All true.
The shambling legions of government bureaucrats have now produced seven years without a human qualified space transportation capability in the U.S.
The shuttle stopped flying in 2011. It is now 2018.
I recall watching Al Shephard launch in 1961, and then Neil Armstrong stepping out of the LEM just 8 years later onto the lunar surface.
In the same amount of time the modern NASA has accomplished exactly on flight of their gold plated capsule, and that was unmanned.
SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin all have credible man rated designs in various stages of flight readiness. They will all be flying soon. Or at least be ready: NASA will be the gating factor as to whether some of them go.
But some are being built by guys who don’t need to wait for NASA funding, and they will leave the bureaucrats in the dust.
“seven years without a human qualified space transportation capability in the U.S.”
I think that’s even worse than the gap between the last Apollo flight (Apollo-Soyuz) and the first Shuttle: 1975-1981.
And no humans are going to climb into an Orion capsule anytime soon.
Jeff Bezos could out-fund NASA with what would amount to sofa-cushion change to him.
Besides the purse-strings however, what federal regulations govern manned space flight? I’m thinking of the Burt Rutan designed suborbital spacecraft about 10 years ago for example. Did they need government permission? Would SpaceX need permission for its stated plan to send two paying customers on a circumlunar flight?