CEV to be made commercially available

In sci.space.policy Scott Lowther wrote:

Henry Spencer wrote:

Try to live in the real world rather than an anarchist fantasy.

Some of us *are* living int he real world, Henry. The real world of
trying to get things done in space, and not the world of standing on the
sidelines and bitching.

If NASA were trying to get things done in space, they wouldn't be spending
$15 billion to design two new launch vehicles. They'd simply issue
contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for design and implementation of a
vehicle health monitoring system for their EELVs and follow-on contracts
for lots of EELV mediums and heavies. The production capacity for both
vehicles is already there and massively underutilized, and both vehicles
could be ready to fly Constellation missions in 2-3 years.

Lockheed, for one, has already shown it can build a new launch pad and
support infrastructure in about that timeframe.

This could be done in one fifth the time and one tenth the cost of NASA's
plan, and it wouldn't require shutting down the Shuttle, Station, science,
and aeronautics programs to fund.

Of course, that would allow NASA to get things done in space instead of
playing with some shiny new rockets. Too bad NASA doesn't want to do
that.

Mike

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Michael Kent Apple II Forever!!
St. Peters, MO