AnotherMiddleClass, it remains to be seen how "efficient" SpaceX, SNC, OSC, and Boeing will be, and their success will be largely be a result of the immense NASA funding, knowledge and support that they have and will continue to recieve (as long as they continue to meet their COTS/CCDev/CCiCap milestones). I am certainly routing for them, and agree there is the potential for this to really open up access to LEO like never before. (btw, save the partisan stereotypes for the politics pages.)

AnotherMiddleClass - you DO understand that NASA blazed this trail that private business will now exploit for profit? Hopefully you also understand that this happens a lot, and that government provides and maintains the infrastructures that businesses exploit for profit every day.

So stop hating on government, read up and go out and vote. Thats the American way.

Patrook Goreng

You do realize that NASA never designed or built the Space Shuttle, and that the company that did was bought by Boeing in 1996. NASA runs the launch center and sets the missions, private companies built the equipment.

Bloated, top-heavy, pork driven, wasteful Big Govt NASA grabbed a US space monopoly and has blown 40 years and $500 billion since Apollo...without getting a single American beyond low Earth orbit, and leaving itself incompetent/incapable of crewing or even supplying our own space station...

While NASA wasted $20 billion on it's miserably failed/canceled Constellation, SpaceX produced vastly superior capability for only $300 million.. the entire 12 flight SpaceX ISS supply contract is for less than the cost of a single Nasa Shuttle flight...

Private enterprise innovation, spirit, efficiency is getting the US space program going after decades of Fed Govt incompetence, waste...

Yet even now, NASA ismwastingm$60+ billion more shameless pork on the unneeded, unaffordable, unsustainable SLS/Orion... When SpaceX has vastly more advanced, efficient deep space capable boosters/capsules already flying..

The US manned space,program is to mimportant to,be further entrusted to our parasitic,,incompetent, greedy, bloated, wasteful Federal Govt.

"If not picked up for NASA use, perhaps they could be used for commercial purposes?"

It's both. Commercial, with NASA as the anchor, but ultimately not the only customer. These would also be the means of transportation to Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space stations, which themselves would be leased by any government or non-government (including foreign, within ITAR limits) with a need, and the ability to write the necessary checks...

Actually, I believe that NASA killed the shuttle, not Obama. The decision to phase out the shuttle was made years ago. Not sure if NASA made the decision under the G W Bush admin or under Bill Clinton, but it was not under Obama.

I meant to say that Obama did not kill NASA but that NASA killed the shuttle. NASAs own bureaucratic nature (at least in the manned arena) is pretty much responsible for their problems, but the feds (under Clintion, Bush and now Obama) inability to maintain a steady, reasonable vision for what NASA should do has contributed the most to NASA lack of vision (in the manned arena). The Bush 'mars plan' is a good example of a wishy-washy Washington vision, and the Obama 'land on an asteroid' plan is another example. It's private folks with money and a desire to explore (and make more money in some cases) which will propel us humans into space, not the govt.

Guys, this information is a mouse click away... let me set the story straight.

The Shuttle program was cancelled under Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" legislation passed in 2004, the last Shuttle flights were supposed to be in 2010. It was supposed to be replaced by the Constellation program (CxP): the Ares I and Ares V rockets... but this program was underfunded by Congress, way behind schedule, was set back even further by a series of technical hurdles, and was eventually considered to be no longer viable (per the Augustine Commission).

In 2009, the Obama Administration following the guidance of the Augustine Commission, cancelled the Constellation program (CxP), and extended the Shuttle by a few missions, but the cancellation of the Shuttle was essentially set in stone, back in 2004. (In my opinion, Shuttle needed to be cancelled sooner or later to free up budget for new vehicles and spacecraft, but clearly the transition could have been handled better.)

Meanwhile, NASA's COTS and CCDev program (commercial cargo and crew) has been in development since 2006, to the point that now we have SpaceX and soon OSC (thru NASA programs and contracts) delivering cargo to the ISS, and by 2015 SpaceX, SNC, and/or Boeing should be transporting crew to the ISS.

Shortly after Obama cancelled the Constellation program (CxP), the development of SLS was signed into law in 2010. While commercial providers will be focused on LEO (low-earth orbit), NASA's SLS will be used primarily for deep-space missions back to the moon, asteroids and Mars.

Meanwhile, the Delta IV, Atlas V, Delta II, Minotaur, etc., are still launching domestic unmanned payload to into orbit as well.

That's it in a nutshell.

Magnum - you continue to call SpaceX, SNC, and Boeing "amateurs" which is just silly given the accomplishments of these companies, and especially the level of involvement from NASA. It just shows that you don't know a lot about how the program is being implemented.

Here is a good link to learn more about how the commercial crew and cargo capabilities are being developed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development

I didn't see Weyland-Yutani on the list! :-)

I would agree with Lee Jun-fan-
Boeing is not an amateur (look up their past performances) and SpaceX has adopted the same Lean Six Sigma standards as the other big companies that have built rockets over the years. If they have a technical order that specifies a screw must be turned 6-1/2 rotations and you rotate it 7 times, you have a problem with quality control and team leads, supervisors, and program managers get called in to discover why that screw rotated 7 times, what is the risk if it is left with 7 rotations, and project schedule (if there is no float) slides to the right if you do not have contingency funds to fast track or crash the project to resolve said number of rotations.

There aren't too many programs that really require Lean Six Sigma but between nuclear power plants and rocket building, I would want professionals that leverage the power of Lean Six Sigma to ensure you minimize the defects during all processes of a project, ensuring the odds of a catastrophic failure are reduced to a minimum as much as possible.

Any time you deal with metal, gases, temperature, pressure, adhesives, and human interaction on one level or another, you will ALWAYS have unpredictibability and uncertainty that needs to be designed into a project. I believe rocket building encompasses all of these facets.

NASA promised a gullible Congress 'cheap, safe, reliable access to space'.. then produced it's boondoggle dead end Space Shuttle which cost over $1.6 billion per flight, killed 2 crews, had several multi-year service outages....Nasa's STS was the most unaffordable, dangerous, unreliable space vehicle in history...

In 50 years of govt monopoly of US space, NASA flew only a couple hundred Govt selected Americans in space costing over $1 billion taxpayer dollars EACH...

SpaceX has free enterprise innovation, efficiency, spirit... and promises to open Space for ordinary Americans…. Offers a rational, efficient, innovative US space program...
The US space program is too important to be further entrusted to bloated, pork driven Federal Agency Nasa..

Go SpaceX

"We would be flying to the Space Station now, if Obama hadn't killed NASA..."

1. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration still lives and breathes. Never stopped.

2. Flying...on what? If Constellation had been continued, you would still be waiting for the first Orion/Ares-1 human flight in 2017...maybe. And Orion is expensive overkill to only reach LEO, it was meant to be a deep-space craft .

Oh, and perhaps you were sleeping, when the address that included this, was given nine years ago:

"The shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the space shuttle, after nearly 30 years of duty, will be retired from service."
— President George W. Bush, January 14, 2004

The end of the Shuttle was clearly going to happen during the next administration, no matter whose it was...or are you going to blame Obama for not stopping a process that was well underway, contracts ending, manufacturing lines closing, before he ever took the oath?

"...and if we had built more Space Shuttles, shuttles that could had been easily updated with modern tech."

'Ifs' = billions, my friend. We can all imagine programs that Congress won't pay for. (Oh, and for the record, in many ways, the Shuttle orbiters were updated over their operational life. Just not in ways you could easily see. Better, faster, lower-powered computers and avionics are easier to do, than things that actually change the shape of the airframe...)

"Oh well, At least China, India & Russia are still flying."

If you mean manned space, India is flying...what?

If you mean unmanned space, then you also didn't hear this minor story about a Mars rover, among assorted other launches.

"USA dependent upon amateurs... Oh well."

Sierra Nevada is new to spacecraft, but they've been an aerospace contractor for a long time. SpaceX has supplied cargo to ISS...for pay. Getting paid for something is, by definition, the end of your 'amateur' status. They've done something.

And when was Boeing ever an 'amateur....?'

at least we have seasoned experts like former NASA astronaut

====== ==

No one now working at Nasa has EVER designed a successful space vehicle, or flown/managed a manned mission beyond low earth orbit...

Nasa, like every Federal Agency, is expert at politics, BS, and self-propagating earmarked pork... not at space.

Subtract the accomplishments of Caltech's JPL and SpaceX and what have we got for US space... just Federal Govt waste, incompetence, bloat, pork.... dead wood Nasa HQ/Center dead wood overhead..

I think you're describing the X-38, and that was always a NASA project for an emergency return vehicle from ISS...and shelved some time ago.

But its drop tests were cool...

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

I don't think Uncle Al (if indeed he really said that), ever considered that that's also the definition of 'practice.'

The current administration did not "gut" NASA. You have no basis for that statement. They cancelled Constellation (at the advice of the Augustine Commission as others pointed out above), which was a bloated, technically plagued, and underfunded mess. They replaced it with more focus on Commercial Crew and Cargo and with SLS, and NASA's funding has remained level throughout, despite the recession and fiscal austerity.

Haha! Yeah, Obama sure did "gut" NASA didn't he?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA:

Year Billions
2006 $15.13
2007 $15.86
2008 $17.32
2009 $17.78
2010 $18.72
2011 $18.45
2012 (est.) $17.77
2013 (proj.) $17.71

And billions of tax-payer dollars funneled to these "private" companies.

Mifo - Not sure what your point is here, but for every dollar spent by NASA, it has paid back $14 in economic benefits.

Sorry if expressed myself poorly. My point was to those "NASA-haters" that you mentioned. If we want to argue that the government is no longer needed to perform these functions - and that private industry can do it profitably - we can't then make a strong argument for government funding for these private companies. At some point, it's corporate welfare.

David9000

You seem to forget that NASA funded the Shuttle it was a private company that designed and built it, and that company was later sold to Boeing.

robn56 - Actually, no I haven't forgotten that. I've got 25+ years working in aerospace. In fact I worked for companies that helped build equipment for the shuttle (and other spacecraft) and I've even been on Discovery (not in orbit).

I understand what you're saying, but we have to recognize that NASA developed the requirements for the shuttle and every other spacecraft they've had built by private industry and managed. Those requirements were built on cumulative knowledge NASA gained from multiple programs and was then passed on to the contractors.

Mifo - I would tend to agree that for LEO, private industry can probably be more efficient at this point. IMO, it makes perfect sense to use them as suppliers for LEO operations. I wouldn't really consider it corporate welfare if they are suppliers (as long as they aren't being subsidized for loosing money).

However, private industry is not going to take the risks to do basic research for more advanced projects. They simply don't yet have the knowledge nor is there a demonstrable business case based on current technology.

Yes they did, but to be fair, that's NASA doing what it's supposed to do. Advance the state of the aerospace art, for US commercial and military benefit is a large part of why it exists at all...

But we seem to be under the impression that 'space' somehow 'belongs' to NASA. That's becoming less and less true, every day...and in fact, that is the way it should be.

Really? They been blasting this money into space all this time? Geez - and all this time I thought they were sending astronauts and insturments and satellites and stuff up there instead.

"Oh, by the way, would you like to invest in my company to send people up there for Mars vacations?"

Show me a business plan on which I can do due diligence, and I'll consider it...

You see, you want to ridicule it, but space has been a 'business' for a long time. Or do you think that all those communications satellites were handed down from above, like stone tablets? NASA's got nothing to do with those.

"Better that these small-scale efforts fail so that more money won't be wasted by blasting it away into the cosmos."

As long as it's private money, why do you care? Why do you favor business failure?

Well thanks Gringo for that most worthy contribution to the discussion. </s>

To the extent that government money is involved, it is political...