“Ya it is amazing what you can accomplish when you have a blank check from uncle sam.”

That’s why governments do it and have been for the 80 plus year history of modern rocketry. Persuade for profit, quarterly driven, risk averse, private capital markets to pay the freight and invest in a limited market withe a minimal ROI and get flying. Otherwise, it’s tick-tock-tick tock time for another 50 years. They had a chance to lead the way in the early 1960s, balked and chose to let the taxpayers shouler the financial risk- but then manned missile systems, per Chris Kraft, had a reliability of noy much more than 60% when NASA lofted Shepard in that start-up period. Which is WHY GOVERNMENTS DO IT.

Ya it is amazing what you can accomplish when you have a blank check from uncle sam. Imagine what commercial space could do if they were given 140 billion dollars and the orders to waste anything but time.

“Then the Administration’s shabby treatment of NASA’s veterans (John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford, Chris Kraft, and Gene Kranz, among others) didn’t help their case before Congress.”

It only makes the Administration’s position look shabby– and in tatters. Those fellas actually accomplished something. It’s a matter of fact. So far, the Administration has only demonstrated it excels at going no place fast.

“Ron: the Administration is acting like the Chicago Machine: Either you play along or we’ll treat you like dirt.”

it is very impressive to me how people like you grab onto Fox news rhetoric and do so with little or no thought.

“treat you like dirt”? Were you alive in the Bush years? When people who said “the iraq war wont be free, wont be fast, wont be anyof the things that Bush and his band of idiots are saying” were called traitors and other goofy words.

Same for space politics and policy in the era. Robert G. Oler

“the Administration is acting like the Chicago Machine”

LOL. The Obama White House organization pales in comparison to the one Bush 43 had – pales. That moniker is meant to scare weak minded Republicans.

“Congress has been much more appreciative of what Neil Armstrong, Captains Lovell and Cernan, and General Stafford have had to say than the Administration has.”

It doesn’t matter what politicians say, it only matters what they do, which in this case means laws passed.

What, pray tell, has Congress done that is a direct result of the testimony of Messrs Armstrong, Lovell, Cernan and Stafford?

Reader: that’s exactly what the Commercial Space zealots think “It has to happen, therefore, it will happen.”

More goofiness.

The only people I know, and I read on this forum who think thoughts like I quoted above…are people like you with SLS. The notion that NASA can have spent 15 billion dollars on Ares and got nothing combined with the 16-30 billion they want to spend on SLS is an amazing testament to the faith you mention and I quote.

Anyone who thinks that NASA has to be involved in a human spaceflight endeavor to make it suceed or to give it any chance of success is bordering on simpletonism.

you never answered my question, which is it 1, 2, or 3? RGO

Actually, there weren’t. There was a lot of talk, but not actual vehicles under development.

Sorry that you haven’t been paying attention.

Ron and Oler: this time, they succeeded, in a way. SLS is essentially the Ares V light variant the Augustine Panel suggested as a Heavy-lift vehicle. So one could argue that part of the Panel’s suggestions (along with Commercial Crew and FlexPath) has been adopted.

Ron: the Administration is acting like the Chicago Machine: Either you play along or we’ll treat you like dirt. Congress has been much more appreciative of what Neil Armstrong, Captains Lovell and Cernan, and General Stafford have had to say than the Administration has. And until this Administration changes its tactics, or admits that they went about their plans for NASA the wrong way (yeah, right) Congress-regardless of which party controls it-will be skeptical at best.