We are at a crisis, if you have not noticed. A world-wide depression and wars in at least two nations that are still unresolved. We have military hardware deploy around the planet for some damn reason while millions are living on the street and a work force that lives in fear and loathing of joining them. And our nations's pollution affects the entire world.

There is so much that the U.S. needs to do first to join the community of civilized nations. The planets can wait and the moon can wait. Would not a tried and true Delta IV or Altas 5 booster make a good launch vehicle for a new craft to carry people and cargo to the ISS?

It is both sad and iconic to remember that the Shuttle program was delayed for years due to demands of the military for more payload and now we are talking about delaying the replacement to make it less. But this is necessary until the U.S. is civilized and strong again.

With Ares, I never favored the idea of solely relying on an SRB to launch a human crew. 2.0 seems to offer a better margin of safety (or at least survivability) in the event of an all-out launch failure. The configuration should also allow us the lift capacity to keep the 6-person capsule.

In the process, I sort of would hope they could help out projects like Falcon and Dragon to be able to hitch a ride to the space station instead of reling on 'outside' source for trips to orbit…seems to be a 'lot' of potential there as well.

Thanks Jon… Re: New Moon Atlas.

Regards
John — w w w.moonposter.ie

I am personally not a big fan of the space shuttle. There has been little working science that came out of it. The Hubble service missions, such as the one coming up, and a couple of other missions actually accomplished something. Most of the rest of the STS missions amounted to gymnastics in space. Even the satellite launch service missions were abandoned by the early 1990's. That should be a hint! The costs were larger than regular launch programs. The space station is frankly a hugely expensive boondoggle that has accomplished almost nothing. Compare this with Spitzer, WMAP, Casinni, Mars rovers, and so forth.

Space capsules might be "old fashioned," but if we are to return to the moon, likely for dubious purposes unfortunately, then a no-fuss approach is better.

Lawrence B. Crowell

There are a lot of employees working on both projects (some for free on their own time), so that will be a prime target in which Obama will have to look at. As this President is intent on keeping as many people working as possible, the Thursday announcement will more likely have some kind of compromise or shifting around of major resources so's that the 2020 date, or perhaps 2021 WILL be met. But, it's going to be a tough one, that's for sure!

John
PS. New Moon Atlas launched — do have a peek Address: w w w.moonposter.ie

Facing a choice between what looks like a spaceship and what performs better as one, the wings are merely a decoration. The won't be useful until we ring a cheaper way to reach orbital speeds than rockets.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Bush's failure was in not funding or promoting the program as such.

As far as direct 2.0… Personally, I hold that side booster stack configuration responsible for the destruction of two astronaut crews.
We would be paying less for a rocket that delivers less, sooner.
Its difficult to get excited about that proposal.

Hubble could never have been proposed, planned, commissioned, developed, and completed in five years, and nor can many other missions NASA works on. I sympathize with the sentiment, but NASA does need to work on timelines longer than that.

I personally don't want to hear ANYTHING from NASA that involves anything more than five years in the future. Too far in the future. We should stick to smaller time schedules – when we're talking ten years people get to thinking they've got plenty of time on their hands.

I wish Obama luck in solving this one!

Its a bad start for the new administration.
Its also an opportunity for Obama to put his foot down and make a Kennedy-esq proposal that shoves NASA into high gear.
Unfortunately, he could also use the timing to flatten the whole manned space program. An idea he wasn't entirely opposed to during the election.

Considering some of these same people thought buying seats on a Chinese rocket was a good substitute for running our own ships… there's lots to be concerned about.