Well, your opinion is foolish. One could be developed for a lot less, a lot sooner, if it didn’t have all the political constraints on it that SLS does.

It was Congress that did that, not the Obama administration.

Software is written. AR&D systems contain software.

“Persistent” questioning by who? And why was it persistent?

What the hell did they expect Bolden to say, “Well, we may have an asteroid the size of Texas headed our way, but we don’t know for sure yet.”?

“The primary goal the science community laid out for the 2020 rover was to enable the efficient selection of the most compelling sample set possible – so compelling that Congress will spend the additional few billions of dollars for missions to retrieve and return them to Earth.”

Of course, this particular process is susceptible to very sudden changes.

My attitude toward ISS is probably best characterized as being “on the bubble.” A truly unconscionable amount of time has been wasted these past two decades doing unjustifiable high school science fair-level stuff up there when a full court press on closed loop environmental systems, physical and magnetic/electrostatic radiation shielding and fractional gravity research on human physiology was needed from the start. Still, the thing is there. Useful research could, in principle, be aggressively pursued at ISS starting anytime.

I’m not optimistic that will ever happen so long as NASA is the landlord, but ISS has at least been the hook upon which the crucial CRS and CCDev efforts have been hung so its continued existence will, in the longer view, be justified by that alone even if it never otherwise lives up to its considerable potential in other arenas.

Given the recent renewal of traditional Russian aggression, the future of the ISS is more problematical than ever. Should the Russians actually move to detach their modules in 2020, or earlier, I favor letting them go and rebuilding ISS as a research facility more directly targeted at the program of inquiry outlined above.

Failing that, we should detach and salvage some of ISS’s more massive components, such as the solar arrays and the radiator system, for reuse on another, Bigelow-based, station and de-orbit what remains. If NASA does decide to finally grow a pair and rebuild ISS for a post-Russian future, they will certainly need to make use of Falcon Heavy to put up new hab modules and other outsize bits of required new infrastructure. SLS – assuming it has somehow survived to that point – will be too budget- and production capacity-constrained to do the necessary work.

Whatever befalls, I certainly welcome whatever incremental business ISS can provide to the nascent crew launch services industry, and for as long as ISS is otherwise justifiable. But I still see that market as inevitably dominated, on the customer side, by Bigelow as soon as he gets his first station up and running in LEO.

As for the rest of my “vision” – though I think that’s a bit too grandiose a term for what seems to me a straightforward exercise in extrapolation from recent and current events – I base it on the fundamental truth that SpaceX is proceeding with its agenda at a minimum of four times the “velocity” with which NASA and other legacy space players, such as ULA, are desultorily pursuing their own chaotic and incoherent mix of warring priorities. That multiplier might easily be five, six or even more.

In the case of ULA, in particular, the ratio is effectively near infinite as ULA seems to be standing completely still at the moment. Hint to ULA: that light you see up ahead isn’t the end of the tunnel, it’s the headlight of a Russian locomotive with its throttle wide open and a wrench hung from the boiler’s relief valve.

As noted, all that is required to do repeatable Apollo 8-style close-up lunar orbit junkets is to establish a LEO propellant depot, then mate some kind of refuelable, reusable transfer stage to a Bigelow BA330 and go. A Falcon 9 2nd stage, modified slightly to be in-space refuelable, would probably work, but the single engine isn’t optimal from a fault-tolerance standpoint and might even be too much boost for passenger comfort. Something purpose-built with a cluster of smaller engines sourced from XCOR, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic or some other NewSpace player would likely be better. This stage and a propellant depot deployable to LEO and/or lunar orbit would be the major custom bits needed to enable frequent and comparatively cheap lunar excursions.

Rich tourists would go first. Later, other interested parties would fund one or more types of lunar lander and arrange for landings and lunar surface expeditions. Soon after that it would be lunar ISRU, construction of Luna City and – lest we forget – hookers in space.

Fun times ahead, Donald. Fun times ahead.

Bravo!!! I think you’re a little too positive on SLS; a little too negative about the ISS’s need until Bigelow actually flies and that, even then, two markets are better than one; and I think you’re a little too optimistic on how fast the commercial guys can get to Earth’s moon, but only by a few years; and whether they will do so without a government market — but all that’s quibbling. I agree with you so close to 100% it doesn’t matter.

— Donald