Space enthusiasts, and many in the general public were fooled once, because we believed. We ignored the signs and warnings, because we wanted to believe. Intellectual pigmies the likes of Walter Mondale said it was a bad idea, and we ignored them because we had to have what we wanted to believe could come true.

Who were these inveterate bureaucrats? These were the men and women of NASA who were convinced that the only way to get into space was the government way, that the only good space program was a government-funded one, and that, having proved that they could get us to the Moon, they deserved whatever budget they ordained.

Who were the easy-money hungry government contractors? The usual suspects at Lockheed (now Lockheed-Martin), McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing), and Rockwell International. What did they want? As much money as they could get the government to fork over for the least amount of effort on their part.

What scheme did they hatch? Simple, really. "Mothball the existing fleet of Saturn V launch vehicles," the bureaucrats and contractors said, from 1968 and through 1972, "and fund our studies for a fully reusable launch system." Why stop production on the fleet of operational vehicles? Because there was no other way they could justify spending money on the really high margin labor of engineering design.

In 1972, with the last two men walking on the Moon, Congress caved in and agreed to fund the shuttle program. NASA trotted out an allegedly competitive request for proposals, the usual suspects (Rockwell, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas) were awarded multi-million-dollar contracts for studies, and eventually a shuttle was born. Originally designed to be fully reusable, it was scaled back and redesigned repeatedly, ostensibly because of budget constraints.

The shuttle promised much and delivered little. It was to cut launch costs by an order of magnitude from $1,000 per pound to orbit down to $100 per pound "or even less" in the words of one optimistic bureaucrat. But a funny thing happened on the way to the launch pad.

Before the first shuttle could fly, it was redesigned and re-re-designed until billions had been spent. Technology that was supposed to provide extra capabilities proved costly and ineffective. Finally, with CBS News running a special report on the "Fourteen Billion Dollar Question Mark" NASA was finally ready for a first flight in April 1981.

Did it fly 100 times a year? No, it hasn't been flown more than a dozen times a year. Did it bring launch costs down? No, launch costs are currently at least $10,000 per pound, even more if you count all the money actually spent on developing the shuttle and not just current-year expenditures. Was it possible to "mass-produce" a fleet of 10 vehicles for "rapid turnaround" with days between flights, as promised? No, flights are still very rare, take months of planning, and require tens of thousands of workers to accomplish. And the aerospace contractors sit back and rake in billions with guaranteed profits. Year, after year, after year, after year.

But space enthusiasts dreamed the dream, so we fought the fight. For my own case, in 1977 at a mere 14 I called my Congress critters, I wrote them letters, I asked the president to help, I sat in shopping malls with petitions, I went to conferences, I joined many different groups, I staged demonstrations at the major party political conventions, helped draft legislation, and did many other things. For over 10 years, I supported everything NASA ever asked for, and pushed for more. Many thousands of others like me did as much, and hundreds of thousands expressed casual support through letters or subscriptions.

Now, the same jerks are up to it again. Having insisted for almost 30 years that the shuttle was the only thing worth funding, and having done everything in their power to kill off any possible competition, the boys from the Beltway and their cronies in the contractor community have hatched...The same scam!

In May 1996, NASA announced that Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing), and Lockheed Martin, using $7 million each in NASA seed money had been preparing "competitive" proposals for an X-33, the launch system which would potentially replace shuttle. I put the word competitive in quotation marks because it is a rather unique industry where your customer pays you to develop your proposal. Curious that all the entrepreneurial start-ups who proposed on this study contract were rejected out of hand, leaving nothing but the usual suspects to compete.

And the X-33, what does it promise? Again, returning to NASA's announcement in May 1996, the promise was a "fully reusable, one-stage rocket by 2008" which would conduct "100 orbital missions, simplified ground operations...to drop the cost of delivering cargo to orbit from $10,000 per pound to $1,000 per pound, or less.

NASA awarded its contract, worth about $900 million, to Lockheed Martin, in spite of the extensive operational work of McDonnell Douglas on single stage to orbit vehicles in the Delta Clipper program. NASA justified this decision because of a supposed commitment on the part of Lockheed Martin to spend $2 billion in the year 2000 and beyond to build the operational version of the X-33, the so-called VentureStar.

In the 1930s, the cartoonist who brought us Popeye created a character named Wimpie who would frequently say, "I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger I can eat today." NASA seems to have bought into this scenario, with Lockheed Martin playing a Wimpie who says, "I will gladly pay you in the year 2000 and beyond for a $900 million contract I can eat today."

Now comes the June 1997 issue of Analog magazine, with a column by G. Harry Stine entitled, "The X-33 Decision, Part 2." Stine comes equipped with credentials. He was working in the late 1940s and early 1950s as an engineer assigned to White Sands Missile Range while they were still flying captured V-2 rockets. He has been active in aerospace engineering ever since, and was part of the kickoff design meeting when McDonnell Douglas initiated the Delta Clipper program, and provided support for identifying off-the-shelf technologies and components all the way through the first flight.

In his June column, Stine points out that the X-33 is the very first X-plane ever designed with a payload bay. He points out that all of its test capabilities have been proven in earlier experimental aircraft which carried the X designation. And he notes that the X-33 is deficient in many capabilities compared to the earlier Delta Clipper. But the truly terrifying aspects of his report are the comparison in capabilities between the planned follow-on VentureStar and the US space shuttle.

Delta Clipper begins its fourth test flight 20 June 1994. Soon after NASA took over the project, this vehicle was destroyed.

The VentureStar was originally to carry 40,000 pounds of payload when it was first conceived in late 1995. It is now rated at 59,000 pounds payload, an amazing 47.5% increase. Whereas the Delta Clipper was a fully automated, self-controlled smart rocket operating in a vertical takeoff vertical landing mode, the VentureStar is to be vertical takeoff horizontal landing vehicle operating, like the US space shuttle, with a final powerless "dead stick" landing. Stine also points out that a tremendous number of new technologies are being proposed for implementation on VentureStar. As with the shuttle, every effort is being made to push the technology, when there are off-the-shelf alternatives available for much less. Shades of the early shuttle program, when operational vehicles were mothballed to make sure that lots of high margin engineering hours could be billed for the development of startling new technologies...the area of technology which invariably suffers from cost overruns. NASA's director of advanced transportation, Gary Payton, has said, "We are changing the rules of the game....Everything is brand new." As Shakespeare might say, 'tis new to thee. Payton explains that the shuttle embarked on full-scale development before it had key technologies ready. Unfortunately, VentureStar is preparing to embark on prototype development without having key technologies ready, especially in regard to the 3 million plus pounds thrust aerospike engine, the conformal propellant tanks, the sensor systems, and the thrust vector control system which has never been tested in conditions other than sea-level pressures and temperature.

There is also the very interesting situation in Lockheed Martin's control of numerous key technologies for access to space. Lockheed Martin owns and operates the Titan and Atlas launch vehicles, which have payload capacities spanning the range for VentureStar. Lockheed Martin is a partner with Rockwell in the newly "commercialized" space shuttle operations, a clever way of giving exclusive operational control of the existing space shuttle to the same old defense contractors. Calling it a "commercialized" program is like saying that the Internal Revenue Service is a "Taxpayer Protection Agency."

In addition to Lockheed Martin's powerful position in expendable rockets and its powerful position in space shuttle operations, NASA has now added an exclusive arrangement for the follow-on shuttle program, VentureStar. Were these monopolistic practices not endorsed by NASA, I'm sure they would raise serious eyebrows at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department's anti-trust enforcement bureaus.

So, where do you suppose this is heading? Will NASA spend nearly $1 billion over 3 years to develop X-33? Will NASA hem and haw and bemoan budget cuts and end up spending $5 billion over 8 years? Or will they pull the kind of game they played with space station and spend $15 billion over 14 years? Will we have a reusable launch vehicle when the money is gone and the time wasted?

I don't know. Maybe we will. Then again, do we have the fully reusable, $100 per pound, 100-flights-a-year kind of shuttle we were promised in 1969? Do we have the 12-man space station we were promised within a decade for $8 billion back in 1984? Or do we have nothing but delays and cost overruns? Survey SAYS . . . delays and cost overruns! What do we have for our winners, today?

We have the opportunity to see hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted. Our winners, the American people, get to wait another generation, possibly two, before passenger transportation to space is available. For our runners-up, the NASA contractors, we have cost overruns, completion award bonuses, and a hammerlock on space access. For our other contestants, the NASA bureau-rats, we have these lovely civil service jobs, with lots of opportunities to make more money working for NASA contractor companies after retirement.

The habit of space enthusiasts of supporting every thing NASA dreams up has got to be curbed. To look at us behave, you would think we believe in the motto, "Fool me once. Fool me twice. What the heck, fool me thrice!"

There is a way to get into space for $100 per pound, fly hundreds of vehicles to orbit a year, and do so cost effectively. But economic success and operational achievement are not associated with government activities. Space enthusiasts must stop asking the government to do everything in space and demand that they do nothing. Only by removing the government from the business environment can we have rapid commercial development.

With over a million pounds of cargo to orbit launched each year, there is clearly a market. With a small fraction of the space tourism market, that could easily increase by another 80 million pounds of passengers and their luggage, representing only 100,000 passengers or one-hundredth of one percent of the known market for space tourist flights. The market is huge, but the commercial developers are all suffering terribly. And it is all the fault of the usual suspects: NASA and their crony contractors.

So, if you like space activities and want to fly in space someday, do something different this time. When NASA asks for help, sit on your hands.

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