Why should it take 10 years to build a vacuum-proof cylinder with a mating adapter at both ends that will fit on top of a rocket?

Are those European or African cylinders?

The ISS was built ad-hoc by a number of different countries – one of the reasons why it was so expensive. But also the only reason it ever got built. While it's done some useful science, it has always been largely a political project with little or no commercial appeal.

If you want it to draw power from solar panels, support life or run equipment inside you might want a few more features than that.

"If you want it to draw power from solar panels, support life or run equipment inside you might want a few more features than that."

"Welcome, Mr President. Would you like to have a look inside the next ISS while you're here?"

Trump steps inside cylinder and asks, "Shouldn't it have a door at the other end too?" followed by a big CLANG and the faint sounds of welding.

Why should it take 6 to 8 years to develop a new car from scratch? It's just a box with a wheel on each corner...

In other words: You might miss the one or the other order of magnitude in complexity in your description.

"cylinder with a mating adapter at both ends that will fit on top of a rocket?"

Usually take humans a few more years to work out how to use their corresponding kit. :)

…companies just left the building. Calling for an RFI in 2026 for something that is due to be in orbit in just a few years, requiring billions of USD in investment is a serious as the job description of the acting administrator.

"They're ready to move faster... we're ready to shortcut wherever we can in order to get a module up there." Yeah, certainly, nothing's ever gone badly in spaceflight just because they cut a few corners to get things up in time, right? What's the worst that could happen? -->

Why do the people suggesting these shortcuts never volunteer to be the guinea pigs?

Did I miss the banns ?

If Charlie Brown managed to find himself hitched to Lucy van Pelt there cannot be much hope for the world… actually that seems about right.

So whatever the president does with NASA - either more or less money - then congress does the opposite just to spite him. NASA makes an excellent punching bag because it doesn't really have constituents like, for example, farming subsidies where all the farmers would jump up and down if it was messed with.

This is not just Trump. This goes back to every administration starting with Nixon after Apollo ended.

NASA has no way to plan a damned thing past a year, and anything multi-year gets crapped on.

One of the reasons SLS is so expensive is that they stop work every year because the gov't defunds something then funds something else, and it's "different pots of money" so you can't just keep working on what you were working on. This is why it's taken 3 years and half a billion dollars just to build a god damned launch tower.

"farming subsidies where all the farmers would jump up and down if it was messed with."

There's also the matter of the country going hungry, reduced exports and no food to turn into alcohol to water down the petrol. The look of that in the press would be brutal and there's always an upcoming election.

NASA's benefit is on a longer time scale. There are still new commercial technologies coming out of Apollo era research. Politicians don't really get the value of pure science.

The way to cut corners without cutting corners is to sit down and come up with a good plan and then execute on that plan as quickly as possible. Only make changes when confronted with physical impossibilities. The other is to allocate the budget AND the money to circumvent lack of funding a couple of times per year when the government shuts down. There are many things that can't be stopped to sit around for a month and can be restarted again. It adds costs in other ways such as how TSA agents that aren't getting paid are forced to find other jobs to keep from getting evicted from their homes. Some of those won't be returning which will require training new replacements at an additional cost.

I expect there where many changes to the launch tower over 3 years. Had it been built in 6 months, there would have only been the most critical changes. I watched a video on one of the construction railroads built to construct the Hoover Dam. 3 shifts per day, 7 days per week from inception to completion taking 5 months (lots of hark rock tunnels). No spending years with environmental reports, re-planning the route and the budget spent on "consultants'. A freeway widening project now takes years and the one near me never seems to have people working on it. One day there will be machinery and the next week it's gone for a month. The signs went up a good 6 months before anything started and I expect they'll be up for 6 months after the work is done before being taken down. In the mean time, it will still be a "construction zone" so all citations will be double fines.

'Dave Cavossa, [...] compared NASA's changing goals to "Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football."'

Not a very good comparison. Everybody knows Lucy is already in the sky (with lots of diamonds).

Poor Charlie Brown, on the other hand...

What they described as the issue is that there is no private company wanting to get into the space station business that has viable plan which is not surprising as beyond space tourism is there any many to be made with a LEO space station. They have extended ISS to 2032 to give industry more time but I can't see it changing the situation, they even talked about selling the 'commander seat', whatever that means to raise more funds.

Axiom looked like they were getting close but sounds like Axiom are bankrupt as they own money left, right and centre. I have serious doubt about them getting the space suits ready and I think it was mentioned at the press conference to bring suit manufacturing back inhouse with NASA.

Vast have at least built something and have a viable plan, but their plan doesn't have any connection to ISS.

Orbital Reed from Blue sounds promising but not heard anything further after the initial announcement.

No wonder industry is finding it hard to work with NASA on a LEO space station.

"What they described as the issue is that there is no private company wanting to get into the space station business that has viable plan "

It takes an enormous amount of sustaining budget to keep a station operational regardless of tourists or commercial firms wanting to do research. The US will just print money to do that where private companies don't have the luxury. There are also laws in the US that publicly traded companies have to act in the best interest of their owners (shareholders). That's wide open to interpretation so building and operating a space station without an anchor tenant that can pay its bills regularly and one time is a concern. Being self-employed, I'm not getting a paycheck like clockwork every 2 weeks. Creditors are keen on operating on monthly cycles and won't bend on that. While over the course of a year I do just fine, over the course of a few months I might be a ragged payer. That's costly and really hard to budget (not that budgeting is taught in school for this sort of thing). If a winter is particularly slow, I can go through my reserves and have to put some things off to keep other things paid. Getting the cushion built up is a long term operation. While I'm not putting off paying for things now, I'm very hesitant to take on any long term debt that requires regular monthly payments. The next car will again be cash which also means I can have insurance with a higher deductible and a lower cost.

Gateway cancelled, now they have to do something with the modules being built for it.

It looks to me like NASA is having a bad case of sunk cost fallacy and wants desperately to find another place to put the habitation module it is building for the Lunar Gateway (that rightfully is getting abandoned). So suddenly NASA want's to "build it's own space station" and require others to dock to it. The only thing that really makes sense is going to the space station providers it was already contracting with and asking them "hey, we've got this fully designed an nearly built module, can we do something with it by connecting it to your station?" Find one of the commercial destination partners that has the best plan of "doing something with it" and then do that something with it.

They have already said the Gateway hub module is going to Mars on a nuclear rocket.

"It looks to me like NASA is having a bad case of sunk cost fallacy and wants desperately to find another place to put the habitation module it is building for the Lunar Gateway (that rightfully is getting abandoned)."

Lack of proper program planning. Gateway was part of a much longer term mission architecture that was very ambitious and shouldn't have been started in the first place. The goal of getting humans back on the moon and doing some work on establishing a (semi-) permanent presence should have been the first paragraph. Not longer term compatibility for things a decade down the road and a South Lunar Pole mining consortium.

Congress and NASA have been making very poor decisions of late. Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator, commented that what NASA needed for Artemis was a lander and what an ACTING administrator bought was an entire giant rocket architecture. The largest single contract award to date by NASA.

The concept of NASA having industry propose the hardware seems like a poor idea. In the past, NASA did the engineering and put out requests for bids to build it. There will always be some back and forth, but the design lead was NASA, not the contractor. It may all wind up falling apart. No lander, no suits and jobs program main rocket with a limited build number. Once the RS-25 engines are used up, that's it for the Senate Launch System. It's not going to be easy to bolt up BE-4 or Raptor v8 engines to the existing design and will likely be simpler to make an entirely new rocket. If a continuous presence on the moon is really a goal, that new rocket needs to be in design now with production that can support 4+ missions per year with some good margins.

Really? Of all the things to put into orbit, when did we do that?

And what sort? Football (soccer for our American acquantainces), Rugby, Hockey, American Football, or some other sport?

Or were they put up as a target for when Elon sent his Tesla Roadster aloft?

Why do I hear "goalposts in space" in Tim Curry's voice?

I hear everything "... in SPACE!" in the voice of whoever did the voieover for "PIGS IN SPACE!" on the Muppets.