Keith Cowing has now posted a transcript from the Q&A portion of the Griffin talk on Tuesday. It's quite interesting, with good questions (and answers) from Keith himself, Jim Muncy, Klaus Heiss, Lori Garver, Debra Lepore (of Kistler), Mike Lounge from Boeing, and others.

Concerning t/Space, it appears from these comments that Griffin would be quite willing to buy flights from t/Space but probably won't be willing to spend $400 million upfront to develop the system.

As I recall, the proposal made by t/Space was $400 million for development and $20 million per flight.

If t/Space desires to retain their intellectual property and sell flights to civilians (tourists) as well as to NASA maybe they should fund the development privately and then sell flights to NASA at $50 million say or $70 million which is very much below anything NASA can accomplish with CEV lifted by EELV and still below the cost of CEV lifted by a Thiokol based SRB + J2.

If flights are sold to NASA ala carte, t/Space can also retain sole ownership of their intellectual property and sell to Bigelow, for example, which where some real profits will be found.

IMHO, Mike Griffin is not anti-t/Space - - he's negotiating with them to get the best deal for NASA.

And his comment about a "car trunk's worth of cargo" seems to fit t/Space to a "T"

Just to be clear: t/space has never said they want $400 million "up front". That was an interpretation of an interpretation of one media report and has never been the case.

Just to be clear: t/space has never said they want $400 million "up front". That was an interpretation of an interpretation of one media report and has never been the case.

This is good news. :-)

If I were dictator, I'd give t/Space (or Rutan) $500 million or $1 billion in taxpayer dollars and say "Do your best" but I am not dictator, thank God!

Bottom line? I want t/Space to fly ASAP however it comes to pass. Hopefully, Griffin will assist that as much as he can.

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