It doesn’t. This is about pork, not national security. ATK doesn’t want to give up their contract.

Personally, I honestly do not understand NASA’s approach, WHY drag your car along when you are taking a cruise ship across the ocean?

WHY drag your 20 ton EARTH landing orbiter to the MOON? At this stage of our space program we should have a lot more vehicle types. Use a fleet of 3-4 man capsules and planes to put up our astronauts to the ISS, use a manned shuttle POD to dock with the Inflatable or Metal “can” that serves as your travel habitat and dock that with the ARES V lunar lander and EDS while sending the robotic shuttle pod back to the ISS and hybernate. You do not have to bring your orbiter back to earth at the higher Lunar return speed and it lowers TPS costs because the Lunar Habit stays in LEO and gets reserviced for the next lunar mission.

We should have mastered a simple commerical “POP & DROP” system by now. Heck it would be like bungie jumping or an extreme sport. Cheap Ballistic returns done at a commerical rate can be shown as a business case, and that is the bottom line. It wouldn’t be pretty, it would do no science or site seeing just pop and drop at a commerical flight rate.

The russians are already jacking their rates and we will be seeing 40 mil a pop now instead of 20-25. ESPECIALLY since NASA paid then 719 million for 15 astronauts at 41 million a head and three cargo launches, they run about 105 mil from the 719.

They are creating a back log of customers because of the shuttle being retired.
America REALLY has to get over this “one vehicle for all” mentally, Not only is it inefficient thus more expensive but ALSO lowers productivity. Can you imagine if the only vehicle america had on the road were semi trucks? we have literally hundreds of vehicle types for a LIMITED land area BUT for the VASTNESS of space we feel ONE should do the trick. To me, that is insanity on a bun.

Although NASA now accepts astronaut applications from qualified individuals whether civilian or military, virtually all shuttle mission commanders still come from a military background.

After President Bush appointed Sean O’Keefe the agency’s administrator in 2001, the new director pressed for closer cooperation between the U.S. space agency and the Department of Defense.

“Because of the size and weight of some of the classified DOD payloads,” Nelson said, “the shuttle was the only way to put them up.”

“I see no reason to keep an artificial separation if a NASA program has a capability that the DOD can use. There’s no reason not to take advantage of it,”said George “Pinky” Nelson

Retired Air Force Col. William “Pete” Knight agrees. In 1967, he attained a speed record of 4,520 mph while piloting one of NASA’s X-15 rocket research aircraft over the Mojave.

“The X-15 was a joint Air Force and NASA program. It was a benefit of both parties, who each brought something to the table,”

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., member of the Senate committee that oversees NASA’s budget, has urged O’Keefe to be cautious about strengthening NASA’s cooperation with the Pentagon.

Senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon of the independent Brookings Institution in Washington believes collaboration between NASA and DOD is valid, though, he noted, “the military will always have its secrets.”

“Military, NASA linked from start”
By Wayne Specht, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, February 10, 2003
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=12459&archive=true

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, pronounced /ˈnæsÉ™/) is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation’s public space program. NASA was established on July 29, 1958, by the National Aeronautics and Space Act.[3]
In addition to the space program, it is also responsible for long-term civilian and *military aerospace research.*

Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (of which von Braun’s team was a part) and the Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA.

Representatives from the U.S. Army (M.L. Raines, LTC, USA), Navy (P.L. Havenstein, CDR, USN) and Air Force (K.G. Lindell, COL, USAF) were selected/requested to provide assistance to the NASA Space Task Group through coordination with the existing U.S. military research and defense contracting infrastructure, and technical assistance resulting from experimental aircraft (and the associated military test pilot pool) development in the 1950s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA

maybe not a little brother but you can not deny they are at the very least RELATIVES.

Vladislaw

It is not.

Vladislaw

Then you weren’t paying attention. I was kind of amazed at the time that no one, at least no one in the press, including the space press, seemed to think it a conflict of interest, or an issue at all.

It’s interesting what’s being reported now about Scott Horowitz. I hadn’t realized this whole revolving door thing was going on with him. Might have been nice to know at the time they awarded the Ares contract. Anyone know what if any role he played in the contract award, or did he recuse himself due to possible conflicts of interest?