I must not have been clear about manned Venus expeditions. I wasn’t talking about visits to the surface, but more referring to cloud-top expeditions like I’ve talked about here on the blog in the past.

As for the may require more EDL work comment, I was trying not to oversell the concept. While I agree with you that the problems are probably solvable, I wanted to be conservative so they couldn’t just ignore the concept out of the box.

~Jon

Nits: The mention of the Mormon migration was amusing, at least.

The inclusion of Venus surface missions caused me to raise my
eyebrows. Surely you were not speaking of manned systems?

While you said that Mars and Venus missions “may require more EDL work or larger fairings” I am sure you are aware of the Russian inflatable reentry shields. Perhaps we can do without the larger fairings, in the same way inflatable structures decouple the volume of a habitat from the size of the fairing or payload bay. All the more reason to stick with an architecture that avoids Super-HLV.

Again, these are nits on an excellent piece.

My only nit wrt your reply is that my friend was describing the USAF’s position — he didn’t comment on his own opinion about it.

That’s only if you accept his premises: that only large, once-in-a-while platforms are the one and only way to go; and that the current American ‘industrial base’ is somehow right-sized already. I disagree with both premises.

Our actions on the government side need to be changed so that every major action is also judged in light of: how will this help in the long-term to create new, and sustainable, space industries? Industries that end up not solely dependent on going bust if one large government program goes away? Your friend’s (unfortunate) attitude would ensure those things never happen; and continue our aerospace industry on its current decline, in many ways following the path of America’s auto industry, which failed en-masse. Over-consolidation, fewer competitors, fewer new innovations created, fewer people employed – and then losing out to oversees competitors in the process – is something we really are repeating across many segments of aerospace, right now. But it can be avoided.

Things like in-space propellant servicing go in the ‘right’ direction, and end up generating much more than they initially cost to set up (or, more realistically, ‘to enable’).

And the benefits can end up being very subtle, but very important. Extrapolate to space what recently happened in Antarctica, where a team was crossing the most unexplored part of an entire continent – and met three different groups of people in one day!

“…………….They didn’t expect to come across other travelers in the relatively unexplored area known as Queen Maud Land. But they did — three times in one day.

“Fuel depots in Antarctica are kind of the equivalent of watering holes in Africa,” mused Scambos, lead scientist at the Boulder, Colo.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Everybody has to come to the fuel depot, and you see all kinds of people, all kinds of groups, gathered at the fuel depot.” ……………………..
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.rss.spacewire.html?pid=31777

~Jon

~Jon