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If you read the ALSJ there are plenty of examples of sound transmission on the moon. Sitting on the lunar rover, the crew could hear the electric motors through the seats they were sitting on. Striking a rock or tool with a hammer, astronauts could hear the sound of impact through their suits, and this sound was transmitted to the other astronaut via radio.

Lots of paperwork and prep work.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP_MSL_Launch_Nuclear_Safety_FS_3-2-11.pdf

http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/MMRTG_Jan2008.pdf

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP%20MSL%20LaunchContg%20FS%204-14-11.pdf

etc.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/newsroom/

Lots of paperwork and prep work.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP_MSL_Launch_Nuclear_Safety_FS_3-2-11.pdf

http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/MMRTG_Jan2008.pdf

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP%20MSL%20LaunchContg%20FS%204-14-11.pdf

etc.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/newsroom/

Lots of paperwork and prep work.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP_MSL_Launch_Nuclear_Safety_FS_3-2-11.pdf

http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/MMRTG_Jan2008.pdf

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/files/msl/APP%20MSL%20LaunchContg%20FS%204-14-11.pdf

etc.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/newsroom/

The Russians used their copy to try and hold up the roof of a collapsing warehouse... that didn't work out so well.

Honestly the most useful thing they could do would be a heck of a lot of destructive testing. You could argue they've already been doing that for the past 30 years, at least twice to failure (along with lots of non-mission impacting single engine failures, leaks, etc). I'm talking a little more extreme, for example, chop the wings up and analyze the heck out of them for the effect of orbital radiation on metal fatigue development patterns, etc. The skin runs at a ridiculously high pressurization, like 15 PSI, everything else in aerospace runs 8 psi max, so chop up the crew cabin and analyze that for pressurization related metal fatigue.

You know how civil / mech engineers are supposedly given iron rings made from "X collapsed bridge" at graduation to remind them not to build stupid things, maybe aerospace engineers (or more appropriately, MBAs) should be given o-ring and ceramic tile necklaces?

They are doing exactly that. One of the big complaints by the receiving museums is that they aren't getting the full Shuttles. The engines, the Reaction Control System and a lot of just nuts / bolts / sheet metal ARE going to get analyzed carefully. The museum grade Shuttles will be significantly mockup grade... There was a fairly big argument that at least one of the Shuttles should be left mostly intact (minus the things that are poisonous and / or explosive) but I don't think it went that far.

Would the term lacking imagination be kinder then limited thinker? Your example serves to reenforce my position. A man says "we'll never have flying cars in every garage" and because he uses the word never, he limits his own thinking. If he was in a position of power he may then limit others and that is why I say this attitude is a drag on progress,

Were he to say "we'll never have flying cars in every garage within five years (1960) then I would agree with the view of dealing with practical limitations. We need to acknowledge the existing limitations so we can overcome them. Planes were inefficient and impractical when first developed. The car had no place in society when horses were the engines of commerce. Steamships were laughed at when they first plyed the waters. Every new step is inefficient because it is new. We learn by doing, failing, doing it again till we get it right. Even science is founded on this principle.

Right now space colonies seem impractical, though I would say only from a money stand point. Right now, today we could build a sustainable colony on the moon but for two fundemental reasons, no one reason and two excuses. The reason, lack of commitment. The excuses, money and time. Regarding money, there has been more commercial success from our going into space then anything that has come from our current military actions. When our imagination is used to create we produce more wealth, more progress then occurs when we destroy. As to time, that man in 1955 would be surprised that today we have at least three working models of flying cars. The technology is still trying to catch up with desire, but one day it will. In 1991 the first cell phone I used was a 2 lb box that looked like a old army radio. By 1993 I was using something that looked like a Star Trek communicator.

You say it can't happen? I say, get out of the way of people who think it can. The only limitation we truly have is ourselves.

They have to take the same acronym as a 20+ year old file format for storing numbers?

It's almost like they didn't bother putting the term 'CDF file' into a search engine to see if anyone else was using that acronym already for a file extension. (of course, w3 even used it twice)

These x-ray scanners give you a much smaller ionizing radiation dose than you'll get from the flight itself.

This is true. However, the harder radiation you get from high-altitude travel is full-body radiation -- it passes through your entire body. The radiation from the TSA scanners are concentrated on the skin. This negates any chance of deep tissue cancers, but raises the chance of skin cancer.

Personally, I won't get in one of those machines. I like a good pat-down or two on my vacations, anyway.

I think we're already doing pretty well on that count, thank you very much.

These x-ray scanners give you a much smaller ionizing radiation dose than you'll get from the flight itself. When you're flying at altitude, there's less air to absorb ionizing cosmic radiation, so you end up encountering and absorbing more of it. Airline crews on certain routes actually get a higher annual dose of radiation than nuclear plant workers.

While I agree that the scanners are an abomination, the radiation from them is (assuming the machine is working properly) a tiny fraction of the increased radiation exposure you subject yourself to when you fly. If you're that paranoid about radiation, don't fly, drive.

And that's the largest?

Maybe linearly, but I'm guessing that some of the CAVE systems offer more in terms of area of display when you scale to 6 surfaces. Or what's the largest hyperwall?

Can we come up with some meaningful measurements of data display, before someone tries setting a world record for the heaviest or ugliest?

I never said they could go into orbit, I said NASA should have funded an orbital system. Scaled is already working on a suborbital spaceplane and Burt Rutan said he wants to build an orbital structure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipThree

Boeing, Grumman, Northrop, Martin were all AIRCRAFT companies in 1961 yet all made bids on Apollo.

http://www.ehartwell.com/LM/SCATOrganization.htm
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4205/app-f.html
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/app-e.htm

McDonnell Aircraft was prime contractor for both Mercury and Gemini.

Scaled had already built a technology demonstrator for NASA in the 1990s, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X#Flight_testing

Maybe you should work on learning about the history of commercial contractors and the US space program a little.

I never said they could go into orbit, I said NASA should have funded an orbital system. Scaled is already working on a suborbital spaceplane and Burt Rutan said he wants to build an orbital structure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipThree

Boeing, Grumman, Northrop, Martin were all AIRCRAFT companies in 1961 yet all made bids on Apollo.

http://www.ehartwell.com/LM/SCATOrganization.htm
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4205/app-f.html
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/app-e.htm

McDonnell Aircraft was prime contractor for both Mercury and Gemini.

Scaled had already built a technology demonstrator for NASA in the 1990s, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X#Flight_testing

Maybe you should work on learning about the history of commercial contractors and the US space program a little.

Pluto is 2390 km, or 1485 miles in diameter, not 21 miles.

You didn't misplace a decimal point, you just plain have the wrong number.

According to NASA Pluto escape velocity is 1.2 km/s, or 2,684 mph, about 10% that of Earth:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/plutofact.html

So Mercury and Venus lose their status?

So Mercury and Venus lose their status?

and only 2GB in the $600 system? and $100.00 more to get 4 GB? better off paying $200 more to get a 4GB ram faster CPU and video card with it's own ram.

$150 to go from 500GB to 750GB? You can get a 3TB HDD for $150.

Ha! And so your innocent slip of the tongue exposes you for what you are, agent of K'breel and the Council of Elders! No human born on Earth could even feign surprise at Apple's exorbitant charges for spec upgrades.

You're here to intercept Curiousity, aren't you? Your mission will now be in vain!

Not just "an artist rendering of what Vesta might look like", complete with red background nebula and alien laser installations? Congrats, Slashdot. Even the anaglyph picture in the 4th link is kinda cool, in a seriously retro way. Of course, the linked page has white text in gray boxes in a black background, complemented with color pictures of a gray rock in a way that seems deliberately designed to make my eyes bleed... but I can get over it. Can't believe we finally got an article on space with actual, real pictures. Yay!

The photos reveal a heavily-cratered gray surface.

Well, I no one ever said real photos would be terribly interesting to the non-scientist. For those who are interested, however, here is NASA's complete archive of Dawn photography.

On July 16, the Dawn spacecraft begins a year-long visit to the large asteroid Vesta to help us understand the earliest chapter of our solar system's history. In August, the Juno spacecraft will launch to investigate Jupiter's origins, structure, and atmosphere. The September launch of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project is a critical first step in building a next-generation Earth-monitoring satellite system.

VLBI fans, rejoice ! Really, after the Japanese VSOP mission, it has been a long wait for this one (first proposed in the 1980's). Together with antennas on the ground, RadioAstron should provide the highest resolution of any human telescope, anywhere, at any wavelength. (Here are some more technical details.)

The USA pioneered the use of this technology (the first space VLBI, in the 1980's, used a NASA TDRSS communication satellite that was underused after the Challenger disaster), and Irwin Shapiro suggested putting VLBI terminals on the Moon well before that, but here is another case where the USA can't seem to actually get its stuff into the orbit.

I agree whole-heartedly on the comment about JWST. It was an enormous eater of funds, but the science potential was even bigger.

Regarding the dark matter issue, there is a small minority in the astrophysics community that believe these sorts of so-called Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs, a name chosen to specifically counter Weakly Interacting Massive Particles or WIMPs) might make up the dark matter.

The majority of the community is in pretty solid agreement that dark matter must be something more exotic, a new particle outside our standard model. There's lots of evidence for this, but the most compelling is from variations in the cosmic microwave background; see results from WMAP and the links therein for a pretty good description aimed at the general public. It's pretty hard to make WMAP's data consistent with the idea that all dark matter is made up of MACHOs.

*sigh* So much misinformation floating around here...

GP said

That's because the only images they have are from the low-res navigational imager. They will fire up the high res camera and other instruments now that they're in Vesta orbit.

Which is absolute bullshit, because there's only one science camera (well, two identical cameras, for redundancy), and it's currently getting crap resolution because it's ~2x10^7m away, while science orbits will range from 2x10^6 to 2x10^5m altitude. There's also the star trackers, which while technically cameras, are not used for imaging Vesta or Ceres at all.

When the ion drive isn't running, there is plenty of power. There's no reason to not gather as much data as possible. After all, if something went bung during insertion (when the probe was out of comms with Earth) it would be the only data they have. Given the detail in the last image (from ten days ago), what prevented them from at least getting a full surface sequence?

Other NASA probes take images from distant approach, trying to milk as much data as they can before the arrive, as well as PR for the mission. I can't find an explanation of why the Dawn team have been so reticent to image their target. It doesn't bode well for the rest of the mission.

(It's not a power issue, it's an attitude issue -- each of the three ion thrusters is gimbaled in a narrow range, and the high-gain antenna and cameras are fixed completely -- same result, though.)
The mission's design duty cycle for the IPS (ion propulsion system) is 95%; the remaining 5% of the time is divided between imaging Vesta and relaying data to DSN ground stations. There's certainly time for more pics than they've taken, but allocating more time for imaging and less for thrusting means postponing your arrival, which reduces your time for doing high-quality science in orbit.

Unlike many other missions, which use a chemical rocket to perform a Hohmann or similar transfer into a near-final orbit, with relatively small deltaV reserved for orbit adjustments, Dawn will be gradually spiraling in under power to reach any given orbit. It's completely free to stop thrusting at any point and coast in a nearly-circular orbit while doing science observations, then resume spiraling in later, though they will likely stick to the mission plan of 3 orbits (2700km, 950km, and 460km radius -- subtract ~280km to get altitude). So there's very little to gain from more low-res approach images that we won't already get from the two full-rotation sets already scheduled (and I presume completed) during approach, and especially the full surface mapping that will be done in the first (highest) orbit. For more info on the navigation imaging strategy, see the latest Dawn Journal.

The main issue is that they're not releasing the pictures they have -- particularly the full-rotation sets mentioned above, As I understand it this is mainly a manpower issue, but I certainly wish they could set up a low-overhead nerd-ready channel separate from their press-ready channel, so they could just dump all the images and let the bloggers sort 'em out.

Yep. Here is a NASA web page where they claim that, among other things, bar codes are a spin-off of the space program. The spinoff argument is lame. There is no way to know what technologies would have existed in an alternate history in which the US didn't build a government-monopoly crewed space program as a cold-war propaganda exercise and pork-barrel project. Maybe we would have had bar codes, and maybe we wouldn't. Maybe we would have had something way more awesome than bar codes.

There's a similar fallacy that seems to come up whenever anyone criticizes NASA's crewed space program, which is that people will argue that without the shuttle, we would never have had the Hubble Space Telescope. It's true that the HST was put into orbit by the shuttle and later repaired on a shuttle mission. But that doesn't mean that in an alternate history where there was no shuttle, we wouldn't have had a similar telescope. Maybe in that alternate history, there would have been an even bigger and better space telescope, launched on an uncrewed rocket, that didn't have a flawed mirror. We just don't know.

And then we always get the argument that NASA's budget is so tiny that we shouldn't begrudge the money. Historically, NASA's budget has generally been about 1% of the federal budget, with fluctuations of a factor of 2 to 4 above and below that. The thing is, 1% of the federal budget isn't tiny, it's huge. When you add up a bunch of one-percents, it starts to build up.

NASA did make a study of the idea of sending a shuttle to the moon. It was shown to be impractical for many reasons, not the least of which is that the thermal protection system (the heat tiles) couldn't stand the stress levels of a lunar re-entry.

Same AC here. NASA is working on hydroponics. I can't find the link I remember, but there was something the size of a double-wide trailer created over 15 years ago that could support 80% of the nutrients necessary for a crew of three.

Here's detail on a recent ISS experiment for validating one type of growing technology (Lada-VPU-P3R). It looks like they've grown barley. What's next? Space beer?

Correction: Leave JPL alone to do what it is good at. The rest of NASA couldn't bang two rocks together to start a fire.

JPL is a microcosm of everything that was ever right about the United States Space Program.

In case you're wondering:
* JPL does all the robotic missions. You know, the ones that last ten years on Mars when they were only supposed to last for 90 days.
* JPL develops the awesome planet-exploring craft. The ones that learn something new.
* JPL manages the successful spacecraft that were launched decades ago and are still going (i.e. they are responsible for the remaining pioneer and voyager data and craft)

Check them out. If you have a chance, visit their "open house" day. You'll see more awesome robots than you can shake a stick at.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

I wonder if NASA are using this tech in their SPHERES thingies.

Don't blame Bush for NASA's failing and Congress's inability to fund it properly, Republicans generally support NASA stronger than Democrats because states with heavy NASA presence generally vote Republican (Florida, Texas) and NASA goes hand in hand with military spending.

If you look at NASA spending and NASA foes in Congress its almost always cut by Democrats even during the Apollo era. Walter Mondale was the biggest foe of Apollo and personally made it his mission to cut funding to NASA

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch4.htm

"This item involves a fundamental and profound decision about the future direction of the manned space flight era. This is, in fact, the next moon-type program. I believe it would be unconscionable to embark on a project of such staggering cost when many of our citizens are malnourished, when our rivers and lakes are polluted, and when our cities and rural areas are dying. What are our values? What do we think is more important?"

"Mondale then offered his amendment again, as he sought to delete the $110 million for the Shuttle/station as an appropriation."

Once Johnson got the Presidency, NASA started being defunded, then it goes up under Reagan, Bush, down and up and down under Clinton and up under Bush.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_budget_linegraph_BH.PNG

I know it's bad form to link your your self but i did the work for this last them we talkd about it.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1643562&cid=32116814

well based on what i have read - as the moon/tidal effeects work the earth is slowing down and the moon is gaining potential energy related to earths gravity well by moving farther away - assume this is a colosed energy system..

assume we pull energy out of it.. the moon will come closer to earth (or reduce it's movement away) - so the total energy supply would be the potential energy of the moon in relation to earths gravity well.

PE = m x g x h

m = 7.3477 × 10^22 kg
g = 9.8 m/s2
h = 363,104,000 m (using it's Periapsis)

PE = 2.61461968 × 10^32 Joules

474 × 10^18 = AEC = whole planet annual energy consumption

PE/AEC = 551,607,527,000 years....

so the answer is .. keep current rates.. and assume we could get it all from here.. 550 billion years..

according to this #19
http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sun.html [nasa.gov]

"In about 5 billion more years, the useable hydrogen (not all the hydrogen) will have been converted to helium, and the Sun will start burning helium, and become a red giant."

if i remember right.. if it goes red giant it will grow larger than 1 AU so it will engulf earth..

basically.. we could increase energy consumption by a factor of 100 and only then would we be toying with maybe crashing the moon into us before the sun burns us away.

After reading the article it doesn't sound like this technology is far off as the process sounds similar to things that are already done on an industrial scale. Yes it requires a vacuum chamber, but the ability to deposit the various materials is the same process that is done to deposit the shiny lining on the inside of plastic bags. Also it uses masks to lay the materials down in the correct locations which to me sounds similar to what is done in the semiconductor industry with photo-lithography. Also it doesn't sound like this uses high heat, caustic chemicals, or expensive lenses. So the usual 5-10 years before it comes to market (i.e. we will never see it) doesn't seem to be an issue. Currently the downfall of this tech sounds like its poor efficiency being only around 1% but even that shouldn't be a problem as I mentioned in an older post that 1% of the earth covered with 1% efficient solar cells would meet all of our current energy needs as we receive about 4 orders of magnitude more energy from the sun a day than we use. I didn't see what materials this requires other than the paper substrate so that may also be a limiting factor.

SOHO is at L1, and they don't have a space weather stream like STEREO or SDO (well, SDO's in geosyncronous orbit, and has its own ground stations, so it all comes down in near real time)

But you can get the most recent LASCO images from the SOHO website:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

I just visited NASA Goddard (great visitor's center, take the kids) and according to the web site they're working toward a 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Quite impressive if you can also wrangle a lab tour.

The closest thing I've seen to a 'splash' was during the June 7th CME, where a significant amount of the eruption didn't escape the sun's gravity:

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw.php?v=item&id=54

For the comet, though ... no splash. And they haven't finished the final processing of the last bit of the comet's track across the sun, so I haven't seen it 'evaporate' as others have mentioned.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a solar physicist, but I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center, and on the distribution systems for SDO data)

You can go to NASA TV at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

They typically will replay the launch highlights on the first evening when the crew goes to bed and repeat every hour until the start of the next flight day.

Tonight's flight day highlights will start at 8:00 PM Central Time. At 10PM tonight they will have a special video on the history of the program.

On subsequent days, they will replay 'Flight Day NN' highlights in the same manner (once per hour on either the hour or half-hour mark, after the crew goes to sleep).

Also, about 5-6 days into a mission, NASA will release a compilation video they put together that includes outstanding launch imagery and sounds, taken from ground-based cameras, the solid socket boosters (SRB), and from the External Tank (ET) looking at the underside of the shuttle orbiter towards the tail.

They even include pictures taken from the Shuttle Orbiter herself using a camera in the liquid oxygen umbilical well, taking pictures as the external tank falls away into the atmosphere, as well video taken by the crew at the ISS as the orbiter does the elegant Rendezvous-Pitch-Maneuver (aka the backflip) on approach to the international space station.

Google for "STS-nnn ASCENT IMAGERY HIGHLIGHTS" in a few days (where nnn is 135 for this mission, but those of 134 and 133 were also spectacular.)

Highly recommended!

I'm hoping NASA stops developing "day to day" vehicles and starts working on next generation technologies.

They tried that. It didn't work. See NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program, 1996-2002.

Bad AC. Use the preview button.

Oops. Linked to the wrong one. Good catch. Might as well link to other spooky sounds presented by nasa.

Really you actually believe this. We get more energy from the sun than we could realistically use. If you doubt me then how about NASA. They even do the energy to mass conversion for you so we literally are getting tons (metric or short) of energy from the sun each day.

it's not as though a microphone on a balloon was dropped into the atmosphere.

No, but a microphone on the Hugyens probe did as it descended through Titan's atmosphere. Here's the audio. The sound isn't particularly exciting, but the achievement certainly is.

Here's a Hubble image of an actual exoplanet, 25 light years away. The exoplanet they're imaging in the story here is 1000 light years away...

Psst, don't tell Gandalf, but I think we've found where Sauron went after Barad Dur was destroyed.

Why does it seem like every time I read an article about space imaging, there is an artist's rendition, instead of an actual rendition of the image?

The actual image would most likely be of the star itself, and usually is just a few pixels wide. Not a lot for people to look at.

However by observing those pixels over a long time they may see changes in the color / spectrum indicating the vapors in the atmosphere of the planet when it passes in front of the star.

Here's a Hubble image of an actual exoplanet, 25 light years away. The exoplanet they're imaging in the story here is 1000 light years away...

The fact that you've been modded "Insightful" and "Informative" on Slashdot is absolutely terrifying. How about this though; you said:

Let's overlook the fact that we have a big fat admission that temperatures haven't been going up for about a decade and how no one wanted to readily admit that to the public...

Can you show me where the data supports your claims? There's a pretty clear trend there and the top 10 warmest years on record have been in the past 12.

The theory is falsifiable because you are quite free to design an experiment to show that carbon dioxide does not trap heat in its atmosphere. Good luck with that though because this is well established through experimentation and theory and accepted by everyone with an elementary school education. There's a reason carbon dioxide is known as a greenhouse gas and there's a reason they are referred to as such (hint: greenhouses function by trapping heat inside their structure).

The answers to all you questions are here:

http://climate.nasa.gov

But I guess they're socialist conspirators at the same time as being American heros, right?

That's because the scientists are done arguing. And it doesn't help when people keep repeating points that have been rejected (or as close as science will ever get to rejecting something):

* It's happening.
* We're at fault.

(Most climate scientists agree that) it's not part of a natural cycle. That's as close to resolved as it's going to be.

That's because the scientists are done arguing. And it doesn't help when people keep repeating points that have been rejected (or as close as science will ever get to rejecting something):

* It's happening.
* We're at fault.

(Most climate scientists agree that) it's not part of a natural cycle. That's as close to resolved as it's going to be.

Ignoring the entirely rational argument that a private launch service industry, without fear of government-subsidized competition supported against bankruptcy by fear of political embarrassment and loss of special interest votes, would follow a normal industrial learning curve: We here speak merely of the government launch capability was at the end of the Apollo program:

The Saturn V payload was 120,000kg to LEO and, again, by NASA's own estimate, that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).

Doing the math for you, just in case you are stupid as well as ignorant:

• $19k/kg to LEO for the Shuttle in 2011
• $9k/kg to LEO for the Saturn V in 1969

Ignoring the entirely rational argument that a private launch service industry, without fear of government-subsidized competition supported against bankruptcy by fear of political embarrassment and loss of special interest votes, would follow a normal industrial learning curve: We here speak merely of the government launch capability was at the end of the Apollo program:

The Saturn V payload was 120,000kg to LEO and, again, by NASA's own estimate, that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).

Doing the math for you, just in case you are stupid as well as ignorant:

• $19k/kg to LEO for the Shuttle in 2011
• $9k/kg to LEO for the Saturn V in 1969

Why the shuttle has wings at all:

http://history.nasa.gov/sts1/pages/scot.html

The amount being spent here seems to be a whole lot, until you consider how much is going to be poured down the "back-up insurance plan" with the SLS program just in case the commercial spaceflight approach doesn't work. I've heard estimates of about $3-4 billion being spent just on that one program, something that still has yet to even be figured out in terms of who is even going to build it in the first place.

Since when do you pay 5x to 10x the cost for an insurance policy to cover the value of what you want to protect against failure? I guess that is government spending logic for you. I'd rather have another dozen companies be trying to build something using the CCDev funding model than a monolithic cost-plus uber project that will never fly anyway. Even the Blue Origin spacecraft has a higher likelihood chance of getting to space than anything being done by the NASA directorates... and they seem to be the furthest behind.

NASA just released the status update for the CCDEV program. Stuff is actually happening there, and there may even be flights by the end of this year, next year at the latest.

The amount being spent here seems to be a whole lot, until you consider how much is going to be poured down the "back-up insurance plan" with the SLS program just in case the commercial spaceflight approach doesn't work. I've heard estimates of about $3-4 billion being spent just on that one program, something that still has yet to even be figured out in terms of who is even going to build it in the first place.

Since when do you pay 5x to 10x the cost for an insurance policy to cover the value of what you want to protect against failure? I guess that is government spending logic for you. I'd rather have another dozen companies be trying to build something using the CCDev funding model than a monolithic cost-plus uber project that will never fly anyway. Even the Blue Origin spacecraft has a higher likelihood chance of getting to space than anything being done by the NASA directorates... and they seem to be the furthest behind.

NASA just released the status update for the CCDEV program. Stuff is actually happening there, and there may even be flights by the end of this year, next year at the latest.