Your argument is specious because private enterprise needs other things besides markets. Investment, for example.

Numerous attempts to raise money have been undermined by anti-CATS statements from NASA officials. Those statements are echoed by many VSE supporters (including Mr. Trotter). It’s significant that your sole example is an internet billionaire who does not have to convince investors.

While you and Mr. Trotter complain that NASA has “only” has $17 billion a year to spend on programs that will make space exploration more expensive, the private sector doesn’t even have a billion dollars a year to spend on CATS. Furthermore, it’s the private sector that bears fhe burden for VSE and other expensive government programs.

I’d still like to bravely explore ways to get a human being to and from LEO, and giving them a determined (like modern automakers) probability of survival should the car crash or in this case rocket veer off course or explode.

Hitler survived a bomb blast, and scientist years later re-enacted the scenario to determine why.

Why are there no destructive tests of humna rockets like human cars?

Is that too much to ask or do with some fraction of 17 billion shrinking dollars a year?

I don’t believe either of your choices, Cecil. While I do support the VSE and its goals of creating a permanent and sustainable spacefaring infrastructure, I do not support the Griffen/ESAS/ESMD/whatever plan, which I feel is very Mars centric, and unsustainable. I do support the use of a lot of things we have now to get started now on building a permanent space-faring capability.

Let’s see, if we just do four launches a year of EELVs with 20mt payloads for the seven or so years it’ll take us to get this SDHLV/HLLV/ILV/whatever mega-booster up and running, we could have already put 560 mt of assets into orbit, with another 40 mt for each SDHLV 100 mt launch. So that means it would take about…um…4 1/2 years for the SDHLV to catch up with what EELVs could have put in orbit (at about 900 mt!).

That’s also 46 EELV launches, which is a nice swath of production to sow your expenses across. And there will hopefully be satellite launches and Bigelow balloon launches and EELV-class CEV launches as well, requiring production of even more. These are the kinds of production rates that help to bring the cost-to-consumer of launch vehicles down to a reasonable price.

Nine SDHLVs is not a big production run. I honestly don’t see each SDHLV launch costing less than $500.0Mn (I’m guessing that the “life-support” for a 100 mt payload prior to launch is going to eat NASA’s lunch). So that’s $4.5Bn. Twelve years of overhead & infrastructure at say $2.0Bn/yr, gives us about a $28.5Bn cost. That means that each of the 46 EELV launches would have to cost less than (drumroll please…) $619.6Mn. Good thing we’re not using the Titan!

I have no interest in my tax dollars being used to fulfill a stale 70 year old Von Braunian dream, nor a private launch system just for NASA. We’re in a new century with new goals, and those include the entire Solar system. I am in favor of creating a permanent space travel infrastructure that is accessible to business and commerce so that the U.S. can continue to create new industries and products that we can sell to the rest of the world for a fair price. So where does my stance fit into your dichotomy?

If it won’t “wash in the larger world” it is only because we have ceded that battle to those who try to paint highway paving as the ultimate in government waste. We need to win back that battle because money spent on asphalt and concrete paving is not waste; it is an investment in the future. It is money we cannot afford NOT to spend and that is the point we need to press at every opportunity. So long as we accept the argument of “the larger world” rather than meet it head on and say, “No, you are wrong” we’re going to be stuck justifying ever dime of American money spent to advance road paving, every year. That is a loosing battle in the long run.
05:50 PM

No we’ve not, the majority of space advocates repeat the refrain “We can’t afford to” much more often that they declare “We can’t afford NOT to”.

That has to change, because we realy, really “can’t afford not to”.

— Donald

If it won’t “wash in the larger world” it is only because we have ceded that battle to those who try to paint NASA as the ultimate in government waste. We need to win back that battle because money spent on NASA is not waste; it is an investment in the future. It is money we cannot afford NOT to spend and that is the point we need to press at every opportunity. So long as we accept the argument of “the larger world” rather than meet it head on and say, “No, you are wrong” we’re going to be stuck justifying ever dime of NASA money, every year. That is a loosing battle in the long run.

First of all, the VSE in no way seriously damages Edward’s plan. If the alt.space crowd can really do it so much cheaper, there are enough markets out there that are not under NASA’s direct influence (comsats, tourism, some space science and applications) for them to demonstrate their skills, as SpaceX is showing. I’d be a lot more convinced by NASA conspiracy theories if alt.space had demonstrated the goods.

My fears with the current VSE plan mostly have to do with it growing unnecessarily complex and expensive. The basic plan has my full support and and it is the only politically-realistic plan for human spaceflight going forward. We finally have the government signing on to an expansionist space policy (much to my surprise, Congress, apparently, even more than the Administration), we would be complete fools to quibble over anything but the strategy to make the basic plan work.

Let me state it again: in spite of my extreme distaste for the Bush Administration, this space plan has my full and unconditional support.

The only place I would urge Cecil caution is his argument about NASA’s percentage of the budget. I agree with your argument, but I don’t think it will wash in the larger world. The larger government signing on to this plan was conditional on it not costing significantly more than we spend now. If it turns out that it does, we enter a whole new, and much more difficult, ball game. If NASA’s budget stays more-or-less where it is, the rest of the government is unlikely to complain too loudly. If it dramatically increases, everyone whose budget got cut will be screaming so loudly that Congress is unlikely to fail to hear.

The political reality still remains, whatever our technical plan or problems, if we want this plan to survive over the long haul the solutions had better live within NASA’s current budget.

— Donald