Well, I was trying to separate myself from this absurd proposition. But let me take one more swing. You will remember that the Shuttle program was *dramatically* descoped in order to come anywhere close to being on what ended up being a sustainable budget. And let’s not even talk about ISS. By this historical guideline, I guess you’re saying that once VSE is dramatically descoped (maybe it’ll be Apollo on herbal vitamins, instead of steroids?) we’ll have funds to do other stuff. That descope will have some substantial impacts on the national value equation and, in short, I thnk the nation would really rather not wait.

My group has changed its focus to ELVs for the short term, the goal now is to encourage these nations to human rate their launchers and gain experience by flying to the Russian Space Station anytime after 2015. We also feel they should be encouraged to make the extra iteration to unmanned heavy lift. From the looks of it, the reusable retrofittable era is still a long way off. As long as they continue to brag about dumping trash filled Progresses into the sea, the post-NASA era will remain the ELV era.

US – Delta IV Medium
Russia – Soyuz
China – Long March 2F
Japan – H-IIC
Europe – Ariane V
India – GSLV++ ?

Brazil – ???

Any other players? South Africa? Australia?

If the vast majority don’t agree, I strongly recommend that they consider learning japanese, mandarin, portuguese and hindi.

> So, this appropriation would have paid for less than six hundred thousand ships.

Yes, much less than 600,000 ships — about 1,000 maybe. If they funded nothing else.

> The current annual military budget would pay for fewer, but still
> several hundred thousand Apollo missions even at $2 billion a flight.

> Oops. That should, of course, be several hundred Apollo missions. . . .

Not even that. The DoD budget for 2006 is $419 billion. That would pay for just two hundred Apollo missions, not several hundred.

Leaving that aside, goofy comparisons like that are the reason why space activists are not taken seriously. The United States is not going to cancel the entire Defense Department to fund hundreds of Apollo missions. Nor should it, in my opinion. The vast majority of Americans would agree with me on that.

And 200 Apollo missions (600 astronauts) would still not compare to European settlement of the New World.

If you’re serious about lunar settlement, you need a means of transportation that *doesn’t* require one-half percent of the defense budget just to launch three astronauts. (Or even six.)

One can hardly call it an SDV any longer.

Let’s just refer to it as the HLV. In fact, let’s not even call it the post Shuttle era anymore, let’s refer to it as the post NASA era, since barring any dramatic developments, it will be the ELV era anyways.

— Donald

In 1510, the British government authorized 700 pounds for the fitting of two ships, one of 400 tons displacement and one of 300 tons. Later, an additional 316 pounds was authorized for fitting out the ships.

= 1,316 poinds of silver.

But in 1512, the British Parliament passed a single military appropriation of 600,000 pounds

So, this appropriation would have paid for less than six hundred thousand ships.

The current annual military budget would pay for fewer, but still several hundred thousand Apollo missions even at $2 billion a flight.

— Donald

And you sound just like the people who make foolish and spurious analogies.

You sound just like the people who, they claim, were all in favor of the war in Iraq, but not the way that the Pentagon chose to implement it. It is too nuanced. Or, to stick to pre-Norman English, it’s cleaving hairs.

Chris Mann: There’s also serious questions about whether the V [in VSE] was supposed to be ironic all along.

Or cynical rather than ironic.

It puts the budget further into deficit while achieving nothing, at the cost of cancelled science.

There’s also serious questions about whether the V was supposed to bee ironic all along.