Is there a common sense between WH, Senate and Congress that this budget is necessary. Where are the big projects which needs 700 Mio $ a year and is that really a priority? Why they don`t use some of that budget for commercial crew projects?

“The ISS might have cost 100 billion to construct but it is still going on 11 years later and expected to last another 8-16 years.”

Excellent point.

It’s beyond me why some people want to spend $Billions on the biggest disposable rocket in the world, and the most expensive disposable 4-seat capsule.

The only way we’ll expand our presence in space is by building up the amount of assets we have in space – space stations, reusable vehicles of all types, fuel depots, Solar Electric Propulsion tugs, etc. Every dollar we spend on disposable hardware is a dollar that doesn’t go towards our expansion out into space. Let’s get our priorities straight.

As for BEO spaceflight, IMHO not worth it. I don’t mind a trip to the moon, but the cost of a single Apollo mission in today’s dollar makes the ISS look cheap. The ISS might have cost 100 billion to construct but it is still going on 11 years later and expected to last another 8-16 years. Apollo consumed 100 billion and was over in a flash with only 6 moon landings. The ISS has hosted 30 expeditions to date.

BEO spaceflight will not happen like Apollo. In addition LEO is a great place to test things like long term life support and what happens to the body in zero g. Apollo was about beating the Russians to the moon, no matter the cost. However if you are to do sustained BEO spaceflight the cost must be a concern. I mean you could only stay 3 days on the moon for that huge price!

If you want to get to the moon commercial is the way to go. What commercial does is do the routine cheaper so that NASA can focus on what is not routine.

Ah, you need more than that. Here is the problem. The Saturn V was a NASA owned rocket with no other users, so Skylab was doomed to be a one or maybe two off as Saturn V production was halted in 1968. Salyut could be launched by a proton rocket. ASTP used Saturn 1B. However the DOD retired the Saturn I in favor of Titan III(it was cheaper). You needed a space station that was lift able by a rocket that would be in production and NASA could not afford to keep the Saturn in production by itself.

Gemini lacked a docking tunnel. You could dock Gemini, but you could not transfer crew from one spacecraft to another. You would need something Apollo based. (Although there was some Gemini plans to put a hatch in the heat shield).

The existing ELV were to be replaced by the shuttle that was the plan of the 70ies. NASA wanted a space station and a shuttle but all they got was the shuttle. The flaw of the shuttle is that is a general purpose does it all craft. It is a jack of all trades but a master of none. There were some plans to adapt Apollo to Titian III for a LEO role but the budgets of the 70ies could not allow it.

There simply was no station for the Shuttle to go to till the 90ies and even then it wasn’t an American station, it was MIR!

I like manned spaceflight, but frankly there are not enough manned flights to justify keeping a manned only system (Saturn V, Saturn 1B, and Shuttle). The Russians and the Chinese are able to make this economy move, but NASA cannot.

Postscript- bear in mind, what Dragon ‘carries’ is essentially irrelevant and only a redundancy to an existing operational system and the ISS is a relic of Cold War planning anyway, and has no relevance today. It’s repreasnets past planning from the Reagan days, a quarter century ago. . Bolden sheepishly referenced it during the Discovery retirement ceremonies as being operational for 11 years—- and made no reference other than ‘reseach’ to what was being conducted and at a cost of $100 billion, it remains a waste of resources to maintain it. The wise move is to work to rule fulfilling minimal contractual obligations and withdraw from LEO operations, leaving it to commercialists and press on w/BEO operations.

“At the risk of sounding anti-americain. NASA should have developed progress technology, years ago”

1000% agree. Such is the nature of a ‘fits and starts’ reactibe space program we have seen in the United States. The DoD and NASA had some grand plans back in the day. Generally speaking, they should have been ‘stamping’ out Gemini-style baseline ‘crew ferries’ for decades. Imagine of they’d contracted for them to ride existing ELVs for flights through Skylab, ASTP and even the early shuttles for a variety of LEO operations simply to to ferry a crew and a supply package.Soyuz and Progress are like a VW beetle- they’re ugly, but they get you there. Americans seem to need a Cadillac to get you there, instead.