There was simply a discussion of several hard choices the Administration had to make.

So in this very rare instance, I think Jeff kind of jumped the gun inferring that someone was linking the two. This isn’t to say that nobody is linking them, but the article — and by all accounts the hearing — did not include this.

Calling something a religious belief does not make it so. What makes you think we could not have built a scaled down version of Nautilus instead of SLS / Orion? What technology would need to be developed first? Do you think the budget would be insufficient?

Martin – Yes.

Martin, Tecumseh said not to trouble any man about his religious beliefs, and Tecuseh was a wise man.

Yes. And it is unclear to me how DIRECT would have contibuted towards that.

We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

So what? What good would that have done?

Googaw should be the one handling this, not me.

Most space utopian models are based on unrealistically low transportation costs, and over estimates of economic returns.

Apparently you think that if we can build deep space manned vessels, without first developing the technologies and cost sharing mechanisms first.

You folks here keep calling pork on the whole shuttle system, when in fact it represented a paid for technology base which could have been used way more effectively than Ares 1.

We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

What the hell was Griffin thinking?

How could I forget? I’m not going to endorse something I strongly oppose “because that’s how the sausage factory works”. And I note that SDLV proponents tend to hide behind politicians instead of admitting they want one for selfish economic reasons or for equally selfish emotional reasons.

In fact, the per kg cost of DIRECT would have been very acceptable.
That’s a fact: it would have been very acceptable.

That’s not a fact, it’s phoney accounting. The could only get reasonable looking costs by not including development costs and by assuming a totally unrealistic launch rate of 8 flights a year. That’s launching 4 expendable landers and four expendable capsules! Even if you only care about the total incremental cost of a moon mission, that’s incredibly wasteful. So no, it wouldn’t be acceptable.

But more importantly, cost to NASA isn’t the relevant yardstick, it’s commercial launch prices in the 5 – 10 mT to LEO range. Jupiter would not have been available to commercial clients, and even if it would have been no one could have afforded to launch so much payload in one go.

So please stay on message, which is that we could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

I think I’ll stay on my own message, which is that DIRECT would have been just as much of an indefensible fraud as Constellation and that we could have had moon missions, or NEO missions and most importantly cheap lift in our lifetime.

What’s the point of a government-run space program in LEO if it doesn’t materially contribute towards 1) going beyond LEO within a reasonable timeframe and 2) opening up space for commerce within a reasonable timeframe? And the crucial thing we need for that is cheap lift. To first approximation it is the only thing that matters. I think I’ll stay on that message and leave the SDLV shilling to people like you.

I didn’t even consider SpaceX, as Musk is going to do what he is going to do and has enough money to do it. All he needs is a level playing field and no obstacles.

At the time, so many years ago, I was thinking in terms of Delta and Atlas, with two interchangeable manned spacecraft, one a capsule and the other winged for low cost landing. Any 1 of the four components goes down, and you’d have had a backup on hand.

DIRECT was for the lift of heavy components. While you can do projects on a modular basis, as China will likely show us soon, its nice to have the ability to launch larger components.

We could have had DIRECT, and part of its payloads, and 2 manned launch systems for the money that was wasted on Ares 1.

What the hell was Griffin thinking?