“Again, slipping announced target dates indicates sloppy management, poor planning and, of course, added expense.”

It’s hard to tell who you’re talking about here. Russia for their Progress failure and schedule slips in getting NASA personnel to the ISS? NASA for not getting their COTS trained personnel to the ISS in time for the SpaceX COTS launch?

SpaceX announced on August 15th (prior to the Progress failure) that NASA had given them a target date of November 30, 2011 for their COTS mission, so who knows what you’re looking at.

Regardless of all of our inaccurate and faulty information, you are the only one that seems to feel that changing the COTS test from December to February is a big deal. SpaceX makes the same money since they are paid for milestones completed not dates performed, and the ISS is fully stocked for now so NASA isn’t in a hurry.

More of your Chicken Little syndrome.

=yawn= Again, slipping announced target dates indicates sloppy management, poor planning and, of course, added expense. And in business, time is money. Issuing press releases and not meeting schedule is just about as bad as not flying at all for commercial HSF. Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

So no, you forgot (or were unaware) that the Russians are the reason NASA won’t have it’s personnel transported to the ISS for the COTS C2/C3 mission until the end of this month.

And regarding “quarterly driven, for profit private enterprised corporations”, you also have forgotten (or were unaware) that SpaceX is a private company, majority owned by Musk himself.

Maybe you’ve fallen off your meds, but if not I recommend consulting your doctor to find out why you have such a disconnect with reality.

“Back in mid-August, a private-enterprised, cargo Dragon was hyped, announced, scheduled and supposed to be lofted to dock with the ISS on December 9.”

You really need to keep up with current events – spending too much time in your basement watching reruns of “Destination Moon” again?

You didn’t notice when your vaunted Russians lost their Progress M-12M on August 24th? You know, the spacecraft that shares the same 3rd stage (the one that failed) with the Soyuz?

You didn’t notice when the crew trained for the SpaceX COTS flight were delayed because of the Progress failure, and won’t launch to the ISS until December 21st?

Wow, no wonder you say such silly things – you’re ignorant of the facts. You should know better, but you’re jealousy of SpaceX seems to blind you to rational thought.

=yawn= December 4, 2011 draws to a close. Back in mid-August, a private-enterprised, cargo Dragon was hyped, announced, scheduled and supposed to be lofted to dock with the ISS on December 9. How’s that slipping schedule thingy workin’ out for ‘ya? Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

“Witness the debt.”

What you know about the debt would only fit on one side of a Post-it note. We’ve had a significant debt since World War I, and our current debt is far lower than it was during World War II.

As always, if our politicians want to spend money on tax breaks for oil companies or rockets to nowhere, they can. If they wanted to spend more on real NASA space exploration, they would too. There is no constitutional limit on how much NASA gets, or doesn’t get, so it’s all arbitrary.

Being less than 0.5% of the federal budget, cutting program within NASA won’t do much solve our debt problems, so take your Chicken Little hysteria to a forum that represents a larger slice of the pie.

“no it’s Soyuz, not Dragon.”

Ooh, Mr. Obvious. But Mr. Obvious forgets to mention that no NASA vehicles are flying to the ISS either. And NASA hasn’t contracted with anyone, including SpaceX, to fly crew to the ISS, so like usual you’re crowing about something irrelevant.

Guess you’re not much of a patriot either, since you seem rather happy to support the Russians over American solutions. How telling Comrade.

Is the way NASA currently does technology development actually all that useful? That too looks like a giant money pit to me.

Well said.