“The interplanetary habitat module that’d be used to reach the said asteroid would have to be twenty times more complicated to build & operate than a lunar lander craft would have to be!”

Yikes! Hit a nerve I guess.

We’re already testing out a long-term habitat in that place that you don’t like to talk about (i.e. the ISS in LEO). As to cost, your 20x figure is pretty fictitious since a design for either has not been set. More on cost later.

“I mention camparison to an L-SAM type of vehicle, specialized to landing on the Moon, because it is precisely all these Flexible Path people who are dead set against the building of any such lander, because they find it to be “way too complex & expensive”.”

The LSAM that you see in promotional pictures is a pretty stupid design, with the astronauts having to climb up and down a 20-30 foot ladder. I like the ULA ACES modular lander design far better, since it’s a horizontal lander (walk out to surface), and it’s reusable. The proposed NASA LSAM was another of a long line of disposable vehicles – that’s no way to expand our presence into space.

As to the “way too complex & expensive” comment, that has always been about the architecture, not just the lander. For instance, today it will cost $30B in order to get a lander to LEO using the SLS. Then it will take untold more $Billions to build an EDS so that lander can get to lunar orbit. We can do that today using existing rockets, so that is why the Constellation-style hardware is “way too complex & expensive”.

“Once the Heavy-Lift rocket comes into line, plus the smaller rocket needed to fly the Orion capsule, just what is the “stumbling block” that would make constructing a new lunar module so prohibitingly costly…”

We can build the lunar lander today if we stop building the SLS. Which do you want?

See, that’s the bottom line here. NASA only has a very limited budget to work with, so if you want an unneeded rocket like the SLS, then you can’t have the lunar lander. If you want the lunar lander, then there are already rockets that can get it to LEO today, and all that would need to be developed are the things we need to develop anyways for us to expand out into space – fuel depots, mission assembly stations, the EML way-station, and other logical space infrastructure.

You have to pick Chris – the U.S. Taxpayer is not going to fund every space fantasy you have.

“President Obama wants a 2010′s & 2020′s space policy firmly anchored & chained to Low Earth Orbit…”

… by going to an asteroid by the mid-2020’s, and going to Mars by the mid-2030’s.

As usual Chris, you keep forgetting what people have really said.

“Barack Obama: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!”

Using your logic:

President Kennedy: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!
President Ford: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!
President Carter: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!
President Reagan: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!
President Bush Sr.: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!
President Clinton: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!
President Bush Jr.: Low Earth Orbit President. Truly enough said!

To quote a great American:

“What ah maroon” – Bugs Bunny

Only Johnson and Nixon fit your profile of worthy Presidents. Since Johnson was the one to stop ordering Saturn V’s, which started the production lines closing and Nixon switched to the Space Shuttle .. gosh .. there really is no such thing as a President worthy of you.

“Perhaps the NASA Administrator doesn’t need to be a leader in the way say Elon or Steve Jobs is/was.”

I was at a workshop recently where the presenter was making the case that “visionaries” aren’t recognized as such until pretty far down the road from when they supposedly were being “visionary”. For instance, Steve Jobs is touted as a visionary, but that moniker didn’t aways apply, and certainly not when he was churning out Apple I & II computers.

Elon Musk is what I would still call “on the cusp” of being a visionary, in that he has done a number of things in the past and present, but it’s the past that truly solidifies ones entrance into the lofty club of “visionary”.

So for me at least, while I do wish for someone in NASA to stick out as presenting a vision of the future that can unify and excite the space community and interest the general population, I don’t know who that should be. The Administrator? One of the leading scientists? Or someone outside of NASA in the space community? But again, our lack of such person has been ongoing for decades, so this is has become more of a wish for the future than a requirement for each administration. In the meantime I’ll settle for competent management.

My $0.02

POTUS is not equal to NASA Admin.

Newt is not equal to Bolden is not equal to Obama etc

I hope y’all see why, right?

So pick your leader wisely.

Re