For some reason (wrong word, but let's just go with it) Raoul seems to have a problem with our accomplishments in space.

America chose to go to the moon. We didn't care how expensive it was going to be, or how hard it was going to be, we chose to do it anyways, and guess what, we did it. Our going to the moon wasn't a failure, it was a successful accomplishment of something which was never attempted before in the history of life on planet Earth.

America chose to send numerous unmanned space probes on voyages of discovery to the planets, and we proceeded to do just that. The benefits to our lives turned out incalculable.

America chose to build a reusable space plane. At the time we thought it was going to be an inexpensive way to put huge quantities of cargo into space, and a necessary way to build a space station. A reusable space plane was never before attempted in the history of life on Earth, but we CHOSE to do it anyways, and low and behold we did do it.

The development of the reusable space plane proceeded pretty much on schedule and on budget, and we flew it for many years before we realized it was not going to be as inexpensive to operate as we first imagined it would be, and quite a bit more dangerous. But since we had it, we chose to build a space station with it, since that was what it was designed for.

America chose to build a space telescope, something that never before had been attempted in the history of life on Earth. But that didn't stop us in the past, and so we saw no reason that it should stop us now. The telescope we got, however, had a fundamental flaw, but we chose to repair it. The benefits to our lives turned out to be almost incalculable.

We proceeded to build a large space station. It turned out to be very expensive, and nothing before that large had ever been built in space, but nevertheless we proceeded, and we succeeded in building ourselves a large space station in orbit.

Since the reusable space plane was proving to be far more expensive than first anticipated, we decided to build a pair of evolved expendable launch vehicles as a cheaper alternative. We then proceeded to develop and fly these EELVs, which also proved to be more expensive to operate than first anticipated, but cheaper than the reusable space plane for cargo, so we continue to fly them today, as they are still much cheaper than the small ELVs which have much higher costs per kilogram.

Next we decided to return to the moon, with technology that basically was less advanced than what we used the first time. Many people realized that returning to the moon with new rockets which radically diverged from the evolution of existing rocket technology was not as daring and adventurous as we had been accustomed to. Many people questioned the veracity of repeating something we had already accomplished, and questioned the value of the expense of going to the moon.

Thus as an alternative to returning to the moon, many suggested that we choose to commercialize space transportation, in order to reduce the costs of space flight and to defer our return to the moon to a more appropriate pace.

It appears now that we are in the process of doing the necessary work in order to commercialize space transportation. Whether or not that will be successful, or whether it will actually reduce costs to orbit remains to be seen, but we decided to do it anyways, just to find out how it will work.

And every step of the way, people like Raoul criticized our accomplishments in space, and labeled them as failures. They even criticized our criticism of our next goals in space, calling that criticism unfounded, and calling our failures successes.

But Americans are used to such irrational criticism of our decisions how to spend our time and our money and our efforts in space, and since it is our country to do with as we please, so we quite rightly commented on their criticism as irrelevant.

Our accomplishments in space have defined us as a civilized nation, and has vastly improved our lives here on Earth. The chances of people like Raoul impeding our progress in space, impeding our ability to take on challenging new and never before attempted accomplishments in space, such as the commercialization of space transportation or traveling to the asteroids, the moons of Mars and the planet Ceres, is nil.

So bring it on Raoul. It's our money to spend, its our lives to lose and its the lives of our citizens to enrich, You will forever be a follower, until which time you choose to lead. Lead on.

Space is for everybody, but we'll still do it our way. It's not as if we haven't invited you to join us. And if we're doing it the wrong way, as we have been these last five years with Bush and Constellation, it's our decision to make right our mistakes, not yours, nor anyone else's but US Americans. So screw you.

If you have a problem with the way we choose to do things in space, that's tough. Any after the fact criticism of our previous accomplishments in space is simply ex post facto nonsense.