On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 13:40:43 +0100, in a place far, far away, "John"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote ...
Were you involved, in any conceivable way, with the space station
program in those days, to speak with such authority?

Don't misquote me. I was referring to NASA operations in general, rather
than any specific problem or project.

But if you want to talk about the station, was it really Congress's idea to
make one big super-station that would be the dream answer for all scientists
and engineers who wanted to study everything to do with space?

It was Congress' idea that they would only fund one station. Once
that became clear, politically it made sense to make it do everything
to garner as much political support for it as possible (the same thing
that happened to Shuttle). This is why govenment space programs are a
bad idea, if your goal is accomplishment in space, as opposed to jobs.

Is Congress really to blame for NASA's illogical obsession with space
planes? SSTOs and TSTOs are much better odds for reusable launch vehicles.
Yet NASA seems to ignore these completely. It shut down the delta-clipper
project. Was this under pressure from Congress?

In the sense that NASA can only do what Congress funds it to do.
There was no appropriation for a follow-on to the Delta Clipper
program (other than X-33, of course, but NASA chose the Lockmart
design instead).

NASA still has done some pretty silly things over
it's existance. And it really should take the fall for some of them.

Few would dispute that.