Not quite. Revisit Von Braun’s August, ’69 presentation. After the Nixon Administration butchered post-Apollo planning, all that was left was shuttle- and that shuttle was nothing like what evolved into the operational STS system. The thread of the mess we have today goes back to that era.

“The ISS a ‘national lab’ ???”

I’ve noticed that facts tend to surprise you. Don’t you see a trend?

“But you believe ‘research’ is a productive and profitable enterprise, eh.”

Yes, eh. You don’t? I guess you’re against college education too, eh.

If only you had the mental ability to do a little research yourself, then you could learn all the facts about ‘research‘. I doubt it will happen in your lifetime though (you doing research), and we just have to hope that certain traits are not passed on genetically…

“Thank you…the issue here is that what got NASA and human spaceflight off the track is that for not the first time, but close to it…is that the infrastructure that they have built with tax payer dollars IS infrastructure built solely for government.”

No. What got NASA ‘off track’ was the poisobous tentacles of privatization. There’s nothing wrong w/building a government installation solely for government operations- unless you feel the US Mint should be sold to the Danbury Mint and contracted to securely stamp out coinage and print currency. =eyeroll=

@Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 11:36 am

Are you saying we need the federal government to step in and do things that are not “routine”? Lincoln said it.

“…but our federal agencies don’t have anything to do with those efforts.”

Yes they do- might want to check who contracted for and paid for facilities and infractructure.

@Vladislaw wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 11:54 am

Revisit the Epilogue penned by Arthur C. Clarke to the 1970 book, “First On The Moon – A Voyage With Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins & Edwin E. Aldrin.’ A long range plan for a ‘space program’ is pretty much layed out by Clarke- complete with exploitation caveats in conjunction w/exploration and for a piece penned four decades ago with the knowledge base of the time, it is fairly prescient, even for Clarke. Its not disimilar to what Kraft was proposing or what Von Braun pitched in vain in August of ’69. An ABC News broadcast from July, 1979 titled ‘Infinite Horizons- Space Beyond Apollo’ was also fairly prescient about the 2000 era time frame- complete w/Jules Bergman predicting ‘wristradio’ personal communication devices in the future costing as little as ten bucks– aka the cellphone.

Of course, the sci-fi dogmas of reusable spaceplane and space station were around long before these commercial justifications were plastered onto them. But that is the sort of economic fantasy space fans were led to believe, and talked each other into believing.

At least Mike Griffin was honest when observed that these were really projects to build heavenly cathedrals. All his Constellation did was strip off the bogus sci-fi “industry” and go back to the pure cathedral of Apollo. (Why he thinks it’s the U.S. federal government’s role to build cathedrals, there he does not venture…)

Today we’ve conveniently forgotten about these old fantasies and move on to new fantasies, such as about how if NASA builds a big rocket big payloads will come (despite the preposterously expensive rocket taking all the budget money from the preposterously expensive payloads), or the local favorite in these parts, about how the taxpayer-funded billionaire tourist is supposed to, according to sympathetic magic (like creates like), lead to space colonization. It’s voodoo doll space development.

“So you believe space has been conquered, eh.” LEO and the Moon have. Nonsense. The ISS a ‘national lab’ ??? For six international crewmen? ROFLMAO Nice try. It has morphed into many things since Von Braun first proposed it as part of an integrated space program in ’69 and Reagan revived it in the mid-80s. It was nearly killed off in the GHWBush era. It’s nothing more than an aerospace ‘WPA’ project, as Deke Slayton labeled it before he died. A lab that currently consumes and doesnt produce any ROI to merit the cost. But you believe ‘research’ is a productive and profitable enterprise, eh. You ought to do a little ‘research; yourself and you’ll discover the first area profit-oriented, quarterly driven firms do to cut costs is slash R&D budgets.

If your attempt was to insult with off-topic commentary, “Don’t be an Oler” would be more effective.

Thank you…the issue here is that what got NASA and human spaceflight off the track is that for not the first time, but close to it…is that the infrastructure that they have built with tax payer dollars IS infrastructure built solely for government.”

you replied:

“What a preposterously ignorant comment.”

only if you did not read what I said. The billions spent on the OPF or LC 39 is trivial compared with the hundreds of billions spent on the space shuttle/space station complex…which are the infrastructure I am referring to.

And there was/is no significant use of either of those “infrastructure” “steps” by anyone other then NASA. That is why they are making a big deal of lego efforts now on the station.

Dont be a Palin…try and follow the conversation RGO

“So you believe space has been conquered, eh.”

LEO and the Moon have. Oh sure there’s still more to do, just like even though we’ve conquered the ocean there are still areas we haven’t fully mastered or even explored.

Look, we landed on the Moon and returned safely six times, and astronauts even had a chance to play some golf and go off-roading while they were there. Not your standard vacation, but I’d say we got the formula down. There is more to do, such as strip-mining and setting up tourist resorts, but we perfected the formula of how to get there, survive, and return more than 40 years ago.

And for LEO we fly there so much we can leave people in orbit on a constant basis. Is it hard, dangerous and expensive? Sure.

“And space is a place we go to work, eh.”

If employees are taking money to perform a task (in this case, in space), I’d call it work. What do you call it? Oh, and by the way, I use the “American English” dictionary to define words, not the “I Don’t Like The Answer So I’ll Make Up My Own Definition” dictionary.

“Then you should be able to share a long, long list of the ‘work’ accomplished on the ISS…”

You really should do a little research before you post. Here is the NASA link to the ISS experiment results by experiments name. You can also sort the list by category and facility.

“…as a ROI to justify it and be capable of penning a concise prospectus to sell the private capital markets…”

The ISS is a National Laboratory – go look up what that means. But financially it means that as long as Congress is happy with what they are doing, then Congress will fund it. Oh, and U.S. companies get free access to the results, just like everything else NASA does.

No wonder you are always so angry – you don’t know anything about the modern NASA, you only know what NASA was doing 40 years ago – you really need to get out of your basement more…

What a preposterously ignorant comment.

CST-100 is leasing OPF and SpaceX will soon be using LC-39. Try again Brainiac.

A fool and his words…….

“it will only work if there is some monetary reason to do whatever we are doing” RGO

Free resourses is almost always the result when the government does the initial exploration. The homestead act was designed to put free resources into people hands and give them a leg up on starting. Business gets access to mineral/water/gas&oil rights at bargin basement prices for the same reason.

This should be done on Luna, it is a 9 billion acre unclaimed asset just waiting to be entered into the ledger.

Googaw wrote:

“I can’t wait to see by how many orders of magnitude we will need to low-ball to include EVERYONE. This particular ritual of the Cosmic Faith, it’s like an astronomical auction to see who can come up with the most preposterous cost estimate.”

Can anyone become an airline pilot? Does everyone want to be one?

By saying everyone goes, I mean it no longer is one government enitity deciding who goes. It means the gates are now open. Granted everyone won’t go, but the preception will be it is now open. It’s the difference in not bothering with having a dream to do something because it will never be open to you, or having a dream where it is realistic that it can really happen.

As Dennis Tito made happen. The dream of space travel became a reality with his journey.