Sigh. To repeat a trivial point for the third time...
You have the opinion that NASA after 1970 could do any large project and push costs down by a factor of ten.
If a serious argument could be made, then one of the NASA fan boys would have posted it...
So if there was some need for thousands of people to be sent into space per year then NASA could design and operate a fairly low cost per launch system. However, once they started operating highly capable but delicate system added to the fact there was little value in sending more than a token number of people into space in a given year then costs are going to spiral out of control even if the desgin was reasonable.
PS: I have even heard the argument that NASA benefited from the amount of spectacle involved in the shuttle program. If they had built something that looked and operated like a 747 nobody would have cared but build something that takes thousands of controlled explosions and then sit’s on a huge ball of fire into space and wow you must be doing something important.
I don't entirely agree. With a space program that "looked and operated like a 747" - assuming you mean a relatively routine and reliable spaceplane where the launches are less of a spectacle - you'd get a lot of people and hardware in space, and people would have cared about that.
I guess it's harder to get people excited about results than about spectacles, but it can be done, and it lasts longer.
For the second time to you (4th time overall) -- uh... no. That account is less than two weeks old. I am probably being trolled.
Anyway, you might think that government organizations are always full of bloat but compare the SSA with your 401k and you will find they are vary low overhead. The problem with government organizations is they tend to make really big a stupid decisions for political reasons, aka if SSA had invested in a mix of stocks and bonds vs. US treasury bonds people would be talking about how over funded it was right now. Instead the SSA “surplus” was used to subsidize government borrowing and treated as yet another agency.
PS: I have 64 Karma on a 2 week old act that may suggest something about my activities. If you actually have something meaningful to say feel free to support your argument, but right now I am feeling trolled.
A link re the Shuttle: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/lunch-wi...
Bye.
Now run the numbers for a version of that a reasonable person would actually be willing to live in for a full year and perhaps he would be willing to discuss it. However, a moon base is probably both cheaper and safer.