Citizens Against Government Waste ( CAGW) tracks pork barrel with the same zeal as a televangelist and if you look at everything NASA that they track the pork barrel spending they find generally has little to do with launching. http://www.cagw.org/site/Search?query=nasa&inc=10
It has more to do with, for example, nasa travel practices, 25 million spent for planes to shuffle employees around rather then using commerical carries.

“performence”???

I assume you meant “importance”.

Whatever you meant, this claim is totally out of touch with reality.

VSE is of such prime importance that its 2 or 3 congressional advocates (very sad) can’t even acquire a one-time increase of $1 billion.

VSE is of such prime importance that not one leading presidential candidate — of any persuasion — has said they would increase NASA’s budget to pay for it.

VSE is of such prime importance, that of the half dozen presidential candidates that have been pandering for votes in key states, none of them can bring themselves to REALLY PANDER for space votes in Florida.

Not any of the many candidates who pandered on ethanol in Iowa.

Not even Mitt Romney, who recently completed a major pandering event in Michigan, where this so-called “conservative Republican” proposed a federal program to bail out the auto industry.

– Al

To the extent that the ESAS study was compromised by political considerations of keeping the Shuttle workforce employed, vice pursuing the quickest, most efficient path to getting astronauts to ISS and the Moon after Shuttle’s retirement, Mr. Simberg is right that Constellation (with the exception of COTS) is pork-like. It’s also noteworthy that a significant amount of Ares I work has been awarded on a sole-source basis rather than competitively, another characteristic in common with earmarks and pork.

“Considering the numerous space efforts breaking out in othert [sic] countries,”

And those would be? Evidence?

FWIW…

Since I never claimed that it was, I don’t know (as is often the case) what your point is. My point is that where and by whom ESAS is built is much more important than whether or not it actually achieves its goals.

The ESAS is seriously flawed, yes, but it actually inadvertently exposed the right answer; dust off the NLS from MSFC, upgrade it to the newer engines available (DIRECT) and go fly it with only minimal changes to the existing infrastructure.
actionforspace said ”Apollo went to the moon in 8 years. They had more problems … than constellation will ever have.” Apollo had real leadership when it needed it; Von Braun. Constellation has Griffin. That’s a bigger problem than Apollo ever had.

I disagree, and cite history as my evidence.