“I agree that “human” spaceflight will be almost all government (and a small market at that) until the prices come down enough to attract more tourists.”

I know you seem to think that that there are only two types of people that want or need to go to LEO (U.S. ISS crew & tourists), but you keep forgetting Bigelow clients, and I think you also ignore the potential for increased ISS related traffic with the commercial 7-passenger capsules. Any of the ISS partners could contract for their own trip during a crew rotation flight, which is the type of short-term visit that the Shuttle made popular.

And, as I’ve stated before, I don’t even factor tourism into what I track for LEO demand since it’s dependent on access to a destination, and I think the few destinations that will be available will be getting plenty of visits for their own needs.

SpaceX has about 50% commercial contracts in its unmanned satellite launch manifest, which is more than any other vehicle launching from US soil. (ULA has not pursued commercial business competitively since US government launches are more profitable.) I agree that “human” spaceflight will be almost all government (and a small market at that) until the prices come down enough to attract more tourists.

“Yet another symptom that it’s a preposterous misnomer to label as “commercial” a “market” that is 99%+ government contracts.”

Well as Bert & I would say, “You cahn’t get theyah from heeah“.

If you think a 100% commercial marketplace will pop-up without the logistics system to create it, then you’re pretty naive. Here’s how I think it will really happen:

1. The ISS needs delivery of people and cargo, so commercial companies supply both. This is 100% government revenue.

2. Using the same commercial transportation systems as the ISS uses, entities like Bigelow Aerospace start experimenting with business models in LEO. Not all will work, and I don’t know how long it will take to become established and growing, but it will happen. This experimentation also provides the profit incentive for current and future commercial transport companies, since the ISS business will likely be a loss-leader.

3. At some point the non-ISS business will outgrow the ISS/government business, and that is when the market no longer needs NASA’s business to survive, but I think NASA will come to rely on commercial transportation services to lower it’s costs for mounting exploration missions.

This is a model that has worked with many transportation systems we depend upon today, so it’s not novel.

I’d love to hear how you think the non-goverment sector will get established in space and thrive on it’s own without any government money.

Or, as Volkswagen said in an old Beetle ad from 1969 which featured an image of the LM: “It’s Ugly. But it gets you there.”

“What if we had kept the systems we had until we were certain we had something better, not letting go of one handhold until we had another?”

Well Mike, you’re right, we could long ago have built a new shuttle based on all we learned, that would be practical and safe. Why didn’t we??? Wait a minute, it was because YOU canceled the shuttle, destroyed the tooling, shut down all the reusable launch vehicle technology projects, and left us with no one who has any experience maintaining reusable spacecraft!

Of course Griffin never questions his own decisions. He is talking about Apollo, not Shuttle. He considers Shuttle useless because it only goes to LEO. A little history, Mike: The public was bored with Apollo by the second landing. Another Apollo, even on steroids, would end like the first.

“Bush didn’t lift a finger to save Shuttle.”

If you read through the CAIB report, it’s pretty clear that NASA management itself shortened shuttle’s life by demonstrating its own deadly incompetence in the way they mismanaged the Columbia foam strike. It was essentially Challenger redux. Bush’s failure was to fight to secure adequate funding for the follow along in his VSE proposal, which is exactly the same failure of leadership his father demonstrated in 1989 when Pappy proposed a similar space initiative. It’s always the same thing: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

At $500 million – $1 billion a mission, it was time to end the space shuttle program and thirty years is a pretty goo run. It simply was not a cost effective fit for the Age of Austerity. The real challenge now is for NASA to develop a rationale for HSF and sell it to the American people beyond the ‘gee-whiz’ flag-waving phase. As valuable as the ‘Cernan intangibles’ are, they cannot carry the load on their own as a reason for HSF to a cash-strapped nation. Russia incorporated a rationale for HSF into its ‘national character’ decades ago and has been regularly flying people into space since 1961. It’s part of who they are. China is developing a rationale as well. America’s space program has always been reactive, not proactive, motivated by competition. Don’t expect that mind set to change any time soon.

But good for NASA pushing the hobbyists to ‘get with the program’ and fly a version of ‘all up testing.’ You may just hear a ‘boom’ again soon after all….

“We live in north Merritt Island about six miles from the KSC employee gate…”

Knowing the program’s end was coming, no doubt you chose to rent, not buy. If you purchased, as Groucho Marx said of Florida real estate, ‘You can get stucco. Boy, can you get stucko!”