Isn't Dwayne Day's article peculiarly pro-SHUTTLE and pro-ISS, though?

http://www.floridatoday.com/news/space/stories/2004a/020804guest.htm

First of all, regarding:

>>>"[former NASA historian and current NASA pundit Alex] Roland [of Duke University] also asserts that space shuttle development ran absurdly over budget. But this is also untrue. If one turns to page 23 of the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, you will see that NASA completed the shuttle for only 15 percent more than its projected development cost, "a comparatively small cost overrun for so complex a program," the report states."<<<

Weren't NASA's initial projections regarding the Shuttle that it would fly FAR more often than it has and with far less labor-intensive maintenance work between flights? Wasn't the Shuttle touted as having the potential to bring down the cost of access to space in ways that purportedly justified NASA's NOT turning to genuinely entrepreneurial contractors like it is now [predictably] forced to do with FOREIGN launch service providers?

Meanwhile, perhaps the most puzzling passage is:

"The [International Space Station's] $8 billion cost first provided in 1984 was before the program was changed in dramatic ways, such as including the Russians and changing the scope of the project. More importantly, that number did not include assembly and operations costs. So comparing this to the actual costs is akin to comparing the cost of buying a new car to fueling, maintaining and insuring it for 15 years in addition to buying it. Second, the $100 billion cost that Roland cites for the anticipated costs of the International Space Station has been adjusted for inflation, whereas the 1984 cost has not. Roland is not the first person to do this -- it is a common tactic for space station critics to use -- but he is still being disingenuous. He understates the "promised" cost of the space station in order to exaggerate the difference between it and the actual cost and to once again bash NASA."

First, didn't NASA's initial cost projections for the ISS two decades ago entail the space station's housing 12 people by now, instead of the two or three that it tends to (uncomfortably and even dangerously) host as of late? Second, hasn't inflation since 1984 apparently been less than 40%? Third, how is bringing in the Russians (which NASA said would save us money) something which excuses NASA's flagrant ISS-related cost-overruns? Indeed, haven't the Russians helped NASA save money regarding the ISS? Weren't annual operating expenses for privatized Mir (despite the controversially sabotaged tether export and thwarted academic outreach endeavors) under $100 million when the Russians and some entrepreneurs spending their OWN money were in exclusive control? And yet NASA's annual operating expenses for ISS are somehow justifiably much more for ISS?

Why would Dwayne Day be such a NASA apologist? Hmmm....