“There’s nothing to turn anything over to.”

Duh, Mister Obvious. They haven’t held a “Commercial Crew Transportation” competition yet.

But while NASA & Congress fiddle, SpaceX and OSC are building NASA supervised hardware that will be certified by NASA for ISS human operations. For SpaceX, that means their Dragon capsule is just missing seats, beefed up environmental systems, and crew displays in order to serve as an ISS lifeboat. Add an LAS and launchpad upgrades, and they will have a complete crew system.

Since all of that is going to take at least 3 years to happen, SpaceX will have proven their Dragon capsule in real-life conditions at least 7 times – up and down.

Now I’m not saying SpaceX will win one of the spots on a future commercial crew contract, but they are the only company with flight quality hardware, and by the time the contract is awarded, they will also have flown many up/down missions. If that doesn’t rank as a low-risk, then I don’t know what does.

“Commerical space has not launched, orbited and returned anybody safely.”

So what? If you’re barrier is that no one can do it until someone does it, then nothing is going to get done. Your circular logic does not work in the real world.

Under your reasoning, Orbital Sciences and SpaceX should not have been given the COTS/CRS contract, because no commercial company has ever delivered cargo to the ISS. That’s not just weird, it’s stupid. It’s perpetuating the status quo, which as we all know, does nothing inexpensively or competitively – and that’s also why NASA has not fielded a single flyable spacecraft since the Shuttle, despite many attempts.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

It’s time to stop the insanity.

“This creature has been an illogical, repetitive troll since the day it showed up.”

Agreed. And he continues to be that way, despite knowing that – the saddest part of all of it…

I don’t understand why you think that there’s anything at all new about this. This creature has been an illogical, repetitive troll since the day it showed up.

“but it will most likely be a government funded and managed space exploration effort. Space exploitation is the playground for commercial space. But space exploitation is not space exploration.”

You do realize that you’re arguing with yourself here. Commercial crew advocates want NASA to turn over the routine tasks (like crew to LEO) to the private sector, not the non-routine (i.e. exploration). Maybe if you actually read the posts before responding you would know that…

But you’re also arguing with the Moon First advocates, who think that NASA should do exploitation, so now you add another group to your snark list.

– – – – – – – – –

So, not change of diet? Some other life event?

It’s so sad to see how your ability to communicate has degenerated recently.

I advocate for companies and approaches that lower the cost to access space – SpaceX, OSC, and even companies like ULA and Boeing if they are motivated properly.

You seem to obsess over SpaceX and things they are not even doing yet, and you have this fixation to re-live things from the distant past (Conestoga I, sub-orbital flights, Friendship 7, etc., etc., etc.). And what’s up with the Gaetano-like cut & paste comments? You’re negativity has really gone to the extreme recently. Change of diet?