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As evidence, they have launched only four manned missions in ten years, even though they have had no significant technological failures in years. Obviously if they were in a race they would be maintaining a much higher launch rate. Their goals are different, to build national pride in their domestic audience and respect for their industrial capabilities in potential customers. Note that (unlike SLS) their current and future man-rated LVs are also intended for the commercial market, and consequently their largest currently planned LV (the CZ-5) is in the 25MT to LEO class, similar to Delta IV heavy, appropriate for large satellites or space station modules but not really for an Apollo-like dash to the moon.

The metrics, rationale and geopolitics for such grand and inspiring enterprises like Apollo have changed greatly since the era when flags and footprints projected national power. They sell Roll-Royces in Russia now and there’s a McDonald’s in Red Square. A Big Mac in the mouth is the taste of victory today rather than a moon rock on display in a museum.

American space efforts have always been reactive, not proactive. When the PRC launches out toward Luna, how Americans react will determine the future course of U.S. space efforts fro the better part of this century.

Yes, carving out their new website on the digital frontier with their own bare hands. But you can not ignore the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the middle of our economy. It is a maker or breaker. Always has been. The federal government, like it or not, has to be a variable in any equation, especially one where property rights are not even established past GEO. You want to know why business ends at GEO? Thats where the property ends.

The key is the multiplier effect. Or in laymen’s terms, getting the biggest bang for the buck. A policy of zero g-zero tax is a no cost way for the Nation to induce capital flows to move towards potentially higher returns. One of the highest multiplier effects you can get.

Another way is having contractors put some of their own skin in the game. The COTS model for three seperate EELV’s has shown us that. Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9 ( and soon orbital) Those gave a lot better return to the tax payer, at a lower cost than Ares I and constellation.

The federal government can help or hurt but they are rarely ever neutral to businesses wanting to do their own thing.

NASA is not an expenditure. It’s an investment. How many of you in your own portfolios spend less than 1/2 of 1% on investments? A healthy 3-5% should be mandated for NASA. We should begin building a space policy with China/Russia and India along with the ESA. Imagine if we developed a true partnership with China/Russia on deep space travel?

If you do not have bold vision – you’re destined to look up to the sky and imagine the clouds as they take shape overhead – only to slowly disappear or rain down upon your head.

wasn’t chasing government contracts. They sold to private sector customers from the very beginning. Indeed, Jobs got the idea for the Apple I by hanging out at an early computer store and observing what people were and weren’t buying. Learning about the customers. A required skill to succeed in Silicon Valley. But something people in the NASA contractor community, including most of NewSpace, have no clue how to do, since their only “customer”, if they have any at all, is NASA or one of its contractors. So they specialize in political lobbying instead of adding value to people’s lives, and work on economic fantasies of no actual relevance to what people in the private sector actually want and can afford to buy.