That was quick. My NRO piece is up. Almost as good as blogging.

[Update at 5:20 Eastern]

Clark Lindsey has more thoughts on the (futility of) the Scuttle the Shuttle campaign.

And as Bill White points out, for once, the Space Frontier Society and the LA Times are on the same page. Probably for entirely different reasons, though…

[Update a few minutes later]

The press should really give up on trying to get this right:

Each shuttle mission costs about $450 million for a few days in low-Earth orbit.

There is no single, always usable number for the cost of a single Shuttle mission. As I pointed out in my NRO piece, the last mission cost over ten billion, and this one will have cost about five.

Which is a good time to reiterate my point about costs of space access.

It’s the flight rate, stupid!

[Update at 9:40 PM Eastern]

Mark Whittington says:

…I take my guidence [sic] from Dr. Hawking in that ultimately the thing to be accomplished is the spreading of humankind across the Solar System and ultimately the stars, to ensure our survival at least until the death of the universe.

Believe me, no one in Washington, with control over the federal pursestrings, is talking about that as a national goal or purpose for the space program, and if they are, ESAS is one of the most cost-ineffective means to achieve that goal.

Fortunately, others, with more foresight, are, and are acting upon it.