"Earl Colby Pottinger" wrote in message
...
"Ultimate Buu" :

I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that the OSP is a step
backwards and that without a specific plan to put all cargo on a) ELV's
or
b) a new shuttle derived cargo vehicle will put the safety of Shuttle
pilots
even more at risk (NASA engineers are already complaining that they
aren't
getting enough hands-on experience to maintain proficiency) whilst
actually
INCREASING the costs for maintaining a manned U.S. presence in space.

X-33? You are joking right? 1.2 Billion dollars and they did not even get
the parts assembled, much less flying. And as it was they were already
scaling back the goals for the X-33 program near the end.

Look, 1.2 billion and all you get is a pile of parts. ROTON was a
failure,


I'm going to have to disagree here. ROTON as flown was in my opinion a
success.

It met its budget and the test flight(s?) accomplished what they set out to
do.

What happened was they couldn't raise additional money. Now, that might be
a business failure, but not really a program failure.

Otherwise I agree with you on the rest of your post.

but it still got off the ground. DC-X flew and only costed about 60
million
(some people claim really about 150 million) but it flew. SpaceShipOne is
about 20 million and is test flyng right now. John Cramer has done test
hops
and will be flying in the next year after spending less than 4 million.