A provider of what? HSF?
I have very little faith in SpaceX and their custers last stand no escape system dragon touristmobile.
The Delta and Atlas are not manrated and putting a capsule on top is a whole new project that would take years.

So how is it highly unlikely? Just use Soyuz? Because they are all that is left, unless you count the chinese.

Ahhh, but there was a plan B, both times a side mount capsule version of the shuttle was proposed, just like last year. It would have been what the shuttle should have been; a heavy lift vehicle instead of a heavy space plane lift vehicle. In my opinion most of the blame can be laid at the feet of the defense industry. No politician was willing to give up a single defense job if it meant trading it away for a space job. So there was never any money to fix the shuttle by getting rid of the orbiter; which we were stuck with in the first place because they wanted to save money by getting rid of ocean recovery. But with funding cuts the military became involved and they turned it into a spyplane; there is no other reason for the crossrange requirement and the huge cargo bay. Unfortunately the railed in from Utah (more politics) SRB’s were not powerful enough to launch into a polar orbit for spy missions. In an effort to get to this polar spyplane orbit the orbiter was built as light as possible; without any escape systems at all. In a nutshell, that is what happened to America’s space transportation system. Nickel and dimed to failure. We could have fixed it after challenger and after columbia and even last year with the Side mount; but the politicians and the DOD won’t give up a nickel.

I know this is going way back to the beginning of the thread, but this argument is totally bogus. The entire point of doing commercial manned space flight is to get inexpensive, redundant systems so that if one fails, you still have options. Even if we only get two, that’s still a big improvement. And in the event that we’re stuck with only one privately-owned craft and we have a failure, who’s to say the government can’t buy it off their hands or contribute funds to rework it? That would leave us with pretty much the same situation we’d be in if NASA did a standard Saturn or Shuttle-style program, with government owned vehicles, but we would have still saved a small fortune on development costs.

If NASA builds it’s own system and backs off of the funding currently slotted for private and there’s a failure, then what? Two years of nothing. No flights, no ISS, and certainly no grand lunar trips. How do I know this? It happened twice with STS. And both times we were forced to retool the STS system for continued use instead of switch to plan B, because there was no plan B. And so long as NASA is the only game in town, we will never get a plan B. Congress will never, and I repeat never, allocate funds to build a manned space system to completion while we have one flying already. It’s not a politically tenable situation. It’s what kept STS flying until 2010 (now likely 2011) though we’ve acknowledged it’s faults and have been trying to replace it since the early 90’s.

The only way the above statement holds is if we end up with one or zero functional providers, and I find that a highly unlikely scenario.

“Apply for a permit if they issue them for risky ventures but taxpayers have no business subsidizing private rocket companies that scare off capital investors in the private sector due to risk of return on that investment.”

Apparently you don’t pay attention to the world. SpaceX has attracted outside investors, and is fully funded specifically because they are going after the commercial launch market. And the government has issued permits and leased them a launch pad, which SpaceX has spent money on to upgrade.

The difference between Orbital/SpaceX, and U.S. Government run launch systems is that Orbital/SpaceX don’t get paid if they don’t deliver. The U.S. Government has no such incentive to provide a service on-time, and within a specified budget. Blow up a launcher – no big deal, the U.S. Taxpayer will just pay for another.

I find it hard to understand how you can be so against free market solutions, regardless of your political leanings (whatever they may be). Commercial launch providers already exist, and they provide all of the launch services for the DOD. NASA also uses commercial launch services for all non-Shuttle launches, so all that is happening is expanding the range of launch services to include crew. United Launch Services is already responsible for crew launches with the Shuttle, so commercial firms have proved that they are capable of doing what is needed. Where’s the beef?

at least you are not just cut and pasting.

nothing you say negates the point. The auto industry would not be where it is today without the IHS.

Commercial lift changes the launcher equation.

Robert G. Oler

Who says? Apply for a permit if they issue them for risky ventures but taxpayers have no business subsidizing private rocket companies that scare off capital investors in the private sector due to risk of return on that investment. Socializing the risk isn’t very popular now. And as for ‘the range’… plenty of California developers would salivate at the opportunity to turn Camp Pendleton’s miles and miles of beachfront property into something other than a government military installation, too. The ‘range’ is gov’t property and government managed for government missile work. Plenty of islands in the Caribbean for Musk-types to buy and build a privately financed rocket range. But we most likely agree on Ares being a less than stellar choice. It’s a politically dirty bird, literally and figuratively. NASA can do better. But this writer fully supports efforts in the private sector to go fly. Go for it, just not at the expense of NASA’s lunar program.