Political danger for private space travels?

I'm not sure you know what the word "same" means. Or is it just me?

Now I think you're misusing the word "often" here. It would be more accurate to say "almost never". It's like watching people on tv winning the lottery and then coming to the conclusion that people often win the lottery (which is only in the most general sense true, it doesn't mean that if someone buys a lottery ticket they're going to be on tv next week). Despite this, what you say does remind me about the old chestnut about a million monkeys banging away at a million typewriters and producing Shakespeare. Although it has been accurately stated that the internet disproves at least the numerical part of this equation.


Nice read, thanks. I particularly liked the reference to "The Andromeda Strain".


Well ... there are lots of NASA bashers here. Occasionally I'm one too. Brilliant use of the word "caste" by the way, please tell me it's not just a spelling error because it really is quite good.

DKH

It seems that some roadblocks to space are being slowly removed in the US. But NASA is acting with great reluctance, it cuts into their rice bowl. What do we need to communicate to our elected officials to get more action out of NASA for promotion of private spaceflight? What are some legitimate reasons for NASA to try to limit private spaceflight?

Well
If I get there first all bets are off. grin.

Lets say we get there first. (Dad how much farther? not very much farther now son!)

Hurry up!

FYI: X-37 was not cancelled...it's launching on an Atlas 5 in December this year (2008). And the X-43 essentially was re-numbered to the X-51. (source wikipedia).

It was by NASA, DARPA now runs the project. When I wrote the above entry (4 years ago) I'm not sure it was general knowledge that DARPA was taking over the project but even if it was what I wrote was/is correct NASA cancelled the project. CEV itself was more or less cancelled as the requirements were changed and the project eventually became Orion. With the constant problems with Orion (Mainly due to its Ares 1 booster) I will be surprised if it survives in its present form.

well i think the NASA is always ready for what ever possible happen..



_________________
Oklahoma city

I think that the exact opposite is probably true, that NASA spends most of its time at the mercy of various politicians and is forced to react rather than follow a pre-determined strategy. A couple of examples:

Robbing other parts of the NASA budget to cover the extra cost of constellation does not indicate that NASA was ready for a shortfall in available funds (most projects would build a contingency into their plans to cater for this, either as a pot of cash available in an emergency or extra margin in the original design that allowed more flexibility. I see NASA's raiding of other projects as a failure to do either of this things or at worst the adoption of a design that was flawed to begin with.

Failure to see that Rocketplane Kistler were never going to launch anything and still giving them a COTS contract despite their obvious problems at raising cash (probably due to their rocket never being finished or ever having a test flight, they blew hundreds of millions of dollars over nearly a decade without anything to show for it).

Trotting out old shuttle-C launch vehicles as an alternative to Ares/Orion to the Augustine commission does not seem like a back up plan, particularly when these same (or very similar) designs have already been dismissed as inadequate and the shuttle contracts are starting to be closed down.

The gap in US Access to space has not shrunk, in fact it has increased, this is despite having had many billions of dollars and five years to work on the problem.

So how is NASA prepared other than badly ?