The Merchant 7

Oh that's going to inspire kids! LOL

Nice try but no cigar.

The Mercury 7 they are very far from.

Everyone will agree that our health care system is dysfunctional with a handful of mega-corporations and pharmaceutical companies patenting everything they can to maintain control over their monopoly. It's so broke, we cant fix it, even with a trillion dollars.

Why then are we setting up the aerospace industry the same way? Everyone will agree and is eager for private industry to break into the space flight business, but during the transition, the government needs to maintain control over the technology developed with taxpayer dollars, and make it freely available to any company that wants to use the technology to develop a launch system and fairly compete. It is the government's responsibility to insure that it does not create a new monopoly and prevent the very competition it is trying to foster.

Technology developed by private companies using U.S. taxpayer dollars should be the property of the U.S. taxpayers, and made available for the benefit of the U.S. taxpayer.

This is how Space Shuttle Main Engine Technology was used to create a heart assist pump to save the lives of children with weakened hearts. See page 2 of the at the end of this post. Private companies are rarely so altruistic.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Ida-pweY_t0J:www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/167752main_FS_Spinoffs508c.pdf+nasa+turbo+pump+spinoff+heart&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShGbXcsLUWxK_lwuEelrH7HV7hQ9c2IrIxFUGawoc1pWYwO2gTMkP4US6i5HgXcWxU5Bi6hRpauXnRd-BJEQh-k6iw7mG4ljJVCSVgVi2oXuiybJwdhDwZiaykzkfTDLyegBwlY&sig=AHIEtbTZFOF5ku2Mn6sMM1ugqa1-GwTowg

I totally agree with you. It is going to take more than an astronaut showing up at a school, dressed in flight coveralls, or a static NASA provided exhibit to get kids interested in careers in science and technology.

About two years ago, there was a poll of entering freshman college students to find out what their major was going to be and what career they wanted to enter once they graduated and the overwhelming response was the accounting field. Unfortunately, this speaks volumes.

I think 7 innovative business leaders are not so far from 7 innovative pilots.

I think the patent system is broken and I think the government should license publicly developed technology to anyone in the public who wants it, but I don't think this has anything to do with the new budget.

I think people wanting to be accountants only speaks volumes about accounting jobs.

What's so new about NASA being used to funnel public money to private contractors?
Seems like the same tired old game, just different faces. Some of the faces aren't even new, but only back from the dead.

Nowhere in any of the links does it actually say who's on the pictures... Can you post that please? I know a few of the faces of so-called "New Space" but couldn't recognise anybody except Bolden.

Thanks.

The Merchant 7 of Vaporware.

What crap...........

Nowhere in any of the links does it actually say who's on the pictures...

The names are announced at 27:08 in this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk#t=27m8s

From left to right:

Ken Bowersox (vice president of astronaut safety at SpaceX, ret. USAF test pilot, former astronaut)
David Thompson (chairman and CEO of Orbital)
Mark Sirangelo (VP and chair of Sierra Nevada)
Charles Bolden
John Holdren
Jane Poynter (president of Paragon Space Development)
Brewster Shaw (VP of NASA Systems at Boeing, ret. USAF test pilot, former astronaut)
Robert Millman (general counsel at Blue Origin)
Michael Gass (president and chief executive of ULA; Bolden accidentally said United Space Alliance, oops)

wm: "Everyone will agree that our healthcare system is dysfunctional..."

No, we all won't, and it's such bogus "conventional/cultural wisdom" broad proclamations such as this that help to prevent us from improving the extremely effective (though imperfect) system we have. Your so-called dysfunctional system saved my life on more than one occasion and is contributing to the continued good health of hundreds of millions of people even as it treats them for instances of both chronic and acute illness. Many of the system's problems stem in part from government interference and/or parallel provision of services; not all of the system's flaws emanate from the big bad evil companies who (gasp) want to make a profit while providing services.

I'm all for commercial companies stepping in to provide launch services; I just have serious doubts regarding how an admittedly govt-can-and-must-do-things-better administration (GM, anybody?) is going to find a clue about how to do it right. I believe it's properly called Theater of the Absurd.

This whole thing will fail like the administration’s health care debacle. In theory they are correct, but they are trying to rush things, which will only make their critics appear right. In short, Privatizing space should be a gradual process and not rushed.