“Met Von Braun, Mark. And in our chat— he didn’t. ”

Why would he talk to someone that didn’t matter? You were there as part of a TV crew (or so you insinuate), so of course he’s going to be cordial and not tell you your ideas suck.

Have you no idea how social interaction works?

And for someone that supposed “knew him”, you apparently forget that he was a proponent of what you call “going around in endless circles” – LEO space stations. He even promulgated the idea of using LEO space stations as staging point for BEO missions.

If Werhner were alive today, he would not be very happy with you dissing his ideas…

Met Von Braun, Mark. And in our chat— he didn’t. Although he was down on nuclear propulaion.

Pot, kettle on line one.

“What Boeing and Lockmart quickly discovered with EELV was that the duplicate support structures for each program were wasteful given the low launch rate.”

Which, given that all the Commercial Crew providers are using existing launchers, is an irrelevant point.

All the Commercial Crew providers have to build vehicles for qualification flights, and those will be the same used for normal duty. Since they can be reused up to 10 flights, each provider really only needs as a “fleet” of 2-3 vehicles. And since they can be stored in a small building, or out on the production floor, in no way is it the same as the EELV situation.

“ISS is a budget liability.”

We’re paying money for science and technology advancement. Though the value could be debated, at least there is no debate that we are getting something for our money.

Use you same judgement for the SLS – what do we get for the $30B+?

“It also helps to prop up the tyrant Putin.”

Funny how that doesn’t feed into your equation for Commercial Crew.

And again, how does that same judgement work for the SLS? Instead of Russia, we’re borrowing that money from China. Is China better to prop up than Russia?

So far you have been arguing to prop up Russia and China far more than those of us that want a domestic crew transportation system and for NASA to use existing AMERICAN launchers.

Interesting, no?

“There is nothing that NASA does that requires they have assured access to space.”

Dig into the NASA charter and you’ll see that NASA isn’t supposed to be a transportation provider or doing human space exploration. Yet they are.

So don’t get too high-and-mighty about “requirements”.

If anything NASA is trying to push for things that make sense, and that were gross oversights during the time of the Shuttle. Spending money to build a Single-Point-Of-Failure transportation system is not a good investment of taxpayer money, nor does it support ongoing space operations sufficiently.

And true, there is no law or requirement for us to succeed in what we do in space, yet NASA routinely creates requirements that make it more likely we will. We don’t need Congress to write laws for that, it’s common sense.

For instance, can you show me the law that mandates backup systems on human vehicles?

“that’s the definition of a monopsony – single user, multiple providers.”

The topic is about competition for supply, and that is because we are talking about redundancy and cost of supply. Having a single source of demand is irrelevant.

“And you still don’t get it. In the taypayer’s eyes…”

Why do you keep bringing us taxpayers into this? WE DON’T SPEND OUR TAX MONEY, CONGRESS DOES.

And Congress is supposed to spend it wisely, and effectively.

One way to spend it effectively is in the creation of a new, self-sustaining industry. Otherwise, like in the case of the SLS, all you’re doing is deficit spending.

20th century ideology.