Yea cuz NASA only pays minimum wage :rolleyes:

EDIT: completely agree with the fact that the private sector should get into space travel....just sayin though.

More jobs than NASA could provide I bet.

I would have thought that was common sense.

Touche

Wrong and wrong
Everyone knows it was Lord Xenu

idiots

I expected no less from you guys.

What from who?

SpaceShipOne and Virgin Galactic is NOT the same thing as NASA. Going straight up and down is NOT the same thing as going into LEO. Not even close.

There are already examples of commercial space ventures that are not run by NASA. The commercial telecommunications satellite industry is one.

BTW some data from the LCROSS impact. More confirmation of water on the moon. I agree, this is a big deal.
LCROSS Finds Water On Moon

Man went to the moon, period. To say otherwise is to unjustly belittle the monumental achievements of some great Scientists and Engineers.

Which is why I compared it to the X-15 project and not a NASA space mission, just to show the cost differences between a government run operation and a private company.

Well I do not think X-15 and SpaceShipOne is a good analogy either. They are two completely different missions. Plus the X-15 was ground breaking. No one had gone nearly that fast or that high before. Paul Allen had a lot of existing knowledge to leverage, not to mention a huge improvement in things like computer modeling and advanced materials that became available since the X-15 mission. Plus SpaceShipOne does not reach the same speeds.

It is like saying that the old room-sized vacuum tube computer builders, or the Cray designers, were inefficient and overpriced because those computers were much more expensive to develop than a modern desktop computer. That is not strictly a great analogy though, since the cost of production development is spread over many units. But you get my point.

Anyway I am not saying the Government is as efficient as private industry. But, that is not the sole reason for the difference in development cost. The bigger driver by far is the differences in what is achieved.

Yeah yeah Mr. Smart Guy. You guess you get my point, even if my analogy was bad.

Private > Government

That's all I was trying to say. But still, what Allen did with $25 million is pretty impressive. Just think if we had many teams like that on board with our space program. Get some fresh minds in there that aren't tied down by the government.

I'm wondering what the Air Force's UAV program will get into in the next 20 years. Space travel, flying on the moon's surface, who knows. They probly already have lol.

I'm in line for AF's UAV program, getting kind of impatient though lol. Going in as an enlistee and everyone has it on their list now.

Not gonna be doing much space travel with propellers ;)

I have a friend that was a UAV pilot last I heard. haven't seen him in over a year though. Probably a pretty fun place to be.

Well we already do. Though NASA's name goes on the Missions, a lot of the high-end cutting-edge development work for these Missions is done by Scientists and Engineers working as contractors outside of NASA. Take SpaceX for example; they are developing lower-cost launch vehicles. Even though NASA is one of their potential clients, they are an outside company, funded by private money, developing a new product for space use.

Damn you! I know we already do, I meant MORE than we currently do. More funding from them anyway. That way shit won't be delayed because of government careless spending and funding cuts.

You know the Army has UAV's as well.... Also as far as I know the UAV school's are the same for the AF and Army (both in AZ) and only hold sessions 2-3 times a year, Army is still easier/quicker to get in on if you want to check into it.

Yeah in fact several years ago I helped develop one of the UAVs for the Army. No shit.

An interesting article pertaining to commercial (private) sector development of manned launch services.
NASA Industry Begin Discussions on Commercial Crew Development Dollars | SpaceNews.com

An example of small guy private sector space engineering
NASA 'glove challenge' set for Thursday