Of course, these same regulations can put more business in the U.S. launch industry. It’s going to be that much harder to buy Long March launches from the Chinese if you have to hand over sensitive technology to them to bolt on top of the rocket. That could be a benefit to commercial space enterprises.

Then you need glasses– for authorizing any funding for CC is an insane waste of public funds for a redundant system that is, at best, years off from going operational, just to access for a few years a doomed space platform. And it is a weak redundancy to an operational system already in place for decades: Soyuz. LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no where, fast.

I understand you disagree with DCSCA, but do you ever get bored with using that same juvenile snarky line over and over again?

“Anyone who works nuclear warning systems is worried about meteor airbursts because they can be mistaken for nuclear attacks and thus trigger a nuclear war, not because of the meteor airbursts themselves.’

Yes, but… Your summary leaves out a whole whole lot of other concerned people in the loop.

Aside from that, you have brought up a problem which OSTP, DoD, and State have yet to address adequately, particuoarly as regards the newly WMD armed nations.

You are also correct that there is no early warning system for impact. The reason for this is Griffin’s act of direct contempt of the Congress’s instructions.

ARM wil solve both problems.

As far as having a clue goes, I deal with space “enthusiasts” who present their imaginary views on the impact hazard as Gospel Truth every day.

They are currently in intense denial as concerns the ARM.

As far as buying a clue goes and having no idea what I am writing about, you might want to take a good look in your mirror before you proclaim the ARM dead or make any other statements about either the impact hazard or means of dealing with it.

Anyone who works nuclear warning systems is worried about meteor airbursts because they can be mistaken for nuclear attacks and thus trigger a nuclear war, not because of the meteor airbursts themselves.

There is no “early warning system” for meteor strikes, just surveys like Spaceguard, which didn’t start until the 1990s. Spaceguard provided no “early warning” for Chelyabinsk or any number of other meteor airbursts.

You clearly have no clue what you’re posting about.

“The people who you can talk to until you are blue in the face are some of the space ‘enthusiasts’.”

I’m not writing about convincing “space enthusiasts”. They don’t have veto power over Congressional legislation. I’m writing about convincing the President. He has veto power over Congressional legislation.

Buy a clue.

“I do not like to single thread, and will be supporting the efforts of others to develop re-usable first-stages/boosters.”

Nor do I, since we need competition to provide redundancy, inspire innovation, and to keep prices as low as possible.

However SpaceX is the only entity on the planet that is working on a potentially feasible version of reusability for first stage boosters, and even they admit it may not work.

Even if SpaceX is able to perfect reusability with their Falcon 9 3.66m diameter core, that doesn’t mean the same approach can be scaled up to the size needed for the SLS. Or at least not right away.

No part of the SLS rocket will ever be reusable. Congress could fund work on it, but that would just be an extension of the pork spending that they are currently doing for the SLS as a whole, which itself is not meant to solve any pressing problems (i.e. it’s just a jobs program).

“We could talk to the President about probabilities until we were blue in the face. The reality is that, based on history, the President has no reason to believe that any US citizen’s life, body, or property is in any danger from any asteroids for decades, if not centuries, to come.”

Sorry, but you are out of the loop, and have been for about 60 years.

Everyone with any access to US warning systems has been greatly concerned about the impact hazard ever since they first started operating in the 1950′s.

The people who you can talk to until you are blue in the face are some of the space “enthusiasts”. They view dealing with the impact hazard as “diverting” money from “their” projects.

That goes for the “cosmologists” as well as manned space flight “enthusiasts”. Look at the numbers: the amount spent for detection has been less than 1/1,000 th the cost overruns on Ed Weiler’s Space Telesccope.

“I agree that if ARM isn’t endorsed in the current Auth bill, it’s toast”

I agree as well. If ARM is not endorsed in the current Authorization Bill, the Bill will be toast.

I understand probabilities.

The reality is that meteors that cause deaths or injuries have occurred centuries apart. Before Chelyabinsk, the last meteor to cause deaths or injuries was the Ch’ing-yang event over China in 1490 — over 500 years ago. (And modern researchers doubt that meteor caused any deaths or injuries.) No President will be motivated to veto anything based on events with historical frequencies on the order of a half-millenium.

Even if you count meteors that caused damage, if not deaths and injury, Tunguska was 105 years ago. No President is going to use his veto power for only the third time in his office based on something that happened over a century ago.

We could talk to the President about probabilities until we were blue in the face. The reality is that, based on history, the President has no reason to believe that any US citizen’s life, body, or property is in any danger from any asteroids for decades, if not centuries, to come.

“You may want to examine the particular circumstances of those ealier vetoes more closely.”

The President vetoed a bill to speed foreclosures during the mortgage crisis in 2010. Unlike meteors, that was a threat to the property of millions of US citizens.

The President’s other veto was of a spending bill that duplicated another bill that he had already signed. It was a housekeeping measure that saved taxpayers about a half-trillion dollars.