Okay, private companies will always do better than government agencies, so why dosen't Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, United Technologies, SpaceX, General Dynamics, L3 Communications Holdings, Honeywell International, Parker Hannifin, Computer Sciences Corp, US branch of Thales Group, and SpaceDev all team up and buy out all of NASA, save the "space jobs" and make space flight cheaper than NASA as a government agency?
That is one of the basic issues which is being discussed in all levles for many years already, from the guy like me who just sits in front of his PC to simulate space stuff, up to real astronauts and engineers and highly ranked NASA/space flight persons who have a real clue.
NASA is in a deadlock already since Apollo. That program was amazing, yes, but also amazingly costly and just a temporaray political goal. STS also was an expensive deadlock behind the curtain of Spacelab, Hubble and ISS. It just lasted longer. It eats up resources and budget like hell due to NASAs structure. The only thing that saved the Shuttle program in the 1970s was the miscalculation and promise -> that the Shuttle would be still profitable (behind criticism back then) and fly "routinely" 600+ times until the end of the 1990s, and capable of flying missions up to one month of duration. None of it became reality. It also was a political proposal like Apollo, but this time justified/fundet because of military usage behind the smoke screen called "science". But the airforce resigned before there was any launch from Vandenberg AFB since they can go into space quicker and more efficiently.
I may sound like I don't like NASA and what it does. This is not the case at all. Everything what NASA does in the manned sector was amazing and groundbreaking from the technological and breathtaking point of view. It just is way too costly and sadly driven by politicians who have no clue and make things worse. NASA has to be open to industries, share know-how and technologies, if it really intends to do amazing long term programs in the future and do something for an entire nation and for the humankind really. If it stays a big bloated bureaucracy, dependant on fiscal politics and political programs like Constellation or the new Obama improvement for the worse, we will be always disapointed by gaps and dramatic cuts. A state never is a good businessman. NASA has to be restructured. Otherwise they never will operate a LEO system that costs only 50 million USD per seat like the Russian Soyuz. Instead it will continue to cost billions just to keep jobs and satisfy senators and its voters...
With the money already used for the AresI program structure, SpaceX could have developed Falcon 9 about 24 times. That's the difference between commercial and governmental.
