Advocacy is not just about voicing support, it requires setting priorities. We cannot continue to fund SLS/Orion because it does not produce anything with a value that justifies its extraordinary cost.

The total agency budget for NASA has been regularly increasing, and over the last ten years even slightly in fixed year dollars. So while some parts of NASA might live in times of shrinking budgets, I guess they’re offset by the other parts that don’t. It’s not about shrinking budgets at all. It’s about changing priorities.

That’s sort of like the whining about all the aerospace jobs that are being lost because of NASA decisions. They’re not being lost. Though some parts of the country are losing jobs, some are gaining. The vast majority of NASA expenditures is on salaries.

“…as with all the DRMs – is at the mercy of political support and NASA funding levels.”

The best thing going for SLS at the moment is that it’s scheduled to happen fairly far in the future, so the people who hope that it will actually accomplish something that might qualify as “exploration” can also hope that a great upturn in the economy will also happen and Congress will be willing to use tax revenues to fund whatever is going to ride on SLS.

Hope is a wonderful thing.

That’s why no IPO is planned before next year.

the folks at NASAspaceflight.com sort of live in their fantasy world about SLS as is most of NASA. The folks at NASA are becoming like Newt described them as (to paraphrase) “people who sit around and think about space”. RGO

Oh boy, here we go again.
SpaceX has a positive cash flow the last time I checked a year ago but that is very different than profit.
Every time SpaceX sells a launch they receive a deposit for that service which is income. It doesn’t become profit until that service is performed. Positive cash flow can disappear real quickly once production gears up to meet the obligations of the contracts they sign.
I don’t want to make light of a positive cash flow. That’s better than a lot of startups in general and space startups in particular. But remember, customers are likely to bolt if problems develop with the Falcon 9 launcher.
Next month’s COT’s demonstration may be make or break for SpaceX. Personally I hope it makes SpaceX but prudent investors will wait for a successful mission next month before an IPO would be realistic.
Downsizing CCDev now would be foolish. We need to bring two companies to production so as to have backup assurance to LEO.

“Not a true statement. Positive cash flow was the only thing that could be said.”

Well you can debate the difference between positive cash flow and being profitable with financial experts. Suffice it to say that SpaceX is being smart with how they run their business. Most startups fail because they don’t get a revenue stream going soon enough, but SpaceX has be able to do that, and sustain that.

For instance, the flight milestones for the $396M COTS contract were at the end of the task schedule (of course). And following in the footsteps of companies like Boeing, SpaceX gets deposits for future launch hardware, plus they have been getting pre-funding from NASA for CRS Dragon capsules so they will be able to make CRS deliveries shortly after they complete the COTS program (5 Dragons are already in production).