The iss was promoted and pushed largely to justify the space shuttle. I still will never forgive the rush to put the first element of the ISS up so that the inertia of the program could not be stopped. The ISS was designed to preclude other launchers and require the space shuttle. The infinite wisdom of NASA and our policy makers was to pay for one white elephant to justify another white elephant. Both programs have been a disastrous misuse of space resources.

The incredible waste was so predictable because it was already obvious that the space shuttle was unreliable and the cost per ton to install stuff in orbit was exorbitant. Anyone with half a brain could realize we needed cheaper more reliable access to space before trying to launch an ambitious number of large pay loads to build a space station. Yet, NASA is all about inertia of programs and keeping people employed when it comes to manned space program.

I feel somewhat bad in my continued negativity towards NASA manned space program, but in my opinion it really has been a disaster considering the funds spent. If NASA ever wants to garner my support for their manned space program that must seek a large reduction of complexity and cost/ton to orbit, and a large increase in reliability. I find it baffling that with the resources of NASA and the incredible advances made in computers, software, and materials, that they can't come up with a significant advance in a launching payloads to orbit. Where has all the money gone for x-33, and the half dozen other aborted attempts at new lauch systems?

The bottom line in my opinion is that before planning ambitious programs (space station, moon, mars) with numerous large payloads, we need to have built a next generation launch system that meets a rigid set of design requirements in terms of reuse, reliability, and payload cost to orbit. We continue to put the cart before the horse in regards to planning ambitious programs without a launcher meeting reasonable design requirements. Frankly, I would write off the ISS and the SST today and put a moratorium on manned space flight until a next generation launcher was built. I would put every bit of money saved into a next generation launch system that required at least an order of magnitude (hopefully 2 orders of magnitude) reduction in support crew and maintenance crews and moved payload to orbit with significant reduction in payload cost/ton. Once there was assurance of a reasonable payload cost and reliable crew transport, then and only then, would I make all the ambitious programatic plans regarding manned flight.

Even then I would make sure that humans were cost effective in their use, and that they weren't doing something that telerobotic operation couldn't do instead. We do so much exploration by remote means now, and just like we can't shrink humans to explore the innards of the atom, it is really not necessary to either.