You are plain wrong. Any space program takes years and starts with satellite launches. Look at the Chinese program for example. There is no reason to think US blockade somehow harmed the progress of the program there. And it does not matter much since USSR is known to launch anything they wanted before the modern globalized economics that made blockades possible even existed.
Your comment about hobbysts is plain misleading to. How many hobbysts launch pets into suborbital and orbital flights and get those back in one piece? How many hobbysts can launch a satellite, anyway? Using their own rocket? You can pimp SpaceX to defend your misleading statement, but they are not in any sense hobbysts and their work would not be possible without NASA and it took them long years anyway.
So please stop disregarding other people's achivements. This is just lame.
Some of those "hobbyists" at Copenhagen Suborbitals are former NASA contractors and they have been working on that project since May 2008, so I think his main point still stands.
It also looks like they're still doing a lot of testing on active guidance systems, rather than trying to put a human up any time soon.
No but Copenhagen Suborbitals are hobbiests. And they expect to launch a suborbital rocket with a human onboard.
And their combined budget is properly less than what NASA use on toilets.
I've noticed this in many of your comments, so I thought I'd point out that you are using "properly" in place of "probably" quite frequently. Also, this is a common mistake, but it's "hobbyist" rather than "hobbiest."
Note the "Suborbital" in their name - they aren't trying to go into orbit, but send someone straight up and pretty much straight down again - so similar to Virgin Galactic.
Your comment about hobbysts is plain misleading to. How many hobbysts launch pets into suborbital and orbital flights and get those back in one piece? How many hobbysts can launch a satellite, anyway? Using their own rocket? You can pimp SpaceX to defend your misleading statement, but they are not in any sense hobbysts and their work would not be possible without NASA and it took them long years anyway.
So please stop disregarding other people's achivements. This is just lame.