“As to cooperation with China, it would at least build international trust and help to reduce the potential for a new cold war, which we certainly cannot afford.”

Which is not what Congress wants. They would love to have yet another enemy. It makes great front pages and the likes of Fox News really happy. Don’t get me wrong the war rumbling back in 2003 was every where, even in the so called leftist media. I just hope China will not play the (stupid) game. They don’t need it. The problem these people don’t (seem to) understand is that when you must show you are the strongest it usually means that you are not and feel insecure about it. Kind of similar to having a very big rocket on the pad if you see what I mean…

Oh well…

As to cooperation with China, it would at least build international trust and help to reduce the potential for a new cold war, which we certainly cannot afford.

“The House restriction on cooperation with China is not in the Senate bill.”

Did not realize that. Thanks. Good news, not that we will engage in outright collaboration but at least there is no stupid language barring any.

You seem to have an unhealthy fixation with those 5 seg boosters even though you do not appear to possess any expertise that would allow you to judge whether they were in fact “hot”.

CCDev would fall under Exploration; how to allocate the funding for the various programs within Exploration and other accounts is left up to NASA, with the exception of the specified amounts in the legislation for MPCV (Orion) and SLS.

NASA can do many things; some are of practical value to science, industry, society, and our environment, even to advancing space tourism as an industry.

We are trying to make a case for a very small amount of funding from within or outside NASA, about 1/30,000th of the proposed Orion/SDLV budget, to use a piece of space hardware to find the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. It is a challenge, because we are outside the traditional mission, but that’s the way R&D works; you must be willing to follow opportunities where they lead. NASA climate research is just as critical in saving lives, yet we have forces in Congress that want to eliminate it, ostensibly to transfer the money to human spaceflight.

I think we must reduce the cost of human spaceflight, and support many practical initiatives in aeronautics, flight safety, climate and environment, space tourism, and many other fields. Some forms of science such as astronomy and planetology are largely of philosophical interest, yet they are informative science and much less expensive than human exploration, But dollars are precious, For every on NASA spends we must consider all the alternatives.

“CAPS is the mission and source of funding.”

Which means the budget for launchers is zero, so good luck with that.

Let’s hope ATK is not depending on CAPS to be the bulk of their Liberty business – but I think they are way smarter than that, although who will be their customers (and why) is still a mystery. Any guesses?