The cause of Tuesday's Antares 130 launch failure is not known. The builder and owner of the rocket, Orbital ATK, will lead an investigation of the accident, and it will be assisted by NASA and the FAA. All that is known for sure at this point was tweeted by Orbital ATK: "There has been a vehicle anomaly. The vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure." Uh, yeah. That much seems painfully self-evident.

If you want a good example of what's wrong with the US space program, take a good look at the Space Launch System rocket NASA is developing. In 2011, NASA estimated the cost of developing this human-rated, heavy-lift vehicle, along with the Orion crew capsule and launch facility upgrades, at $18 billion through 2017. The latest estimate by NASA pegs the development cost for SLS/Orion at between $19 billion and $22 billion through 2021. Almost everyone in the space industry understands that this is an extremely disingenuous low-ball estimate.

The two Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts awarded to Boeing and SpaceX by NASA on September 16 should come as no big surprise to anyone familiar with both the agency's conservative culture and its relatively small annual budget of just under $18 billion. Boeing received $4.2 billion to continue with development of its human-rated system based on the Atlas V rocket and CST-100 capsule, while SpaceX got $2.6 billion to continue work on its Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket and Dragon V2 combo.

Last week, I wrote about Boeing's decision to ramp up 737 output to 52 per month in 2018. I sounded a cautionary note about long-term overcapacity, particularly if Airbus matches Boeing. But I'm starting to think there's no reason to worry; this announcement is far from certain to be executed. Consider the factors that could derail the ramp up: First, we're talking about 2018. A lot can happen in four years. Over the past five years, single aisle production has been massively increased by a combination of three factors: low interest rates, expensive fuel (which makes new jets more appealing than keeping or buying cheap older ones), and fast growth in emerging markets (primarily the BRICs).