NASA Signs Contract for Elon Musk's Starship, Even Though It's Never Launched Without Exploding

NASA has officially added SpaceX's enormous Starship rocket to its roster — despite the vehicle never having completed a single successful test flight, let alone a mission. The space agency announced last week that it had awarded SpaceX a "modification under the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to add Starship to their existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch service offerings." As the agency explains, these contracts "provide a broad range of commercial launch services for NASA’s planetary, Earth-observing, exploration, and scientific satellites." The news shouldn't come as a surprise at this point given SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's growing influence in the White House. His space company has made moves to take over key positions at the agency, highlighting Musk's glaring conflict of interest. Even Jared Isaacman, who's expected to be sworn in as NASA's next administrator soon, has a long history with SpaceX. But the company has struggled as of late to get the upper stage of its ... Read full article.