“The alternative is to hand the space program over to Silicon Valley charlatans in black tee shirts.”

Since Delta IV Heavy is the only possible launcher alternative to Ares I (or it’s zombie offspring), you must be talking about ULA.

I wasn’t aware that Michael Gass, CEO of ULA, wore black tee shirts, and I know for a fact that ULA is not headquartered in Silicon Valley.

Maybe you were trying to allude to Elon Musk of SpaceX, but it’s Steve Jobs that wears the black tee shirts (Musk is more of a button down type). You need to work harder on these analogies – you really suck at them.

“You have captured the unassailable logic of Constellation in exquisite detail! ”

No, what we see is that you demand guaranteed jobs for certain segments of the labor sector, regardless of the cost or the need. You better hope the Tea Party doesn’t find you out…

The actual alternative is to develop public-private partnerships so NASA can focus on R&D and exploration, as the Aldridge Commission and many others called for. No one is seriously talking about just handing over the entire spaceflight enterprise to NewSpace.

You have captured the unassailable logic of Constellation in exquisite detail! The alternative is to hand the space program over to Silicon Valley charlatans in black tee shirts.

“Threaten Shuttle? Bush threatened Shuttle, in fact he killed Shuttle in 2005. So far as I know Congress wasn’t asked.

Constellation doesn’t replace Shuttle, it carries half the crew and a tenth the cargo and costs more to launch.”

I fully agree that Constellation was not a functional replacement for Shuttle. However, it was designed to be a jobs and funding allocation replacement for Shuttle. People in Utah who made 4-segment SRBs would now make 5-segment SRBs. People in Louisiana who made external tanks would now make Ares I upper stage tanks and eventually Ares V cores. SSME work would transition to J-2X work. MSFC would keep managing everything and the cape would keep launching them. No one’s Ox would get gored – someone else would keep picking up the tab. Canceling Constellation upset that apple cart. Opposition was unavoidable no matter how sensible the administrations plan.

We need to face facts here. Orion was not designed for ISS logistics, and when it was morphed into this mission it made no sense.

So true. Lets hope Dragon or the CST work out and Orion can be used for some expensive exploration.

Threaten Shuttle? Bush threatened Shuttle, in fact he killed Shuttle in 2005. So far as I know Congress wasn’t asked.

Constellation doesn’t replace Shuttle, it carries half the crew and a tenth the cargo and costs more to launch. Since Shuttle is irrevocably gone, we have to compare Orion and Dragon; Orion comes up short by large margins on cargo, crew size and cost. Even Boeing is proposing their own capsule to compete with it. We need to face facts here. Orion was not designed for ISS logistics, and when it was morphed into this mission it made no sense.

“It was you who wrote “built”, not me.”

I guess I was not clear enough. But my statement “let American aerospace build vehicles for the U.S.” was meant as industry designed & built.

Constellation and the franken-launcher have industry acting as contractors – they assemble the hardware, but it’s not their product, nor their responsibility.

Built, but not designed.

It was you who wrote “built”, not me.