This is an ignorant statement. The SpaceX manifest is chock full of non-NASA customers out through 2017:

spacex.com/launch_manifest.php

Two of these customers (ORBCOMM and Iridium) require multiple flights. The Iridium contract alone is worth 2/3rds more than what SpaceX will receive from its NASA COTS agreement.

investor.iridium.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=479890

There are even two Dragon flights that aren’t going to the ISS.

Even if NASA disappeared tomorrow, SpaceX, including Falcon 9 and Dragon, would continue on as before.

Only a fool unfamiliar with the history of SpaceX and their launch customers would believe such nonsense.

Sure it is. NASA has survived on ~$17 billion budgets for years.

“So? Change is good. A change in the charter, a stroke of a pen and its done”

I don’t know what country you’re from, but again, nothing gets done in the US system of government with “a stroke of a pen”. Multiple votes in various committees and chambers of Congress are needed to change the charter of a federal department or agency. Even then, the President may not sign the relevant bill into law.

“Injecting the poison of comemrcialization into the charter in the Reagan years was easy enough.”

Since when is “comemrcialization [sic]” the equivalent of “poison”?

“Which is precisely why consolidation is necessary. What DoD says it ‘wants’ or ‘needs’ is irrelevent. It salutes and does what its told by civilian authority- and if that authority orders it to consoldate space operations and absorb NASA assets, it will do so.”

DOD’s “civilian authority” is the Secretary of Defense. He has no need for or interest in a fourth or fifth space R&D agency. Even if they somehow voted and agreed to change NASA’s charter to a military one, there’s no reason for the Congress and President to impose a $17-20 billion agency on a $600-700 billion department. The tail does not wag the dog.

FWIW…

Whether we “Americanize” RD-180 production or develop an entirely domestic RP engine, we’re talking about budgets that start in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Without having more specifics, it’s hard for me to say which option is best.

I will note that RD-180 production requires powder metallurgy techniques that US industry has never tried to master (at least to my knowledge). It’s only one thing to consider, but the difficulty of reinventing and then applying an entire metallurgical technique might be more time- and cost-consuming than simply building a new RP engine with well-known and wll-understood techniques.

“Gas gun or mag lev launch with attached kick stage would be great, but… what are the odds of getting those who consider pork above all else, to think that far out of the box.”

Gas gun technology is older and better understood than maglev technology. Only a couple terrestrial maglev trains have been operating for less than a decade, but gas guns have been used in high-impact and reentry research for decades. I’m unaware of any maglev launch hardware development (only paper studies), but projects like SHARP have developed subscale gas gun launch prototypes since the 1980s. (Even Saddam Hussein had a secret, space-capable gas gun project called Babylon.)

A company called QuickLaunch founded by the SHARP team claims that an ocean-based, space-capable gas guns for propellant delivery could be built for $500 million each.

quicklaunchinc.com/technology

That amount is on par with NASA’s COTS investment, which arguably escaped the notice of “those who consider pork above all else”.

I would also throw $500 million at Loral’s Aquarius low-tech, super-cheap ELV concept.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarius_Launch_Vehicle

What’s nice about both of these concepts is that, if they work, they’d break the back of propellant launch costs without risking the many billions of dollars of investment usually required for an HLV or RLV.

“Would like to hear from you on the above and why supposedly simple SRBs are not the answer for boosters.”

The Shuttle SRBs are not “simple”. They’re the largest (by far) solid rockets in the world — so large that they must be cast in segments and then assembled into a single motor, unlike every other solid rocket. They are also very heavy, which, if your SDHLV is also heavy, would necessitate investing in a new mobile launch platform, which is probably at least a billion dollar investment in and of itself. They have to be cast in Utah and shipped cross country to Florida, another unique cost. Because they must be shipped fueled (rather than fueld on the pad), they are a huge fire/explosive risk, which imposes extensive safety measures and unique costs on everything that’s processed through the Shuttle VAB. There are a limited number of SRB casings, which must be recovered after each flight, imposing additional costs.

Even setting the unique complexities and cost of the Shuttle SRBs aside, adding solid rocket boosters to a launch vehicle always adds costs. No matter how simple, solid rocket boosters represent an additional engine production line that must be added on top of the costs of the vehicle’s first- and second-stage engine production lines. Don’t get me wrong — smaller solid rocket boosters allow a design like the Atlas V or the Delta IV to address a wider range of payload sizes without the full costs of their heavy variants. But if you’re building for a single, known payload mass (or relatively narrow range of payload masses), then you’re almost always better off addressing that payload with as few different engine types and production lines as possible.

It’s important to note that the SRBs were added to the Shuttle as a compromise to meet a performance target within a limited development budget. They were not a desired solution, and the vehicle has paid for that compromise in terms of its operational tempo (or lack thereof) and high operational costs.

FWIW…

SpaceX shills are worried, aren’t they. No NASA, no SpaceX.

IMHO Any Democrats and Republicans leaving Congress have until Christmas to get the budgets for their achievements passed. If they do not they are likely to find that the legacy for the last two years of work is nothing.

Idiot.

Please stop demonstrating your ignorance of how the government works. There is no one whose pen can rewrite the Space Act with a “stroke.”