We “always pass that ‘point’ over” because such a notion is palpably insane. And your mindless repetition of it does nothing to ameliorate that.”

You’re correct Rand, which is rare in my view on anything having to do with Nasa. If he had said abandoning human space exploration, he would have been correct. Obama is killing HSF in America. It’s nuts to think SpaceX or ULA will go ape sh%t building LEO launchers on their nickel. Those firms will demand guarantees and full funding from the Congress. Why should Congress fund it when there are few district jobs involved? When Shuttle and Constellation jobs are gone so will Congressional support. Obama’s plan will give us the first Congress since 1960 when there are few Nasa jobs in members districts.

My guess is Obama’s April 15 HSF speech will be a defiant defense of his plans and not change many minds in Congress. With the 2010 elections looking terrible for the Dems, Congress will fund Shuttle and Constellation for 2010 and reject Obama’s plan. 2011 will give us another chance to shape HSF for America. Hopefully it will be more intelligent than Obama’s proposal.

I look upon this as yet another excuse to spend lots of money with little to show for it. Here we have the language of beginnings. That made sense when we had little hardware, no experience, no track record…I.C.G.O&O. but since then the above has been continually done by NASA, year after year after year since July 1958. Further: are they really so naive as to consider that “new” will be more “affordable”? Sorry, but…”it ain’t necessarily so”; and only if you have more money to spend in any case.

Most of the results of previous research are now just “archives of interest to the Space Cadets”. One of them resulting in the “backrooms revolt” of DIRECT: studiously ignored or countered with another NASA research-based proposal by NASA top brass to save face.

We’re now proposing to do it AGAIN?!? How is THAT going to make things faster?! I think there is sufficient knowledge base: e.g ION-based and MHD sustainer engines such as VASIMR are getting on for SIXTY years old; chronically underdeveloped power supplies such as fuel cells and RTOGs also 40+ years old. The technology employed by Space X and OSC equally so. New propellants? Like there hasn’t been any research on those already? In-orbit propellant depots: did that in the sixties, seventies, eighties etc both within NASA and the Aerospace Industry.

So what’s to research? Start using some of that HUGE technological database available to NASA engineers and translate it into hardware I say.
To give an example of how NASA operates: back in 1970 Rocketdyne built and successfully tested Aerospike KERO & HYDROLOX engines. AIB! Along comes Venture Star/X-33 25 years later. Resurrect the old designs & proof test them into production? Nope! NEW engines of a similar design; cost overuns. Import LiAl Tank-tek from Russia and screw-up X-33 tank construction, overrun costings even more than usual; cancellation. Three years later, VSE. Five+ years after that announcement, more massive cost overruns, a joke of a flight test, schedule slippage up the kazoo…cancel and (yawn) start again with a “NEW” concept.

Analyzing the track record. what are the chances of success before the next President cancels “Obamaspace” and implements a new equally unattainable idea? Virtually a certainty I’d say – with management of the O’Keefe/Griffin/Bolden ilk running things.

Even more so when one divests oneself of experienced hard-working people while incompetent management wriggles out of responsibility and reinforces its personal position in the heirarchy….

Good intentions and two bucks will buy you coffee at Peet’s. Or a road to hell.

Government owned aircraft such as the JSF are designed and built just like any spacecraft. The USAF has as much oversight into those types of aircraft as NASA does into Orion.

“Griffin was a hurry-up-and-go kind of person.”

Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration outlined a hurry up and go agenda. Griffin, with every single choice, was the exact opposite. Anything and everything that could slow down the project were the choices Griffin made. In the VSE it called for a lunar landing as early as 2015 Griffin only missed that mark by almost two DECADES. If that is hurry up and go thinking I would hate to see what constellation was going to look like if he had chosen to go slow.