Let’s be more direct, DCSCA is flaunting his ignorance as usual.

The facilities on SLC-37, SLC-41 and SLC-40 are owned and operated by ULA or Spacex. The US Gov’t is not involved with the O&M of these facilities.

Know something before posting.

Facilities don’t “loft payloads.” Launch vehicles do. Get a clue.

Last time the taxpayers checked, the facilities used to ‘loft payloads’ are O/O by the United States government under the guise of NASA and assorted DoD monikers. Guess places like Vandenberg and other DoD launch platforms, including submarines BTW, escaped your broad-based thinking. Perhaps there’s a USS Musk submerged off Florida we don’t know about. Ignorance, indeed, Simberg. Good grief.

Neither NASA nor the military “loft payloads” (other than the last couple Shuttle flights). All US payloads, military and NASA, are launched commercially. Someone else flaunting his ignorance.

It’s understandable why you’re desperate to protect your turf. But you best review what NASA actually does. We know the other things NASA does but to most Americans, its the government agency that ‘sent Glenn to the moon’ and ‘invented Tang’– and NASA did neither. Get out of your bubble. The Age of austerity is here. Pretty much all of it can be done by other agencies. A 40% cut in staff is generous but dissolving the agency as an independent orgasnization and tucking it under the ‘umbrella’ of the DoD might actually save longer term space projects under the guise of ‘national security.’ As it stands now, NASA is quite vulnerable to being essentially eliminated. The duplication of personnel, projects, facilities, etc., make it an easy target. There’s little difference if a payload is lofted by the military or by NASA. The United States simply cannot afford two space programs any longer. And the easiest one to eliminate is NASA.

That’s the plan for Boeing’s CST. It’s not clear whether that will be the case for Dragon yet.

“Jettisoning something” increase complexity which reduces reliability. Eliminating such an event reduces risk.

Yes. The Orion LAS had over sixty identified hazards, over half of which could kill you on an otherwise nominal mission (e.g., failure to jettison). It also was one of the factors that led to the out-of-control weight growth that required the extra segment in the SRB.

And once again MichaelC flaunts his ignorance.

The fuel is neither explosive (hypergolics, which don’t mix well and therefore don’t explode well) nor is it unneeded: it would be used for circularisation and deorbit and maybe even for a bit of deceleration / steering during final descent. It could also be reused.