Richard Shelby did more damage to America's space program than any person in history. His insistence on putting pork barrel projects ahead of important projects like orbital fuel depots set NASA back by decades. Had he gotten his way, the US would still be reliant on Soyuz to get into orbit. Good riddance to him.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/so-long-richard-shelby-and-thanks-for-all-the-pork/
#Space #SpacePolicy #NASA #Spaceflight #USSenate #USPolitics #Pork #Boeing #ULA #SpaceX
You've overlooking the political realities, though.
Without those pork barrel projects, it's not clear that NASA would have received even the funding that it got, as politicians weren't all that interested in diverting federal dollars away from their closer-to-home projects.
