I gotta think that if you gave a few billion $ to the Air Force black projects people and said: We need a bare bones ability to get humans into space to fix a spy sat in Geo-sync orbit ASAP. That you would have a new test-pilot driven bird flying a lot sooner than the shuttle's retirement date in 2010. Hell, it might already be happening! (I can dream can't I?)

If NASA can't get past this simple 1st stage, (ok... I know its not really simple) then I expect that NASA will die on the vine and become nothing more than an underfunded science project and the manned civilian space program will die.

Oh sure it would be nice to have a new shuttle with a giant payload bay with a robotic arm, cameras to show mission control everytning down to the serial numbers on every replacement part, and all the bells and whistles...Including a scalable life support system capabale of taking a crew to Mars and back...But NASA will fail if it takes that all-in-one approach.

Scott Evil