I wasn’t aware SpaceX had any contracts to fly people. Falcon have flown nobody? Yep. Exactly as planned. Falcons don’t fulfill contracts? Nope. Let’s hope you aren’t doing contract monitoring for anyone. You don’t seem to understand even the simplest ones. When Lockheed doesn’t fly pineapples in their Orions, I guess that will be a contract fault in your book.

“Except they don’t.”

That will be a surprise to SpaceX, who has received payments from their customers for each of their successful flights. So Frank is correct, not you.

“Falcons have flown nobody.”

As has been pointed out to you many times, you are the only one stuck on this metric – no one else cares about it but you.

Will SpaceX fly someone eventually? Yep. Should they have done it by now? Nope.

Get out of the basement and get a life Bub.

“Wasin London to greet the first Pan Am 747 landing in ’70 at Heathrow coming in at 7 AM from NYC.”

You are talking about an event that was 43 years ago! And no doubt you were there as part of the press, or if not, then just a aircraft enthusiast. Regardless, the crowds were far less than what Lindbergh experienced on his historic landing in Paris, which is what Frank’s point was – every trans-Atlantic flight is just a repeat of what’s come before, regardless the size of the aircraft.

Notice how all of your retorts are anchored in the previous century? You really don’t understand the modern world, do you?

I’m curious. What do you base this pronouncement on? You’re pretty sure about this. Is there some life support engineering strategy they’re using that you think would be faulty? SpaceX isn’t sending gallons of champagne into orbit either. Probably not because they couldn’t.

I hope you have a case based on engineering insight and rationale better than that the ECLSS doesn’t have a NASA sticker on it.

Depends on the plane, Frank.

Wasin London to greet the first Pan Am 747 landing in ’70 at Heathrow coming in at 7 AM from NYC. There was a huge crowd– press toured the plane… and let me tell you– a 747 lumbering in for a landing over London made the news and stopped traffic… especially in skies more familiar with the smaller 707s.

and, of course, Concorde drew a lot of crowds and got a lot of ink.

Yep. The compression of the 24/7 news cycle today isn’t a help, either.

They do everything but the one thing that would count: fly someone. And they don’t because they can’t. And if they tried, the crew would die. And kill the company as well. So the solution is to lobby, issue press releases and buy movie prope from 007 films to get ink.

Gee Frank, don’t think you’ll find any active personnel from NASA ‘starring’ in any flicks from the 60s— certainly before they actually made a few lunar landings– some technical advisory was done throguh NASA PAO but certainly not creditd as ‘starring’– and having worked in Hollywood and did some research on that area years ago its holds up– mostly NASA personnel did media – commericals and such– after leaving the agency– and film credits are minimal most notably Jerry Griffin, Pete Conrad while Aldrin did a few TV apperarences.

“And yet Falcons fly and fulfill contracts. They pass the ‘put up or shut up’ test.” says Frankk. Except they don’t. Falcons have flown nobody. False equivalency isn’t the path to parody. Spaceflgiht is. Fly somebosy. And yes, put somebody up– or shut up.

“Crowds don’t gather because a plane made a non-stop flight from NYC to Paris anymore. What’s important now is that it does happen every day. Continued shock and awe at a ‘massive government program’ is not a justification. Continued useful and desirable (even if now ‘boring’) results, are.”

Yep. And I think that’s what a lot of people fail to grasp. Entities like DCSCA think of the “glory” of picking rocks on an airless body in space, but that is just what is commonly called down here on Earth as “work”. My neighbor works at 100m below the surface of the ocean, and most people could care less. The same is becoming true of our astronauts, and that’s a good thing, since it means we have lots of lots of people that are getting into space.

We can’t sustain a space program that relies on drama and suspense like some network TV show, it has to have a purpose. So far, despite what “some” think, there is no political need these days for doing big things in space – we’re not propping up any former super powers anymore. And no 3rd world country is going to care what we do in space, and will buy our iPhones and John Deere tractors regardless.

So the real question is, do we spend what little we do spend on NASA to do NASA unique things, or do we use the American Taxpayers money to do things that create an expanding industry for the whole nation?

Vitter appears to be just another politicians that is looking out for his constituents, but not for the nation. It’s too bad he can’t rise above that.