I take it you have the data on how NASA, which has long since been pathetically underfunded, spends its funds accomplishing the narrow goals those private enterprises are doing? That is, you can discern all of what NASA does and break down its finances to demonstrate this?
I've seen the data. One reason NASA is "underfunded" is because they rarely avoid spending a million dollars when a hundred thousand would do. The big reason they're like that is that they have to play CY&A with Congress on items both real and imaginary; a second reason is that they've accumulated bureaucracy which works to study everything to death.
NASA put people on the moon before there was the internet. And, I think that's pretty much the epitome of how I don't believe this, the drive and the will, more so than 'competition', was all that was necessary. The drive and the will could've had us working to get to Mars over the years Dubya mentioned it.
NASA then was like the private outfits now: lean, mean, focused. Even NASA insiders agree that the organization has none of that left. NASA then used what worked; NASA now has the itch to make something more high-tech just because they can.
And however much I'd like to get to Mars, right now that's a stupid goal. We should be working on a permanent moon settlement, and a robot program to capture asteroids -- especially ones with rare metals. Once we're good at both those, then it will be time to think about Mars.
Those creative ideas cost money, are you now going to show where in the finances NASA could pay for this, or will you suggest that the private sector should just buy the shuttles and launch them on their own for 1/10 NASA's asking price?
NASA is going to want more station space. If the shuttles get scrapped, NASA will just end up spending three or four billion just building what they already have -- large spaces that can be sealed against vacuum. We have the shuttles; loft them, park them, and save those billions.
Right, of course.
Unless the terrorists work for the operators, of course, but that's just bad cinema.
LOL
Even then it would be hard -- too many inspections and re-inspections. Things have to get casual before there can be room for a threat.
The real threat target would be a space elevator. Merely connecting it, geo-synch station to ground station, would proclaim "TARGET!" in letters a thousand miles high.
Look, I don't care that private enterprise is looking to the stars, and saying, "hey! Let's fly a couple thousand feet closer to those and make money off the rich!" But the Constellation program was looking beyond taking rich douches into orbit (where they could jettison the 'cargo', for all I care) and taking heroes back to the moon and even beyond. That's my big concern here.
But that's what the rich are good for -- throwing huge piles of money at things first, thereby making those things possible for the rest of us. Many, many advances in history have come because the rich dumped money into things, and as a result they became practical and within the reach of a middle class -- whereupon they became useful things, not just toys. Today's toys for the rich are tomorrow's tools for the middle class.
So no, you don't want them to jettison that 'cargo', you want that cargo to come back safely, and pay to go over and over and over, while systems get better and service(s) improved, until one day the rich have to move over for the upper middle class and then the middle class... and move on to new toys to throw money at.
