what a waste of time and money especially to my tax money
Well, how much did you pay for bringing democracy to Afghanistan in the past 10 years? Compared to that, SpaceX is pretty successful, isn't it? :lol:
And which individual? do you think Elon Musk is actually designing the rockets? He just plays the PR monkey for the show. And that pretty good.
And now something more serious: COTS is meant as service in the fullest sense of the word. Maybe you never had to learn the definition, since you never had to manage services. But I do every day (software development as IT service), so let me help you:
A service is a process that gives the customer a gain while the service provider has the full responsibility for costs and quality.
This means: You currently pay taxes for something, that doesn't cost you anything more if it fails to launch at the first attempt or if it does not reach the intended orbit. That means launch service and launch service provider. If SpaceX Dragon does not reach the ISS, SpaceX will have to pay NASA for the lost cargo.
It is completely different to what NASA used to do in the past, where you did keep on paying taxes, even if it failed epically, but something that is pretty common for commercial flights.
Of course, currently NASA also has to subsidize SpaceX and the other companies as central agency managing the COTS2+ process, since building up of such a service industry is part of NASAs job by law currently. But even that happens pretty different to usual NASA programs. In COTS2+ it is money for milestones. You only get the contract money, if you hit the milestones. That is common for commercial satellites and some military programs, but was never done in NASA.
So, why are you complaining about your few dollars that you paid for COTS2+? would you better keep on paying for some political programs like SLS, which are much more expensive, and which put the full accountability for cost overruns and quality failures on the tax payer?
MattBaker: The engines are separated by Kevlar liners. while in theory, a engine failure could be still sympathetic, it is pretty unlikely to happen. especially since the engines have pretty low power densities for a rocket engine, it is no SSME with the power of a few nuclear reactors compressed into a basketball sized pump. Especially, it is no N-1, which had all 30 engines effectively failing when one of many pipes in the first stage burst by hydraulic hammers.