Priorities in government and space

A bit off topic possibly, this may be a thread of interest off one of my favroite forums.

Making Rockets Cheap

Sincerly;
Michael P.

the_gunfighter_45acp wrote: >A very good point. Apollo is not better, but its also not really any
worst. And the fact Apollo got us to the moon says more than the
shuttle has done for us. Reason being the shuttle cost so much just to
go low eath orbet would run cost to that of Apollo if not more if NASA
wanted to go back to the moon useing the shuttle in some way.

>Your good point is, Orion is kind of like the waggon pulling the
horse. The largest and costly part of it is thrown away after every
launch but the capsule is reuseable. I have to say this has been
bothering me as well but as it stands Orion maybe the best NASA can do
before the shuttle is moth balled. A totally reuseable launch system
thats cost effective may take NASA 15 to 20 years before its ready.
We all know NASA these days takes its sweet time.
I do not mean to be so hard on NASA. And I believe NASA has its roll
in the future of manned spaceflight...

>Reason why we should look more to privet space launch ventures.
They can take a lot of NASA low earth orbet launches off their
sholders and let them save their ever smaller budgets for bigger
things such as moon missions so on..