You are correct that Sen. Clinton has not specifically mentioned Ares and Orion by name, although the Washington Post article from November includes this statement from a Clinton campaign spokesperson: “Senator Clinton does not support delaying the Constellation program and intends to maintain American leadership in space exploration.” (This was shortly after Sen. Obama released his education policy.) Her policy statement has, in general, been perceived as supportive of Constellation; if she has an alternative to the current approach in mind, she has not identified it publicly, nor has her campaign responded to questions about it.

I don’t think it is nitpicking. I think it is important to not mistakenly read more into the Clinton policy than is actually there.

One alternative to “SPEED development, testing and deployment of next-generation” systems is to drop the ESAS approach, which is committing over ten-billion dollars to develop a duplicative launch system (which may not even work). Of course, we can’t read that into the Clinton policy statement either, and doing so also could be a mistake.

– Al

“In essence, the [Clinton] policy supports a ‘robust’ human spaceflight program, including continued development of the Orion spacecraft and Ares launch vehicle (collectively known as Constellation)…”

Apologies if I’m nitpicking or engaging in wishful thinking, but I don’t recall Clinton mentioning either Ares or Orion by name. I’m not even sure that she’s mentioned the word “Constellation”. (Although Constellation includes COTS so it could be a reference to non-Ares/Orion Shuttle replacements.)

In fact, Clinton’s policy mentions that “She will speed development, testing, and deployment of next-generation launch and crew exploration vehicles to replace the aging Space Shuttle.” With the emphasis on the plural “vehicles”, this would seem to be an endorsement of a multi-vehicle solution unlike Ares/Orion.

Again, apologies if I’m nitpicking or engaging in wishful thinking, but I thought Clinton’s human space flight support was a lot more non-specific with regard to vehicles than Mr. Foust’s article would lead one to believe. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

FWIW…