SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has certainly taken his lumps lately in his quest to launch cargo and eventually live astronauts on his Dragon spacecraft.

Old line space companies such as Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and Alliant Tech Systems have bought right-wing polititians in NASA Red States in order to slow down commercial cargo and crew development in order to spread the meme that old fashioned cost-plus contracts to the aforementioned entities in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Colorado (Red State NASA Centers) are the only credible companies able to construct space vehicles, totally on the taxpayer dime.

What they fail to mention is that commercial cargo and crew receive only 1/10 the money that the old contracts receive and only after they reach certain milestones. Most of the equipment that companies like SpaceX, Sierra-Nevada, Orbital Sciences and Blue Origin foot most of the cost of their space equipment.

This is mainly a political issue and has nothing really to do with putting man into space at all; it just political party propaganda.

Below is the link to the 60 Minute segment on 3/18/2012 in which Scott Pelly interviews Elon Musk and gives him a mainstream media audience exposure that could help him politically. Maybe.

Musk Interview On 60 Minutes 3/18/2012