I’m wondering if what Griffin’s up to is giving “old NASA” a chance to show what it can do. If it can actually accomplish something exciting and new, great. How will the organization respond to the challenge? From things he’s said in public he seems to like to hedge his bets; maybe he has some cost-effectiveness metrics up his sleeve for a few years down the road that’ll make a switch to EELV/Falcons politically mandated, at least for crew launch?

NASA’s a big ship with a lot of inertia; splitting shuttle into two vehicles makes it a lot easier to kill one of them down the road.