Which consists mainly of the United Space Alliance and its subcontractors, in other words, Old Space. The future will be made by both Old and New Space, not by NASA. NASA has nothing that justifies letting MSFC develop a new and unneeded launch vehicle and only a very weak case for Orion. There would be a stronger case for some other spacecraft, especially if they chose a very incremental path to work their way towards Nautilus.

“NewSpace is not now, and will probably never be a substitute for the capabilities of NASA.”

This is a canard. NewSpace and their advocates want NASA to turn over it’s routine tasks to the commercial marketplace, so NASA can focus on the things they do best – research, technology and exploration. Congress wants NASA to be a delivery service, and that’s not what they do best – all they do is outsource the work anyways, so why not cut out government middleman?

“I suspect that becoming competent is a very expensive process…”

The term “very expensive” is not very descriptive. Is $1M very expensive? Is 10% of revenue “very expensive”? For Boeing, $1M would be a rounding error, but 10% of revenue would be “very expensive”.

I suspect that your statement is a meaningless…

“When is the last time that you went out and bought a 777…”

This is a silly comparison, since no new company reasonably expects to propose such a large capital investment product, and get enough customers to get to product launch.

Instead companies build smaller products and build up their competency. Bombardier is a good example, since they have been slowly building up their competency in jets so that they are now starting to compete with Boeing and Airbus with their CSeries.

I guess the bottom line is that it seems like people like you don’t think that new aerospace entrants can be successful, and people like me do. I don’t do it blindly though, as I look for certain characteristics:

– A product or service that addresses a market need
– Early customer validation (i.e. orders)
– Enough funding or revenue to see them through early setbacks
– A spark of excitement that attracts top talent to help them grow

Not all will succeed, as not all established aerospace companies will succeed with their plans (remember the Sonic Cruiser?). But depending on NASA for all of our activities in space is no longer viable – we have outgrown them, and the budget that Congress gives them.

In case you never noticed, NASA has an experienced engineering workforce. Quite a few. Considerably more than SpaceX. A LOT more than Blue Origin or Armadillo.

Almost anything that you want to do, NASA has already seriously studied, and has also probably done, to at least a limited extent, in the past.

And Old Space lacks the entrepreneurial spirit of New Space. Both could change very rapidly if NASA decided on fair, competitive and redundant procurement as it should absent strong reasons to do otherwise.

NewSpace is not now, and will probably never be a substitute for the capabilities of NASA.

What capabilities? The alternative to New Space isn’t NASA but Old Space. And the two can coexist. Are you really this badly informed or are you deliberately trying to spread disinformation?

Does that mean that they are doomed to failure? No. Look at Scaled Composites. What that do is very limited, but what they do, they do very well.

NewSpace is not now, and will probably never be a substitute for the capabilities of NASA. I can understand that some of you want to believe that they could. I just don’t see that happening. I suspect that becoming competent is a very expensive process, which is why the likes of Boeing does not come cheap. When is the last time that you went out and bought a 777…Last I heard, it was about a quarter billion…

(And I will try to refrain from sniping back and forth, if I can help it. Some of you guys make tempting targets, though…)

“So 80% do not have any actual orbital spaceflight experience.”

The implication you’re trying to make is that unless you’ve had actual orbital spaceflight experience, you can never do it. Which is circular logic.

As others have pointed out, the living knowledge base in the industry (i.e. people) move from company to company depending on what programs are going on. As one example, SpaceX has attracted a number of launch, mission and spaceflight professionals that were eager to work for a company that is making real progress on putting real hardware into space.

It’s not like the 60’s, where every aspect of spaceflight and space hardware had to be invented and proved out. A lot of the technology nowadays is literally out of a catalog, and the knowledge is common knowledge after 40 years of taxpayer-funded spaceflight. Our tax dollars have done the best of all possible things, and that is make the technology within reach of the private sector, and we should all be celebrating that.

I know commercial space doesn’t fit into your government-run lunar program narrative, so that’s OK. Keep saying “it will never work” instead of providing real constructive feedback. Keep rooting for government-is-the-answer super launchers that won’t see the orbit for decades, or uber-expensive capsules that are not unlike gold-plated toilets. I’m sure your way is better… NOT!

“Name another present today that could carry 100 passengers, plus crew at SS speeds!”

Concorde competed for customers with other modes of transportation, and because they were really only a luxury offering, they had to compete against increasingly more luxurious and less expensive competitors. This is what ultimately lead to Concorde’s demise, because it was never a real money maker for it’s operators, and had to be supported by government subsidies.

But again the issue is not flying from New York to London at mach 2 and 56,000 ft, but flying to 360,000 ft and being weightless for minutes. They are two completely different experiences, and not comparable.

“I dont think even Dragon nor the CST-100 could do what our OLD Apollo could do! Now is that advancement?”

No, but they were never intended to, so that’s really a false argument.

The Apollo CM was built to carry 3 people on a Moon mission, and CST-100 and Dragon are being built to fly 7 people to LEO destinations.

Could CST-100 and Dragon be evolved to support a Moon mission? Maybe, but until the needs of such a mission are defined, there is no way to know for sure.

I believe so. That’s why some wanted to scuttle the ISS as soon as possible to help pay for development of an SDHLV.

Norm Augustine doesn’t have a boss at all, let alone one “to please.”

Don’t be an idiot. Again, you’re just making things up.

No one said anything about “hiring a few token astronauts.” Why do you insist on making things up?

Oh, I know. It’s because our actual arguments are irrefutable.