Public-private partnerships in space are not a bad thing and were mandated by Congress in the Space Act.
Public-private partnerships are good. The issue is that ULA's place within NASA has prevented it from opening to other options for contractors. Since HW Bush's SEI we have seen NASA cater more and more to ULA, giving it and other "old space" identical contracts for the same parts when only one part needs to be built. It's one of the reasons that the Ares I was projected to cost over a billion dollars per launch, even though it was little more than an SRB and a Second Stage.
Again, NASA was congressionally mandated to use shuttle parts. But the SLS is not just a Saturn V. It's projected launch costs are 40% of a Saturn V. Its payload is significantly greater. And most importantly, we don't make Saturn V's anymore; it is not like we are running 2 identical launch platforms. We developed a new launch platform to fit our needs at this time.
SLS does not fit our needs. The payload of Block I is only 70 MT to LEO, compared to 140 MT for the Saturn V. It won't be until Block II is completed that we will finally eclipse the Saturn V, and that won't happen for well over a decade. Now, we do not produce Saturn Vs. But SpaceX is set to launch its first Falcon Heavy in only a few months - a launch vehicle that will cost only $90 million per flight and carry 53 MT to LEO - as compared to $1 - $1.5 billion per launch for SLS. The SLS was not designed to fit our needs - it was designed to fit those of Congress.
We have already spent billions of dollars from this project and are only 2 years away from the planned launch, why waste all of that sunk cost now?
This fails because of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. We've spent billions on it, but will have to spend billions more to see the SLS through launch. A much better investment is simply buying Falcon Heavies or Vulcans from SpaceX and ULA. This . is far cheaper, even calculating the sunk cost.
Please show me a rocket that doesn't use chemicals to launch? Hydrogen/Oxygen sound like chemicals to me; kerosene- chemical; hydrazine- chemical; literally any substance- chemical. Keep this one in the back of your mind, we'll come back to it shortly.
This is exactly the point. NASA just isn't the most efficient at building traditional launch systems anymore. An internal NASA study showed that they would have spent more than twice as much as SpaceX did to produce the same rocket - the Falcon 9. NASA is fantastic when it's working on research and development of new, groundbreaking technologies. We no longer need it to launch simple rockets - this is something that has already been moved to the private sector.
Doesn't this even further expand the problem you listed in the preamble, "including congressional representatives maintaining funding to programs NASA no longer wishes to run"?
This doesn't, because NASA must first request those programs. Programs like the [A-3 Test Stand].(http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/12/15/nasas-349-million-monument-to-its-drift/) would never happen because NASA would never request that they be funded.
If you think $90 million a year is going to get anyone anywhere close to Mars or the Moon again, get your head checked. Launching the already designed and built Atlas V to low Earth orbit costs roughly twice that. How would you ever get to the moon, let alone Mars on that ridiculous level of funding?
The $90 million per year for Red Dragon is what NASA wanted for it. The projected cost of the program was $450 million and it was projected to take 5 years until launch readiness. This isn't limiting the amount it can spend on going to Mars to only $90 million, just the amount it can spend on the Red Dragon Sample Return Mission. The same is true for the Altair program. We currently are spending zero on building a crewed Mars lander since Altair got cut with Constellation.
The author of this bill has no idea what he is talking about. This bill, if passed, would end NASA as we know it. This bill would lead to stagnation of space development, the loss of the US's place as the leader in advancement of space technology and exploration, and the final go ahead for Russia, China, or India to make us irrelevant in what will certainly be the most important endeavor of that mankind will partake.
I hope I've explained the reasoning behind each section of the bill to ensure that I do, at least, know what I am talking about. This bill would not end NASA - it would expand it, raising its funding by some 40%. It would stop NASA from working on old technology and refocus it on going farther - on becoming the first nation in the world to return samples from the surface of Mars. It will restart the VentureStar now that we have developed the requisite technology. If we want to actually get to Mars within the next few decades we will need reform, and that is what this bill does.