"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote:
:"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
...
:Because I used to think like you, up until I started getting my
:aerospace engineering degree and started looking at why launch costs are
so
:high.

And just why is that, other than that there's been no real commercial
driver to get them down?

:Sending a few NASA astronauts to the moon won't make us any more of a
:spacefaring nation than Apollo did, so what's the point of Apollo 2.0?

Well, as you pointed out, right now most of the American people could
give a fig about space. Not sending people isn't the way to get or
keep their interest. When we were going someplace (before NASA got
boring) a lot more people were interested.

Interest in Apollo dropped rapidly after the successful return of Apollo 11.
The same drop in interest also happened for shuttle, shuttle/Mir, and
shuttle/ISS. What's to stop that same drop for Apollo 2.0? What will be
fundamentally different so that interest will be retained for longer than
the first few flights?

There's your point. Or do you think we'll somehow become "more of a
spacefaring nation" by killing human access to space outright?

Human access to space does not necessarily equal NASA human access to space.
I'd like to see NASA start pulling back from taking control of all aspects
of human access to space and see them start to utilize commercial resources.
Unfortunately, Apollo 2.0 does none of that. There is some lip service
being paid to commercial resupply of ISS, but the entire foundation of
Apollo 2.0 is NASA, right down to the launch vehicles and launch facilities.

I'm not against NASA returning to the moon, but I am against the current
plan which lets NASA retain control of everything. Specifically, launch
services can be purchased from US providers.

Jeff
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