"Verily, thee sayeth a bookful."

NASA is no more immune to the effects of grotesque government program bloat than any other government program. Has ANYTHING the government done ever cost even approximately what it was promised to?

That being said, the need for a small manned replacement for the Shuttle, assuming that the Russian ships couldn't do the job just fine, has been obvious to those in the private space industry for years. The AAS (Alternate Access to Space) program was supposed to be such an alternative, and I worked with a company to present a proposal for this. Although NASA didn't have the guts to consider anything other than unmanned supply missions, our design was easily modified to carry people. And it was reusable: a blunt reentry cylindrical vehicle with a parachute and landing bags, about twenty feet long, that was designed to be launched on one of many old surplus Titan IIs laying around. Cheap, and workable. Needless to say, much more expensive and complicated solutions made the final cut, and the whole AAS program was eventually scrapped in favor of the new improved reusable system which promises to employ MANY more government workers.

When the concept for the X-38 "rescue vehicle" came out years ago, more than a few of us wondered why they didn't take the obvious step and design it so it could be launched on an expendable. Ah, well.

The X-38. It was estimated that taking this to a fully operational CRV would cost about $2 billion, or approximately what it cost Boeing to develop the 747.