Elon says his 150mt vehicle would cost $300m per launch. More mass than SLS for a tenth the operational cost.

Bigelow would sell you a six crew BA330 for less than $100m. Falcon Heavy puts it in orbit for another $100m. Keep the FH upper stage which is already paid for and you have most of the ship needed to go anywhere in the inner solar system. $1b provides fuel for almost any mission.

Elon has offered $20m per seat to (and from) orbit. He’ll put a 4 person lander in mars or lunar orbit for about the same price ($150m.)

That’s an exploration program that a single person (Bigelow and Musk included in that set) could finance. Not a government. Not even a big company. In the real world $38b is enough money to actually accomplish plenty. Invested at 5% ($1.9b per year forever) and I could give you worlds and space colonies in just decades.

The obvious conflict of interests looks like a stronger reason for distrusting internal NASA estimates.

“X @ MSFC who did the est based on the Ares V baseline. That number was provided to HQ.”

If Ares I/V estimates proved anything, it was that they were far too low. Why would that have changed for SLS?

No one in NASA has built a large rocket since the 70’s, so there is no real expertise to rely upon for true cost estimates. That’s just a fact, not a nit against anyone at NASA.

Let’s also keep in mind that government programs have different goals than commercial ones, in that commercial products are built to satisfy customer needs and provide a profit to the company. Government programs, while defined by initial budgets, are their own customers, so they don’t have the same incentives for spending money wisely, or even making estimates that come anywhere close to reality.

For that reason I would put more faith in outside estimates than NASA ones. It will be interesting when the official SLS cost estimates are presented to Congress.

But not to the United Space Alliance and the rest of the Shuttle political-industrial complex.

Agree

Fair enough.

Here is a picture of a Morton-Thiokol proposed Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle from 1978:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/In-Line_SDLV_1978.jpg

Change the paint scheme and it could be SLS. 98% of people wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. The point is that there is nothing fundamentally different about the design after a whole generation. If the design is the same and the economics are the same, then we are stuck in the same unfordable rut.

I think SpaceX and all of the new space companies acknowledge their debt to government derived technologies. Transitioning technologies to industry where the can be mass produced is a good thing.

“some people can’t read.”

Yes indeed.

“as managers discuss the preliminary objectives, which may include a ‘human capable’ version of the spacecraft being tested”

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/may

may1    
[mey] Show IPA
–auxiliary verb, present singular 1st person may, 2nd may or ( Archaic ) may·est or mayst, 3rd may; present plural may; past might.
1. (used to express possibility): It may rain.
2. (used to express opportunity or permission): You may enter.
3. (used to express contingency, especially in clauses indicating condition, concession, purpose, result, etc.): I may be wrong but I think you would be wise to go. Times may change but human nature stays the same.