Unless you can give specific examples of what such “dominance” might consist of — and technically, politically plausible scenarios for how they might be achieved — I’ll keep chuckling.

The “high ground” hysteria of late 1957 was — or should have been — effectively shot down by the Killian Committee’s pamphlet five months later:“Introduction to Outer Space

It remains for the most part earthbound, no matter how much anyone chants “Red Menace Yellow Peril go zoom.”

That’s the surest way to hobble their program! Get them involved in ISS and then just watch the paralysis slowly take hold…

Socialist chest-pounding is nothing new.

Be careful about the name calling – the Chinese of the 21st century are much more savvy capitalists than we appear to be in the US – and much smarter about managing their transition from Communism of old to Free market economy. They watched the Soviet implosion and decided that managed transition was a better way than unmanaged chaos. Of course, now that Russia seems to have finished their implosion, the new Russia 2.0 is a much more dangerous, and aggressive beast, than Russia under Yeltsin (good article in last week’s Economist on that which I highly suggest you all read).

I am much more concerned about the paltry product safety inspections taking place for Chinese-manufactured goods.

I’m more concerned about our own lack of basic regulatory oversight on our meat plants, vegetable processing, and drug regulation than a few toys with lead based paints coming out of china….

And as far as the Chinese, I still firmly believe that a cooperative arrangement should be pursued in terms of our civil space efforts. And as for China sending people to the Moon, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Socialist chest-pounding is nothing new. One would think the experience of the Cold War would have taught us at least that much. In any case, I am much more concerned about the paltry product safety inspections taking place for Chinese-manufactured goods.

There are strengths and weaknesses in all of the parties (government, big contractors, little NewSpace companies), if your goal is reducing the ISS cargo and human transport gaps, or for that matter cheap reliable space access in general. I wouldn’t suggest just sitting back and waiting for the private sector if you have an ISS problem you need solved. It might, though, be better than Weldon’s plan to give the private sector a huge incentive to solve the problem(s), in the form of major COTS development funding as milestones (measurable matching funding and technical progress) are met. The prospect of lots of ISS business is of course another incentive. If a competitor (and it doesn’t matter if they’re Shuttle-derived, Falcon/Dragon, EELV, or some other technical solution, nor does it matter if they’re a big contractor, NewSpace, or a team with a mix of both) can solve these NASA problems while setting themselves up for other business in the process (whether it’s launching comsats or running rocket theme parks – it doesn’t matter), all the better.

With good business incentives, I’d expect the private sector to be able to solve the problem if it can be solved at all. They’re already doing a lot of the space transportation work (much of it through traditional aerospace government contracts).

The tricky part is convincing those that benefit from the current system, and do hard work within it, that they also have more to gain (and contribute) with a change.

As long as we maintain military superiority, I say more power to them! If they want to be fools and waste their money on flags and footprints, that means less money spent on other more threatening things.

Lockheed and others are still waiting for signs of that NASA money. Last I heard NASA was giving that money to the Russians.

forgive me, but I really have to pick on one thing you said.

>>>At worst America will simply be humiliated during the hiatus of US manned flights starting in late 2010….

There will be a hiatus of U.S. *government* crewed space vehicles between the last flight of the Shuttle and the first flight of Orion on Ares1.

That is NOT the same thing as a hiatus in U.S. crewed flights. Either Dragon could fly, or SpaceDev’s HL-20-derivative, or t/Space’s CXV, or somebody’s capsule on an Atlas 5. There are a LOT of ways that Americans could fly to space on U.S. launch vehicles before 2015.

And Ray lays out a good concept for how to make more of these happen sooner.

– Jim

I just had the more-modest goal of reducing the gap in my pretend proposal, not eliminating it. What I had in mind was a way to reduce the gap more than Weldon’s idea of sending more money to Ares I/Orion. (Not that I think this COTS++ plan would be implemented – I just wanted to point out how wasteful it would be to throw more money at, of all things in the space industry, Ares I/Orion).

If the COTS++ program I’m imagining got the full Ares I/Orion budget (pre and post Shuttle), a number of different competing approaches could be tried. The multi-player competition, and the strict COTS requirements to meet measurable technical and business milestones before funding levels are awarded, should sharpen the skills of the competitors. Looking at how big those Ares I/Orion figures you posted are, and adding the existing COTS funds and the pre-2010 Ares I/Orion budget, you’d have quite a space transportation effort. Add in significant “skin in the game” from the competitors and you might hope enough money would be there. Allow multiple competitors – a Shuttle-derived concept, an EELV concept, SpaceX, and 1 or 2 others (possibly 1 with existing Russian vehicles on U.S. launches to hedge bets) and you’d be trying everything under the sun, and giving every political constituency a shot. Note that in addition to the ISS human transportation gap, there’s also the potential of an ISS cargo gap that some of these could try to solve without even attempting human ISS transportation. They’d just be eligible for less money from NASA.

The Florida voters shouldn’t oppose this because it gives multiple systems that would likely launch from there a shot. With commercial “skin in the game” on top of the NASA money, there would be more money flowing around making space industry voters happy for years. Note that the workers’ alternative is a single highly risky NASA program with a huge gap where the operations folks will be twiddling thumbs, or if the gap grows too much, fired.

The big and little contractors should like it because the single NASA program is risky for them, too. They’d have to put up some money, but the payoff would be a space transportation system that can not only get ISS business, but would also, one would hope, be competitive in the current global commercial space launch business (comsats and the like), as well as potential future commercial business opportunities like Bigelow-destined or similar human transportation.

I also suspect that this “free-for-all” would result in a space industry better-positioned for getting to the Moon, if that’s what’s decided next decade, in spite of the advertised ease of going from Ares I ISS transportation to the full ESAS system.

“It’s fine to argue for more spending on any number of NASA programs. But Weldon needs a better policy argument than the Chinese paper tiger bogeyman.”

I agree (and actually I agree with 98% of most of your posts). Even if he’s only concerned with the gap, there are better arguments. Having NASA pay for foreign space transportation services that can compete with U.S. space transportation services is one reason to shrink the gap. Ares I/Orion themselves are also a big argument to shrink the gap. With a big gap, and countless Shuttle workers needed for Ares 1/Orion, lots of people may be sitting around getting paid for a long time waiting for Ares 1/Orion, or Shuttle may be kept even longer (either scenario taking money from Ares 1/Orion in a viscious cycle).

Anyway, any one of these, if developed to their full potential, strike me as being more useful than Ares I/Orion:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=4446