Markets

> There have been more negative comments from members of this group, in
> effect that NASA or some other government is keeping us from our dreams of
> space commerce.

It does not seem to be helping at this point. NASA has a distinct
dampening effect on new launchers. That's a bad thing.

> My reaction is that is silly. If it were not for NASA and
> the Soviet (now Russian) space programs humans would yet to go to space.

That isn't totally clear actually; the Germans unmanned rockets got
to space first.

> The prospects of developing space commerce has been aided by these
> government programs, maybe not as fast as could have been done, but private
> organizations have yet to put a single human in space, though of course with
> the Russian government's help MirCorp did. Without the efforts of
> governments most humans would not even believe we could go to space and
> live.

Let's assume that that is true.

Does that mean that NASA is still a good thing? Look how it reacts
to space tourism. Look what Mr. Beale said when he cancelled his
launch program about doing this due to the threat of competition
from NASA [presumably Boeing or McDonnel Douglas or someone was
behind the threat made to Beale]. Consider that Columbus's trip to
America was paid for by a government, but Americas colonisation was
more commercially based.

The question isn't 'was NASA a good idea'. That's an unqualified
yes. The question is more, does NASA still have any right to be
occupying portions of the launch market with a hugely expensive and
very, very heavily subsidised launch system, and threatening any
new launch systems?

Actually, that isn't the real question. The question is are the
politicians still getting votes from placing money in the
particular districts that the contracts go to; and are the
companies that win the contracts still contributing to the party
funds of the politicians?