When you add the cost of orbital assembly to the loss in payload (the parts won't shove themselves into place) the costs come back into line of where we were. Now with more troubles from safety issues.

I believe if it was ever feasible to make the shuttle and shuttle derived vehicles part of our deep space exploration plans, they would have done it a long time ago
The fact is this machinery iss too much trouble for what it accomplishes, despite the sales pitch. Throwing SSME's in the pacific doesn't make them cheaper or more reliable.

The money saved on the development of a true heavy lift system comes at a cost to the mission.

Normally it might be.

Here's the problem tho:
When Kennedy stood up and said "We choose to go to the moon", everyone who understood how we might do this realized they needed the biggest rocket that was technologically possible at the time.

Going to other planets is a tonnage game. If you want to have a meaningful payload after landing on the surface, you need a large lander and the related earth escape stage.

Yes a smaller rocket might be cheaper and your saving jobs, but cutting out 2/3'rds of your payload has a serious effect on the mission. If we cant accomplish anything new, exactly why are we going?

If the hidden idea is that we shouldn't go, that argument was tried and lost out four years ago.

At some point, you have to think of how we'll feel about this in 30 years. In the year 2040, will you look back and think, "I wish we had more lifting capability…"

I know I would…

And really, is one year of savings enough of a difference to scrap this thing? The money is definately enough to make a very strong case. However, I don't like losing the HLV like that… It's WAY too valuable. We've been saying that we miss the Saturn V, and we shouldn't have scrapped it. Now we're looking at scrapping Ares V.

Ah well, I'm sure we'll figure it out…

A $30 billion savings isn't chickenfeed, even for NASA, and I would hope that they put in the hours to study the proposal — just like any good company or organization (especially one that's spending our tax dollars) should do.

We could make new kinds of orbiters and fix several of these issues of course… but for that cost you could also make a down payment on something far more powerful.

Internal competition over what would be the next step had its place about four years ago when Constellation was chosen. Now the fuss should be over internal systems (capsule seating, mlas vs las, second stage engines, etc)… not for throwing the whole thing out and starting over.

With the shuttles retirement looming and people expecting progress on Ares and related systems, I'm sure there are more productive things NASA staff could be doing right now.

I'm all for long term investments, and I am sure that NASA is investing in new programs where they believe they could bear fruit.

As for internal competition — it happens all the time, and is very healthy, as long as it is managed properly from the top. (It does lead to a good number of bruised egos though, when one side ultimately loses, which I can attest to personally on more than one occasion!).

If they want cheaper launches they should either invest the money in hypersonic tech, RLV's, or with one of the up and coming COTS members to do the most good.
At least its a step forward.

Besides system level choices russians also tend to make stuff technologically better, like the Buran safe and flexible jet landing, more capable and robust thermal protective systems, and the automatic piloting. (When they similarly ripped off the Concorde, they also made some good system level simplifying choices, such as the non-fold cockpit.)

It's both funny and sad that "not invented here" prevented US from gradually bettering the Shuttle with adopting known superior fixes or even using original suppliers.

I'm all for it!

Of course old technology may shave off a year, but we will need new tech eventually.

Fact is that there's just not any political will to go to the Moon.

I think something along these lines should have been developped as soon as the decision to scrap the shuttle was made, allowing more time to work on more advanced launch systems and at the same time keeping intact the american capacity to put heavy stuff (incl. people, of course) in orbit and beyond.