After spending $9 billion over the past four years on Constellation it needed to be canceled due to serious design flaws right from the beginning. NASA was not very far along in developing any part of Constellat­ion. That was the problem. Most of it only ever existed on PowerPoint­. ATK test-fired a 5-seg SRB, and Lockheed Martin built an Orion drop-test article which was thoroughly destroyed because they botched the mechanism for dropping it out the back of C-130 and the parachutes never opened.

The entire Altair lunar lander project had been canceled due to overruns in other parts of the program for over a year by the time Constellat­ion was canceled. It was a lunar exploratio­n program that couldn’t afford the part that actually lands on the moon.

You might know a little about horses but you don’t know much about science. Where do you think the technology for the Falcon engines, Dragon heat shield, and friction stir welding came from? Government investment and control of research. Musk is trying to make money off technology that cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. What a deal.

Reagan gave all that space tech that used to belong to we the people to private business. We will never see a cent of the profits from it.

Good point. Because of it’s modularity, the ISS of 2028 may look completely different than the version we built today. Even during assembly modules were moved around to different ports, and fully utilizing the ISS could mean splitting the station up to support the building of more stations.

That is, in fact, the plan that the Russians had for their segment all along, especially with the prospect of US involvement in the ISS ending due to Constellation .

That is why DSCSWTFCSA’s comment’s about how the station was absolutely positively going to splash in 2015 are so hilarious, though.
Because all orbit control is done from the Russian side, the US segment wouldn’t have any means of deorbiting itself. As far as I know NASA never announced a detailed plan on just how they were going to achieve that until the cancellation of Constellation, a mere 5 years before the supposed “splashdown”, which is an unusually short lead time for such a task. IMO it’s another thing that shows how poorly thought-out the entire thing was.

“I’d say that there’s a bit of a false dichotomy here, as ISS could and should well be an integral part of a smart BEO program. After all it was not only envisioned as a laboratory, but as an orbital shipyard as well.”

Good point. Because of it’s modularity, the ISS of 2028 may look completely different than the version we built today. Even during assembly modules were moved around to different ports, and fully utilizing the ISS could mean splitting the station up to support the building of more stations.

Kind of like cuttings from a tree to grow more trees.

Of course this type of thinking represents reusability, which is a different mindset from the disposable nature of Apollo and CxP, so it’s no wonder some people have a hard time understanding the benefits.

Can NASA do more than one thing at a time in space? The ISS plus a lunar program? Plus a Mars program? Doesn’t look like it. So I think we need NASA to help spur as much commerce as possible along the way to help shoulder the financial burden.

The ISS is in place, and it’s supposed to help us understand what it takes to live, work and survive in space. I think that supports Flexible Path.

I’d say that there’s a bit of a false dichotomy here, as ISS could and should well be an integral part of a smart BEO program. After all it was not only envisioned as a laboratory, but as an orbital shipyard as well.