"IF (big IF) Rutan, Bigelow, etc. start putting people into orbit regularly and at fraction of NASA costs, "<br /><br />Not "IF" but "when"<br /><br />"NASA will suffer a serious hemorrhage of those employees who are actually passionate about their job, as opposed to just about regular paycheck. Unless NASA manages to radically reinvent itself (and I do not believe it can at this point), that may well effectively "kill" NASA. '"<br /><br />Again there are there are two different end goals here: Commercial Entertainment and Scientific Research/Exploration. If the people working on the first can create cheap access to space, then all the better for the second. And currently at NASA how much of the development work is contractor work anyways with NASA oversight and management.<br /><br />And please explain how cheap private access to space will "KILL" JPL or all the aeronautics work at Ames, Langley, Dryden... and what about all the mission control at JSC or all the space suit work, what about the work on the moon/mars missions, and what about all the people at KSC who are involved in the operations of launches? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>