You’re still missing the point. Nobody is “giving” the USAF this mission — it is already in the USAF’s domain and it is based on military requirements. You make it sound like it’s an option to give military spaceplane development to another service or federal agency. If that’s your point, then which one do you propose? C’mon, state your case why military spaceplanes should be developed by someone else. Be specific. So who? The Army? Navy? NASA? Dept of Energy? CIA? Treasury Dept? Coast Guard? How about National Parks Service?

If so how do you fix it? Draft the retirees back and fire the Generation X enegineers that are running the programs today?

I did not realize that reading comprehension was so lousy on this site, but you and Spacer clearly have a problem with it.

The point: That anybody proposing giving USAF a new space mission (human spaceflight) needs to explain why the current totally messed up USAF space acquisition process should be trusted with this.

And because you don’t seem to understand this, here goes: DSP is a “legacy system” developed decades ago. Milstar is a “legacy system” developed over a decade ago (and it was a mess). GPS is a “legacy system” developed a long time ago. It doesn’t matter that there are still a few production satellites being launched today–the tough part is developing something new, not building bird #25.

When you give USAF the job of developing something new, you are giving it to the people who are screwing up _now_, not the people who did a good job back in the 1980s. Since we don’t have a time-traveling DeLorean, we’re stuck with the acquisition system that currently exists, and it is a total mess. So anybody arguing in favor of USAF doing a new complicated space project has to explain why this time it’s not going to go the same way as SBIRS, Space Radar, NPOESS, TSAT, A-EHF, etc.

The last DSP satellite was just launched 1 year ago. The most recent GPS satellite was launched months ago. Milstar is less than a decade old. All of these and more are launched on USAF rockets. All of these systems are currently operated by the USAF. I think you need to understand what a current program is and not cherry-pick future programs that have complications. Besides, you haven’t even attempted to make a case for how NASA would do SBIR or TSAT “better”? It is impossible since NASA does not build those kinds of systems for the defense community. So again, what is your point? That NASA should start building military satellites and military spaceplanes? You have no point actually other than to complain about a select few AF programs over cost/behind budget and make no substantive recommendation.

That link didn’t contain all of her words, either. In fact, it describes them as excerpts. And even a full broadcast transcript doesn’t provide all of her words, because those objective editors at ABC trimmed out many of the things she said to make her appear to be as clueless as possible.

But that was not the reason it was killed, as noted also in the article. And the problems were being resolved as was also stated. Please read the article entirely.

However the MOL is a red herring you threw in. The observation I made was on the X-20 which was moving forward as a follow-on to the X-15, leveraging the experience of the X-15. I stand by the statement that the X-20 would have allowed a separate path to manned orbital flight that would have enable private manned space access decades ago.

We will be very lucky if the EELV based Shuttle replacements have any where near the capability planned for the X-20.

“As one former senior Air Force official once put it, the program always seemed to be one year and one billion dollars more away from completion.”

Read more carefully.

MOL was an expensive project, and by 1967 it was clashing with another space project, a massive robotic spacecraft designated the KH-9 HEXAGON.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1057/1

But the cost seems reasonable given the technology it was pioneering.

however I also expect Nixon didn’t want the politcal issues associated with a high profile military space program on the upswing while NASA was winding down Apollo and doing Skylab.

The nice things about robotic spy satellites, the general press and public doesn’t pay any attention to their comings and goings….

Also, in due respect to both NASA and MilSpace, New Space has also had its own program troubles.

SpaceshipTwo is one good example, with its launch date constantly slipping due to Burt Rutan trying to reinvent the wheel by building a new engine for it.

Elon Musk originally argued that Falcon 1 would be operation within two years for $50 million. It appears to be on the high side of $100 million in development cost and is 4 years behind schedule.

Neither Burt or Elon has money limitations, they don’t even ahve to deal with Congress, so you must assume the program delays have another cause related to program management decisions.

Then we have the Kistler K-1, which has been around since the early 1990’s draining money (how many hundreds of milllions of dollars were raised for it?) and always seems a day late and dollar short from flying.

So program management problems don’t seen the exclusive preserve of NASA and MilSpace. It seems to also be part of New Space.