A lot of things are Marshall’s fault, but not this. It was driven by a strong resistance from the astronaut office for them to be made redundant on the system.

“It is funny that no one seems to realize SpaceX is making the same mistake man-rating their dragon as a cargo vehicle.”

Why not use the same capsule for crew and cargo? Where is the danger?

Clustered engines were not a bad idea at all and the falcon 9 heavy would be a great machine.

Hydrogen is really an inferior propellant compared to kerolox.

The problems of chemical propulsion for deep space flight would all be solved by fuel depots.

Radiation, zero G, and life support are not that big a problem for BEO and can be solved with inflatable space ships and “innovation.”

But the biggest flub is the sacred idea that NASA HLV’s are the ant-thesis of the American spirit of space exploration.

All of this is wrong headed promotion but the “experts” here defend these proposals to the death- well, to the point of calling anyone who disagrees stupid or a liar without actually saying so.

As another poster put it, they are just trying to make excuses for smaller launchers.

I meant that the notion that we “we must separate crew and cargo” means that they must be of two different vehicle designs is a crazy thing to conclude from Shuttle experience. We don’t send cargo on uncrewed airplanes, and there’s no reason to demand that we do it with space transports. If people want to send their cargo up on unreliable uncrewed launchers, that’s their business, but the notion that SpaceX is making some kind of mistake with their design on that basis is nutty, or that it implies that NASA needs to develop two separate launch systems is nutty.

I don’t understand. ”

Neither one of you do.

I don’t understand. The Shuttle forces you to send up a crew even if all you want to do is to launch cargo. There’s nothing wrong with adding cargo if you wanted to send up crew anyway, but sometimes you don’t. Or did you mean something else?

There were a lot of mistakes with the Shuttle, but that wasn’t one of them.

It is funny that no one seems to realize SpaceX is making the same mistake man-rating their dragon as a cargo vehicle.

If no one seems to realize that, it’s probably because it’s not true. It makes a lot of sense to have a pressurized capsule that can carry either crew or cargo. It would be stupid to design two separate systems.

it must be realized this effect reverses itself with cargo- we want the biggest unmanned vehicle possible to put up as much into orbit at a time.

No, we should want a vehicle that gets cargo up at the lowest possible cost, so that the program is affordable. You want one with exactly the opposite characteristics. Which is why your foolish ideas will go nowhere.

A launch vehicle carrying people should carry people and nothing else resulting in a medium lift vehicle that is easier to inspect, test fire and modify over time; this is safer. But before the screaming starts, it must be realized this effect reverses itself with cargo- we want the biggest unmanned vehicle possible to put up as much into orbit at a time.

When talking about “losing LEO” it might be good for everyone posting here to agree to disagree on a few things.

“I disagree, since it would rob commercial launchers (including future RLVs) of their payloads.”

Government monopolies like a NASA HLV are going to be a huge disruption to any market it enters, so there are no right answers (except killing the beast before it’s born).