How is returning to the moon, in gear almost directly copied from Apollo designs, not going to be considered by everyone as Apollo 2? About nothing new is being done, and the heavy reliance on super expensive, high labor cost, launchers — means the programs going to be to expensive to maintain for long.

This also explains why comercials are adamently not to be considered for lifting the goodies to orbit. It would be trivial and a big cost savings, to design a competative big for true heavy lift. Say give the winner 60% of the lift contract, and losers 30% just to keep a hot back-up. But the point of the excersize is to keep the shuttle workers employed, not to do missions in space.

Hell I did a work up on how easy it would be to “refit” the shuttles to vastly cheeper and safer – and more capable system. Probably do it for the cost savings of a few shuttle flights, and be a much better basis for deep space maned missions. But it would crater the stafing levels of the big centers, which is of FAR higher priority then any exploration mission.

As to why the space buffs don’t see this… I realy think a lot of the prospace orgs, realy just became NASA cheerleaders. REagardless of how bad NASA does something, they are to loved to ever see flaw with. Its just unthinkable.

Realistically I think NASA has lost any chance of being a significant force in exploration anymore. They are so bloated and sluggish, they simply can’t keep up even with near term private maned timetables. Odds are the next humans on the moon will be setting up a tourist station.

On the other hand I’m not as optimistic about redesigning everything around small lift weight boosters, and racks of fuel tanks brought up a tank at a time. Big bulky unfulled ships can’t be lifted on little light boosters, and often empty tanks can’t take launch loads.

http://curmudgeons.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_curmudgeons_archive.html#112759872707500054