General Discussion

NASA was the canary in the coal mine for what they are doing now. We have no choice but to use SpaceX or ULA for most of our launch needs. While DOD doesn't do a whole lot of low earth orbit contracting it's Space Forces geosynchronous orbital needs that have us cornered. Like I said, there are 2 private companies and 2 countries with rockets powerful enough to put a BIG satellite 22k miles up. It sucks that peoples "so what" attitude towards NASA for the last 25 to 30 years has put us in this position. I would much rather have a publicly funded "private" national space program like we used too.

And I would argue hard that we NEED to be in space and not fall behind the curve, especially with the Chinese. They are moving as fast as we were in the 60's and have surpassed us as having a heavy lift rocket (or a low earth orbit one for that matter) as a nation even though they shoot them off like Boeing firecrackers.