Coastal Ron wrote @ February 20th, 2012 at 2:06 pm

You imply they lack the skills and clearly you’re wrong. Anders, the late Sghepard excelled at it- Scott, Cernan, Lovell, even Borman ‘commanded’ Eastern through turbulant times. Simberg, as usual, embarasses himself w/irrelevance. You’re just cranking to crank.

Probably had a tenuous touch with reality to begin with, applied to the company, got rejected, and has been off-the-rails since.

“NASA at the moment, flies NOBODY!!! The earliest likely time they will fly somebody is in the 2020′s and at cost of over 20 Billion to repeat Apollo 8. ”

It will be at least 50% more than $20 billion.

Estimates are $18 billion just through the first _unmanned_ SLS/MPCV launch in 2017. (That milestone has already slipped one year and will slip again now that the Europeans have turned down participating in MPCV.)

SLS/MPCV costs through 2025 are at least $41 billion. Doing the math, that’s a run-rate of $3.3 billion per year after 2017.

The first manned, Apollo 8-like mission for SLS/MPCV isn’t scheduled until 2021 at the earliest, or four years after the first unmanned launch in 2017. Four years times $3.3 billion is over $13 billion. Added to the $18 billion through 2017, we’re we’re looking at something over $31 billion through that Apollo 8 redo.

“That’s embarrassing. For an agency and contractors that have 50 years of experience of human spaceflight, this is appalling!”

Agreed.

SpaceX never claimed to fly humans tomorrow. They have said publically they think it would take 3 years. You are setting goal posts that are deliberately unachievable by any entity so you can proclaim them to have failed. Seems more out of bitterness and spite than any logical reason.

It is progressing on a budget that is fraction of what NASA usually spends on these projects. A capsule has been returned from orbit and the SuperDraco LES thruster has been tested.

NASA at the moment, flies NOBODY!!! The earliest likely time they will fly somebody is in the 2020’s and at cost of over 20 Billion to repeat Apollo 8. That’s embarrassing. For an agency and contractors that have 50 years of experience of human spaceflight, this is appalling!

Ofcourse, I can see how you will redefine the terms in the future to denigrate this one company. When they put someone in orbit, you will complain that its only LEO, and NASA did that 50 years ago. If they go to the Moon, it will be oh, NASA did that in 1969, how come they are not flying anybody to Mars! A kinda rhetorical treadmill to dismiss SpaceX because, SpaceX succeeding is an embarrassment to those who insist that spaceflight is only possible by bloated bureaucracies and the military-industrial complex preselected contractors.

Private companies are trusted already with multibillion dollar satellites and the military vehicles/equipment that keeps troops safe without the equivalent of NASA overbearing the process. Commercial crew is just the application of what is done already in every other part of the government and industry. There is nothing magical or special about NASA in this regard, no matter how many times its repeated.

The relevance to this site is that all three events the participants spoke eloquently and forcefully about the importance of ISS and commercial space as key not only to space exploration but also biomedical and physical sciences research.

The event called “On the Shoulders of Giants” includes a great speech by Bill Nelson fiercely defending ISS and commercial space. I’d like to see him do this on the Senate floor, although his porking colleagues probably wouldn’t care.

Logic has never been the troll’s strong suit. It’s equivalent to claiming that astronauts were lousy at business by pointing to Frank Borman.

“You seem to be of the school of thought that a smaller increase in yr annual budget over the previous years budget is actually a cut.”

My observation is that since the foreign debt of the United States of America is your signature topic, that you are woefully ignorant about the actual details of it.

And then when you try to show the source of your data, all you do is link to the home page of the New York Times – how lame.

So much for your credibility…

“Ask Bill Anders.”

He went into business after Apollo. My assertion stands.

“Those “Apollo era astronauts” were chosen for their skill in operating government equipment – not because they knew how to run profitable businesses.”

Ask Bill Anders.

Uh no, the forum is space politics. See header for details.

You seem to be of the school of thought that a smaller increase in yr annual budget over the previous years budget is actually a cut. You’re just cranking to crank. Sad. Again- “China, Largest Holder of U.S. Debt, Remains Tied to Treasuries … ” source- http://www.nytimes.com