“Well, you are entitled to your opinion, but you know what what they say about opinions and body parts?”

No, what?

the Augustine Panel stated “Constellation program is on an unsustained trajectory” due to lack of funding but Congress should pony up $3B for Augustine’s “recommended path” i.e. Augustine’s wishes?

Augustine did not have a recommended path. They provided 6 viable options

Since Constellation was not criticized technically but fiscally. Why didn’t the panel just recommend more cash to Consteallation?

Well, because they didn’t provide recommendations – they provided options. And indeed, one of the options was what you state. It was not selected (for good reason)

The Augustine Panel’s charter in my humble opinion was to sweep away anything with the “Bush Taint” regardless of then candidate Obama’s support for Constellation.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion, but you know what what they say about opinions and body parts?

Also, Obama did not support Constellation. Go read the white paper & watch his Titusville speech – he doesn’t endorse it

As for the rest – thats just rather pointless moaning (and not particularly informed moaning) so I am not certain how to respond.

Really? In the early days of the ISS program there was no “splashdown” date contemplated; the modular design was intended to allow any part to be replaced. If continued human activities in LEO are not sustainable and justifiable, there is no realistic prospect for human spaceflight beyond LEO. Of course at some point more advanced hardware, a new vehicle in different orbit, commercial management, etc. might occur. But the goal of ISS was never to prove we could go to Mars and then be abandoned, nor was it to do microgravity or biological research, except as a sideline. The main purposes were spacecraft and satellite servicing (including satellite and upper-stage refueling, as some of the other comments have noted), and space and earth observations. The first space observation instrument to be placed on ISS, the AMS, is on the pad now. So far there are no earth observation instruments, which is bizarre given that the high inclination of the ISS allows it to overfly almost the entire inhabited surface of the earth. One application that wasn’t foreseen was as a tourist destination, but this also fits in with long-term utilization of LEO.

Current politically-directed spending on Orion and HLV notwithstanding, I do not think any of the current ideas for human flight BEO provide a meaningful justification that would be taken seriously by either the taxpayers or private investors when the real cost of a sustained human presence BEO is considered, and I continue to be surprised at the superficial nature of justifications for human flight BEO even within NASA. Even with a reasonable potential for ISRU, at least an order-of-magnitude reduction in transportation cost is needed before such missions might be considered a worthwhile investment for scientific, geopolitical or tourism purposes. We really need to prove we can make human operations in LEO a practical proposition first, and even that will require all the resources of both commercial enterprise and NASA. Just my $.02.

At best that would be an argument against government funded manned spaceflight in general. But if there is going to be government funded manned spaceflight anyway, then it should be procured fairly and competitively and in a way that makes the hardware available to commercial customers and friendly foreign governments. That is much more fiscally prudent (and more useful too) than the old cost plus NASA-only way.

“Dragon’s crew capacity is seven.” Another press release.

Yeah and the R/V parked across the street can carry a dozen. Except the R/V exists and actually DOES carry people. No crewed Dragon with an independently verified/integrated and flight tested ECS or LES has been launched, orbited and returned on a test flight, let alone an operational mission to LEO. SpaceX’s HSF project exists only on paper. A crewed Dragon will never be orbited– not because it is not eventually possible to do so but because there is no profit in it, as the American interests in the ISS begin to wind down after 2015 and it is currently slated to splash by 2020. It’s poor economics… which may explain why Tesla is still not a profitable enterpriise.

Except, of course, the continuing lack of expanding capital investment by the private sector is all that matters. It continues to balk at high risk/low ROI proposals- such are the frustrations of the parameters of the free market these for profit enterprises are attempting to service. Orbital HSF proposals have yet to convince the private sector to risk capital investment. It’s just not worth it in this era. (which is why governments do it.) Hense these ‘for profit’ firms keep begging governments for subsidies to socialize the risk on the many while planning to profit a few. Won’t wash these days. Recent history has shown Americans arent too keen on that– especially now in the Age of Austerity where the U.S. government has to borrow 43 cents of every dollar it spends.

That too is best left to the market, specifically ULA, though with NASA funding. That funding could be direct, but I would prefer to fund this through market pull. Under the latter scenario NASA could provide an immediate propellant launch market for both unmanned exploration spacecraft and storable deep space transfer stages operating from high energy orbits like L1/L2, instead of for EDSs, which are a much greater challenge. The spacecraft / transfer stage could be derived from the Orion SM + avionics, with Orion itself cancelled or spun off as a commercial crew capsule with no special privileges and no extra NASA involvement. Buying a hundred metric tonnes or more of storable propellant at L1/L2 each year would probably be enough to let the market fund infrastructure development. ACES and then an ACES-derived depot would be low hanging fruit.

I know that no one is ever going to launch crew but NASA and I know no one else will put up a space station but NASA in your world BUT I believe SpaceX will fly crew to a Bigelow station by 2016-17.