On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 20:07:29 -0500, in a place far, far away,
"jonathan" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


The Bloomberg story as spectacularly uninformed. The Atlas and Delta
EELVs are not purely military rockets: NASA can purchase them
commercially from United Launch Alliance (ULA) any time they want.
EELVs carry commercial satellites and NASA payloads like the GOES
series. What NASA would have to pay ULA to do is build a man-rated
version, which the Pentagon has no interest in. It's also not clear
where NASA and DoD ties need to be closer: they cooperate every day on
everything from range operations to the significant military support
to shuttle launches to missions like Orbital Express and vehicles like
the X-43.

I agree. In fact, I'll have a piece tomorrow at Pajamas Media
completely debunking this nonsense.


Good luck, Obama trial balloons are floating all over the place
right now, from one end of his agenda to the other. This has
all the earmarks of the administration floating early policy
to see the reaction.

No, it has all the earmarkings of a completely clueless reporter, as I
note in the piece with a quote from a member of the transition team.

But then, who would expect you to know the difference?