No I'm saying that if Nasa had been told - get cargo to orbit cheaply it could (perhaps) have done so. Instead Nasa was told - get a man to the moon before the

No I'm saying that if Nasa had been told - get cargo to orbit cheaply it could (perhaps) have done so. Instead Nasa was told - get a man to the moon before the decade is out. But it was also told build something in Houston to keep senator X happy; stick a few $Billion to Boeing they are having a hard time; keep a few SR-71s flying in case we have another war in the gulf; make sure the Shuttle can get to a polar orbit from Edwards without overflying foreign territory; buy the mirror from P-E because we need to keep Keyhole alive till the next funding cycle. And a hundred other 'tasks' And that's before the inevitable internal bureaucracy kicks in