even an overbudget and overdue project which will actually provide you with a launch capability is better than NOT HAVING ONE AT ALL.
I'd like to disagree here. The Space Shuttle (while iconic) cost over $1 billion per launch. As a direct result, there were only 131 shuttle launches before it was grounded the last time.
The currently used Soyuz rocket costs something like $20-40 million per launch, and as a result has done 727 launches, 708 of were successful at a cost of $15-$30 billion. The shuttle projects 131 launches cost $209 billion.
The only conclusion a rational person can come to is that the Shuttle was a disaster from a cost effectiveness basis, and the ability to get things to orbit. It's replacement via NASA does not appear to be likely to do much better.
But before anybody starts wanking the "private sector solution," may I remind you that every time mass transit has been nationalized in the UK, it's ended in an utter disaster.
Who built the railways in the first place? Ah yes, that'll be the private sector. It was nationalised along with everything else with a union when that was in fashion after WW2 and privatized when it'd been reduced to a state where hardly anybody wanted to use it and it was losing money hand over fist.
Currently by far and away the best option to get to orbit is SpaceX. Yes, SpaceX needs competition because monopolies are always awful for everybody, and they probably need international regulation to keep them from doing absurd things. But, this is the situation that exists; the private sector has delivered a rocket that can take off, and most of it can then land again and be reused. Unless NASA can duplicate this tech they can't get within orders of magnitude of the cost effectiveness.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
