You just paid $100 billion to create an orbital spying system for the Russians.

New Space has failed to hit the home run in orbital access. Yes, Elon is making progress but I expect even the die hards will admit that a manned Dragon before 2012 is impossible and perhaps unlikely before 2014 unless he starts getting rockets into orbit. And none of the other New Space firms are even that close.

Meanwhile Russia has gone back to being the evil empire, perhaps becoming even worst then the Soviets were.

And Griffin has steered NASA into the ground with his crazy ESAS architecture using SRBs for Orion. Even if you fired him today and did a crash program for a light weight Orion on an EELV it would take a few years to happen. Say 2013 with good funding and luck.

So like it or not its flying the Shuttle or turning the fate of the ISS over to the Russians a few years and explaing to taxpayers how you just paid $100 billion to create an orbital spying system for the Russians.


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