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NASA has become No Access to Space for Americans. It is deliberatly thwarting efforts for non-NASA access to space, especially by private groups. It has become just another governemt bureaucarcy defending its monopoy.

If you want to understand this as a part of a great fiction novel, search the net to find "Kings of the High Frontier" by Victor Koman.

NASA has become No Access to Space for Americans.

Agreed. One of Niven's novels ("Gil the ARM"), set in the late 21st - early 22nd century, looks back at the late 20th century and NASA's weird political spacecraft and marvels how ridiculously bureaucratic and wasteful the whole process was.

NASA has become No Access to Space for Americans. It is deliberatly thwarting efforts for non-NASA access to space, especially by private groups. It has become just another governemt bureaucarcy defending its monopoy.

Sadly, I must agree. I worked at NASA while a college student in the 70s. During that time I remember one of the scientists in our department morosely remarking one day that NASA had just passed the point of having one bureaucrat for each scientist on their staff. I've been watching NASA ever since, and it's clear that the productive, dynamic heyday of the 60s is gone forever. If we had to return to the Moon today, we could not afford to do so.

It really saddens me to say this: NASA has accomplished great things, but like an athlete, or a race-horse, beyond his (or her) prime, it needs to be put out to pasture.