“You da man.”

I know, I know.

Nonetheless the acknowledgment is welcome. Sweet music to my hears.

“The numbers & figures he gives, that purportedly makes the SLS heavy-lift vehicle unsustainable are pure sensationalism!”

OK, then it should be pretty easy for you to refute.

How much will the SLS cost to launch a pound of payload to LEO?

I’ll take silence to mean that you don’t have a clue, which won’t surprise many of us…

Even SLS will be commercially made.

“The numbers & figures he gives, that purportedly makes the SLS heavy-lift vehicle unsustainable are pure sensationalism!!! WHY would the commercial entrepreneurs have an easy-street time at building a similar rocket?”

WHY? For the same reason a study conducted by the Air Force and NASA together concluded that if Falcon 9 had been developed using traditional NASA methods, it would have cost many times more than was spent by SpaceX. BTW, the independent Booz-Allen group reported that SLS can only stay in budget a few years before its costs blow up unsustainably. So there is some pretty hard evidence that SLS development costs will be much more than a commercially made equivalent.
Here’s the relevant NASA document that discusses how much more expensive their methods are for producing launchers than going about it the new goal-oriented fixed-price way that is being used with COTS and Commercial Crew:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf

So it is YOU who are guilty of “sensationalism”.

“What—Flexible Path/Commercial Space wants the immediate end of the governmental space program, just so that their amateurish dreams of launching rockets out of their backyards can commence?!?!”
More irrational hysteria. What people on our side want is for the money wasted on SLS to be used by NASA to develop the more technologically cutting-edge manned deep spacecraft and depots that would be assembled from materials lofted by commercial launchers. Thus the expensive 1970’s era technology of the SLS is actually preventing exploration beyond low Earth orbit; especially, since it would cost much more than an equivalent commercially made HLV launcher or several smaller rockets doing the same job piecemeal.

All of this has been pointed out to you over and over again.

Grow up, Chris.

Besides, why should we, as a nation, place ourselves into such a helpless dependency on a single heavy lift system? What happens to the space program if there is an SLS failure akin to the Shuttle tragedies or the Soyuz/Progress loss?

The commercial side is not asking for “ALL of the federal budget dollars.” That, sir, is “pure sensationalism.” They are asking for sufficient funding to compete and provide NASA the desired services in a timely manner. Nothing more, nothing less.

Your position is entirely predicated on hyperbole and strawman arguments. The whole point behind buying commercial services for LEO access to reduce NASA spaceflight operations costs so that it can afford to spend more of its money on BEO missions and mission systems.

You mean like a thruster valve seat that was leaking because it experienced flight temperatures well below its qualified AFT’s?

Nah, I couldn’t do that. You da man.

If the good people of Virginia want to clean Wallops up, do it! It is not in the nation’s interest.

I’ll have to strongly disagree with you both on whether the clean up is the State of Virginia’s responsibility or that of the Federal government, as well as on the need for it.

All right all right. I was only trying to help…

BTW, did you just try to out-common-sense me? I am going to have to be more careful I guess…

Any who.