I like the Future X program, which NASA has been talking about, because it permits a large number of companies, not just one big company, to participate. The real question is whether NASA, the Department of Defense and others will buy commercial launch services from the firms that develop these new launch systems, or whether they are going to try to control the situation by keeping their contracts within the established providers. Because of limited funding, and we all have to live with that, it is imperative that NASA and the Pentagon cooperate. The delegation was a mistake. The commercial industry has the capability to develop expendable rockets and the White House did not need to make this division.
Private industry has the capability to develop expendables.
Reusables, on the other hand, are totally underfunded. So we should be having DoD and NASA cooperating on multiple reusables. Q. President Bill Clinton's line-item veto last October of three small military space programs in the 1998 defense spending bill canceled funding for military space plane technology development. I think the president flew into a black hole on that one. There is a bias in this administration against using space for defense.