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There's a lot more stuff under the NASA umbrella than manned spaceflight that do a lot of great science (Such as the JPL) and are generally some of the best at

There's a lot more stuff under the NASA umbrella than manned spaceflight that do a lot of great science (Such as the JPL) and are generally some of the best at what they do, so I wouldnt advocate shutting down the whole program, however I would agree that building launch vehicles is not something they should handle themselves. I would have preferred them to be championing SpaceX, but it seems big, slow, hulking bureaucracies have an affinity for each other. Unless NASA's already got a rocket they've been developing in secret, I'd say SpaceX could put up a person in orbit faster than NASA+Boeing can with theirs, given their respective track record.

araes 12y ago
NASA has been developing the Space Launch System (SLS) [1] since the 2010 Authorization Act killed the Constellation program. If it means anything, they're through their Preliminary Design Review and heading towards their Critical Design Review. They expect somewhere between 70 metric tons to 155 metric tons to LEO depending on the version of the design. Whether it will fly, who knows, but they are actually farther along than NASA has gotten on a space vehicle in a while. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System