No amount of evidence can change people like you and Matt can it? Totally government dominated space travel truly is a religion to you, isn’t it? In that sense, Common Sense is most certainly right: you’re a robot automatically repeating the same old stuff without thinking deeply about it. Or maybe a lot of it is just pride from you you not wanting to admit (even to yourself) that your position has been wrong all this time?

The skilled scientists and engineers who have endorsed ARM already have their names on it.

“I never said Starbucks was “good”. I said it was expensive. And lemme tell you, the space tourists who buy the stuff will pay dearly for it, much to the delight of the taxpayer.”

I myself would not try to sell Starbuck’s coffee to any space tourist, as they generally prefer far better coffee if they drink it. They will drink Starbuck’s expresso drinks only if no better is conveniently at hand.

Agree the coffee. I send packs of decent stuff to friends in the U.S. all the time. It’s one of the great mysteries of life that they can’t find decent coffee. Oh well.

“It is space projects of scale that matter.”

The only currently running “space projects of scale” is the ISS, which you think should be ended. In that regard you are highly inconsistent, since you say they matter, yet you don’t see the value in space research.

Other than the ISS, there are NO “space projects of scale” being funded. Pieces and parts of what could be “space projects of scale” are being funded, but they are woefully inadequate by themselves to do anything new. ANYTHING new.

So when do you think another “space projects of scale” will get funded? Do you think the Republican’s in Congress are anxious to do so? If not, then you will have a LONG time to wait.

“Which is why, in the long run, short-sighted forays by deep-pocketed NewSpace hobbyists do not.”

Shortsighted? Show me anything NASA is doing that is acknowledged to be “farsighted”. Certainly not the SLS, since they didn’t ask for it, and Congress hasn’t funded any use for it.

And certainly not the Orion/MPCV, which not only has an overweight Service Module, but the craft itself is 20% too heavy to safely carry humans. And this is after how many years of development?

If building a rocket that has not need, and building a spacecraft that is too heavy to carry it’s intended payload isn’t shortsighted, then I don’t know what is.

In the meantime, SpaceX will continue to bring new capabilities online and operational. The Falcon Heavy next year, the crew version of the Dragon in 2015, and potentially reusable 1st stage boosters in 2016.

Each of those SpaceX capabilities has paying customers waiting for them – not something NASA can claim with the SLS or Orion.

In this case it is the government being shortsighted – you just can’t understand it…

So anyway. As we all know by now SLS is geopolitics at work for the US trying to build a clock that goes tick-tock without taking someone to orbit and back safely when NASA has done that for 40 years, except of course if you account for Challenger and Columbia or even Apollo 1 or what might have been Apollo 13 and a few other shuttle flights that people don’t talk about and Apollo flights as well…

Good luck to you trying to reason the robot.

You don’t have to agree with us to be taken seriously, you just have to put forward solid evidence with your arguments. You have demonstrated time and time again either your unwillingness to do that or your inability to do so.

The average taxpayer sure isn’t paying for impact threat mitigation. ARM won’t do that. In fact, the money expended on it will be money that won’t be spent on detection.

I couldn’t help but notice in Lori Garver’s presentation today. The three people she listed as endorsing ARM as a threat mitigation mission were congressional legislators. Wow, I’m sure glad I have such technical wizards looking out for me!

I never said Starbucks was “good”. I said it was expensive. And lemme tell you, the space tourists who buy the stuff will pay dearly for it, much to the delight of the taxpayer.

The average taxpayer has no interest in paying for coffee for billionaires.

Aside from that, except for the expresso drinks, Starbucks coffee is really not all that good.