Emergency Funding

> What! No pithy signature-line this time. Tsk, tsk.

I wanted something to match the post itself.

> I see the that the detail of your proposal is in the development of
> launch capacity

Yep. None of the rest happens w/o it.

> but you dedicated 2/3 of the funding to orbital infrastructure

I expect that to still be quite expensive.

> but lumped all of that together into one line.

Ah... well... heh heh... yeah, well...

> I'm really curious about how that would be spent and to what

This is where I think the least is known, and where I suspect things
will change most over the years. Moon, asteroids, or both? Build
SPS, with habitats on the side, or the other way around? And so on.

> purpose. Would you sink the funds into a profit-making enterprise,
> or lay down equipment for others to use later so that they could
> make a profit. What would you put up in orbit,

Well, this is me as NASA administrator, and making a profit is not
NASA's job. In fact, NASA's job is to do the big-bucks, high-risk
R&D that may well take some time to turn a profit for anybody, and in
fact runs some risk of never turning any profit at all, ever. In
other words, the things that the private sector cannot, in good
conscience, do. But absolutely, as soon as a technology is developed
to the point that the private sector can make use of it, NASA should
facilitate turning it over to them.

> and would you contract for specific items, or leave it up to the
> private sector to propose infrastructure and the government becomes
> a funder, or investor.

I would see it like... OK, the government built the interstate hyway
system, but does not run interstate trucking. The government built
the Panama Canal, but does not run the cruise ship industry. The
gavernment created the Internet (no, not just Al Gore, though his
contribution was important), but does not run the dot-coms. None of
the companies that were involved in creating the Internet back then
would've done it on the grounds that someday there would be e-mail,
cyberporn, and amazon.com.

> It sure was surprising to see this thread come back to life.
>
> TangoMan

Xenophile (unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's, unto MikkiD's...)