"Dr. O" wrote in message ...
Let's be reasonable: there isn't any economic sense in human spaceflight, at
least not the way we are doing it now. Everyone knows that the OSP won't be
significantly cheaper (although it may be *more* expensive, as your article

OSP isn't about making it incredibly cheap for anyone else, it's about
making it "less" expensive for NASA and the US and (now) much safer
than the Shuttle.

points out) than the current Shuttle. The drive to replace the Shuttle is
largely based on subjective notions about safety and the misguided belief
that anything new must be better.

A shuttle concept is not necessarily bad, as Japan and the EU both
have *unmanned* shuttle concepts that look very good. The EU one looks
pretty slick with painted on TPS.

The shuttle has the problems of being the *first* shuttle.

Look at how crappy the very first cars were. It was very common to get
flat tires fixed every thirty miles and other breakdowns.

Basically, NASA does not want human spacelfight to become economically
viable since by doing this, it will have shot itself in the head. Therefore
I think that Congressional pressure is needed to change NASA's goal: to
develop technology to make access to space economically viable.

NASA would love to both save money on human space-flight *and* keep
their budget. They'd love to switch that to other projects (like Mars
of NEO's asteroids).

But we have to get beyond 1.0 of the shuttle.

Arthur Hansen