It ends in GEO, not LEO. And EELVs are more than good enough for exploration.

Of course, their responsibility pretty much ends at LEO, and they have no requirement for anything beyond the capacity of EELVs.

DoD won’t take you BEO.

“Pork indeed, and you failed to answer, the question as to whether you would rather see our pork keep American workers employed, or Russians?”

It’s not just abut that. Nelson, Shelby, etc. are all for that. The question is,*how* is that American talent being used? The idea is not just to hand engineers paychecks. BTW, the commercial providers are American, too.

“If you think SRB’s are expensive, try getting that much thrust out of liquid boosters.”

You only need as much thrust as what’s needed to get the payload into it’s desired orbit. Anything above and beyond that is a waste.

This always come back to the same question – what is the funded program that demands a launcher with more capability than Delta IV Heavy?

Until someone can show the need (with money to back it up), then building an HLV is a waste of money. If there is a funded need, then maybe an HLV is needed, but maybe not – a trade-off study would have to be done that looks at the need and total costs.

But if you don’t have money for a payload, you shouldn’t spend money on a launcher.

“The FIVE stage Conestoga 3632 had the greatest payload at 2141 kg. HARDLY a crew launch vehicle as it was never intended to launch crews.”

Don’t remind him of this – he was an investor, and he is still hurting from it’s failure.

Once you understand that, then his opinions on “the investment community” and commercial crew in general are understandable. He hopes no one will succeed, because if they do, then his too-early investment looks really ridiculous – and to quote from the Godfather “And a man in my position can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous.”

He deserves your pity, but not your attention.

You don’t need that much thrust. It’s quite simply a lie that’s being pushed by SDLV and HLV enthusiasts.

There is no competition.

There cannot be ongoing competition between HLVs for the foreseeable future, or maybe ever. Which is why HLVs are an unaffordable dead end.

The arguments that are being made for “human space flight right now” have nothing to do with grand sweeps of time.

Of course they do. And if you step back from it all, you’ll see it. Kraft’s op-ed some months back layed out the way forward. Whether it is American led or not remains to be seen.

“I’m not saying that commercial has demonstrated technical and management capability to take us where we want to go.” But that’s really key to their capability to succeed in the eyes of investors and central to convincing government to subsidize them with tax dollars.

It all comes back to the same thing. Fly somebody.

If you think SRB’s are expensive, try getting that much thrust out of liquid boosters. I think the equivalent of F-1 engines would be more expensive than SRB’s nowadays. Safety wise, the quality of the pouring process for solid fuel easily exceeds that available for the manufacture of those thousands of high quality liquid rocket engine parts- that have to be test fired and inspected. Then they turn into junk. SRB’s are reusable which might not even be cheaper than throwing them away but it allows them to be inspected which guarantees an ongoing product improvement program. 200+ firings in a row is the best record on planet earth for that much thrust. Of course, only Saturn V or maybe energia beats twin SRB’s so there is not much competition. Which is the whole point. There is no competition.

But they got them and they have been constantly inspected, modified, and improved for 30 years since Challenger. 200+ flawless firings in a row.
They are superior in every way as a first stage to any other comparable booster.

They are now the best thing since sliced bread.