forget that KSP community knows about rockets and space flights much, much more than rocket scientists knew in early 1950s...

 

Don't forget that that knowledge is basically public and yet most countries cannot develop an orbital launch vehicle.

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

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Don't forget that KSP community knows about rockets and space flights much, much more than rocket scientists knew in early 1950s...

 

Science is not the problem. Engineering is. And one of the main problems in any branch of engineering is that outsiders tend to think that getting things to work is trivial. Well, "problem" in the sense of "how hard can it be?"

[KSK]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

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Don't forget that KSP community knows about rockets and space flights much, much more than rocket scientists knew in early 1950s...

 

With some notable exceptions, I doubt it. Most of the KSP community knows about the rocket equation. Possibly. Or they'll just rely on KER to tell them the numbers. If they bother using numbers at all and aren't just relying on the good old-fashioned moar boosters and moar struts approach to rocket building. Likewise, take away the Map screen and most of the KSP community would never leave low Kerbin orbit.

After all this is a community which will reliably get itself in a knot over the mere mention of the dread beast Realism.

Tell the KSP community to put a V2 together from scratch (using a rocket that was demonstrably part of the state of the art in the early 1950s) and I doubt they'd do any better (and probably a lot worse) than a hobbyist rocket club, or a university engineering department, or any other group of motivated, practically minded people.

[kerbiloid]

We have books and computers. They didn't.
Also, V-2 has very counter-effective construction because it was designed in specific conditions.

[linuxgurugamer]

On 8/25/2017 at 2:00 PM, Nefrums said:

 

 

Yes those two are very different....   

 

NASA does a lot more than rockets.  The full name is National Aeronautical and Space Administration.  I suggest you take a look at the budget before equating NASA's budget with the ESA's budget

[KSK]

24 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

We have books and computers. They didn't.
Also, V-2 has very counter-effective construction because it was designed in specific conditions.

Spoiler

 

Neither of which points are at all relevant here. Books and computers are not the sole purview of the KSP community and the effectiveness or otherwise of the V2 is irrelevant. I used it as an example because it was a functioning rocket which your rocket scientists of the early 1950s would have known about. Therefore, from your argument, a rocket which the KSP community should be able to construct since they apparently know more about rockets and spaceflight than the rocket scientists of that era. 

My point was that the KSP community would be no better or worse than constructing it than many other groups of people. The notion that playing KSP makes you a competent rocket engineer is about as credible as the notion that playing SimCity makes you an architect.