Encyclopedia Astronautica.
Early Lunar Access.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/earccess.htm

This only required 52 mT to LEO by using a lightweight 2-man capsule and all cryogenic in-space propulsion. So it could be launched either by the 53 metric ton(mT) Falcon Heavy in 2014 or by the 70 mT SLS in 2017.

Moreover, the two required cryogenic stages already exist in the Centaur upper stages. All that would be required is integrating the two Centaurs into a single vehicle and adding lander legs for the lander stage.

Bob Clark

Clearly it isn’t and they didn’t. For fairly obvious reasons. NASA HSF is at best irrelevant, and more likely a dangerous obstacle and expensive diversion, to developing industry in space. The main political justifications for NASA HSF, as lame as they may be, remain planetary exploration and national security, and thus the backgrounds of the committee members.

This looks quite refreshing. Instead of a committee of industry insiders chasing NASA contracts, according to self-serving economic fantasies derived from sci-fi, astronaut worship, and obsolete Cold War projects, we have a committee that seems to be mostly made up of leaders from communities those NASA contracts are claimed to benefit — especially science and national security.

A few astronaut cultists have been reflective enough to ask “why” people not in the cult should be funding orbital HSF. Now apparently we have some big wigs outside of that cult, and outside the NASA contractor community that cult has fed — instead leaders in communities NASA HSF has been argued to benefit — who are lining up to answer this question.

Of course if that’s the case, cultists probably won’t like the answer. And they along with their NASA contractor friends will start by bashing this committee. Tastes of economic reality have a way of generating vituperous cult opposition. How dare the funders and purported beneficiaries of NASA HSF demand a say on how these fantasies proceed?

Bad news for the astronaut cultists, good news for the rest of us: Congress won’t ignore it.

Yeah, real beautiful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ares_I-X_booster_damage_2009-5997.jpg

I’ve posted on it many times. Here it is again.

I’ll remind you that the vehicle flew beautifully.

“Way too many left wing eggheads in this group. Academia was complicit in neutering the space program back in 2009. Not this time. The GOP needs to win the election then exercise raw executive power.”

AW, Ares 1 had .7 G combustion oscillations. Raw Executive Power can not change that.

I have asked you for your Plan B, but you have not responded.

The US (as well as most nations) lacks a real space industrial capability in any terms but launching (Iand we dont even have that) develop that and almost anything is possible…and I suspect that is what the Reds are trying to do RGO