” If the liabilities are large, then it may make more sense to descope the requirements and use the contract as a vehicle for producing a CRV rather than terminating the contract outright.”

Yes I thought about that too. But I also don’t know how the government can just redirect a “cancelled” program without re-procuring. But I am not a lawyer so…

I am ambivalent about whether the Orion CRV makes sense. I can see arguments either way. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has had time to do a cost and risk trade at this point.

It also occurs to me that the termination liabilities in the current Lockheed contract may have a large influence on the trade. If the liabilities are large, then it may make more sense to descope the requirements and use the contract as a vehicle for producing a CRV rather than terminating the contract outright.

I didn’t say it was foolish. What I said was that no one in power is talking about it.

So if you’re going to get on your horse to lecture us about the destruction of civilization, you might ride it to Congress and find yourself a seat there.

The following is napkinware guestimation but gives an idea of what could be done with Storm’s approach. The ISS budget could be cut by $500 million per year without impacting anything terribly valuable by reducing the crew size and lengthening crew stays, and the HLV $3 billion could be put to better use. Alternatively we could cancel the pointless Orion-lite and free up many billions. I propose taking this money, $8 billion over 10 years, and produce a series of mass-produced deep space craft. 100 machines to study in detail the surfaces of over 400 bodies (mostly asteroids, but also all of the lunar and Martian surfaces in new ways). Plus 60 machines to excavate craters in the most promising asteroids or lunar surface locations and analyze the contents of the resulting plumes and craters. All of this assisted by ground and space-based telescopes. Most of these spacecraft would be powered by electric propulsion, like Dawn, so they could keep hopping from orbit around one asteroid to orbit around another. Average cost of the missions when mass-produced like this, I estimate $50 million each including dual or piggyback launch costs.

(Somebody should of course analyze any potential space debris problem from excavating NEAs. I strongly doubt it will be a problem from this small scale of operations, but it should be studied).

One can get far more creative and varied in the prospecting missions than this, but this gives an idea of the scope of what we can do in the way of real exploration for a tiny fraction of the cost of sending astronauts to a tiny fraction of these places.

I am a huge proponent of HSF – its just that I want to do it in a smart way . . .Where did I just hear that?

Oh my, some common sense has wafted into the comments on this blog. We can’t allow that! Stop straying off the subject of astronauts you robot hugger!