No upper stages required. I hope that clears it up for you.

Seems logical to me.

More evidence that it’s nuts.

“the easily executed modest changes of direction required to salvage the said program”

Which are??

And the logical and rational disconnect of discussing events that wont occur until after 2025 in the year 2012 doesn’t occur to you? That’s how delusional SLS advocates are.

Lack of money again, I suspect.

Well they just go ahead and throw more money at a program with a 15 year development period (starting in 2005) that consumes tens of billions of dollars, has no actual mission and plans on flying a test flight every two or three years a decade in the future at a cost of upwards of a billion dollars per flight and where the hardware is immediately discarded. Surely more money is the solution to the Constellation (SLS/Orion) problem. A couple hundred million transferred OVER from Commercial Crew should do it, no?

How readily you wrap yourself in the astronauts’ flags when you can’t even keep their identities straight.

“SpaceX performance is still a little dicey for my comfort.”

As opposed to repeated parachute failures and issues crash-landing MPCVs?

http://gizmodo.com/5039573/nasa-tests-orion-parachute-result-spectacular-failure

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/02/another-orion-p.html

Or structural failures depressuring MPCVs in space?

http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2012/11/26/orion-capsule-cracks-pressure-test/

Or SLS configurations with acceleration and vibration loads that once again compromise MPCV?

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/11/dynetics-pwr-liquidize-sls-booster-competition-f-1-power/

Please…

And it isn’t clear, per some recent postings on NSF, that the RS-25E follow-on engines are programmed to appear until after 2025, if then. Lack of money again, I suspect.

I read Jeff Bingaham’s latest over there. I think he continues to deal in piddling tit-for-tats between the commercial programs and SLS/MPCV while ignoring the bigger and much more worrisome picture about SLS/MPCV viability given its budget.

For example, per his last few posts at NSF, he’s worried about the Administration proposing another increase in commercial crew that comes at the expense of SLS/MPCV in FY14 or FY15. The most that increase would be is a few hundred million dollars.

SLS/MPCV, meanwhile, is already more than one billion (with a “b”) dollars off the funding required in the FY 2010 NASA Authorization Act (that Jeff helped author) in FY12 alone. Based on the existing appropriations marks and the coming sequestration or budget deal, FY13 is going to be even worse than that.

By around New Year’s, the appropriated SLS/MPCV budget is going to be well over $2 billion (or 30%+) behind the authorization plan in only its first three years of existence. You can’t keep meet requirements on schedule or safely when programs are that far out of their budget box. And Jeff is worried about whether commercial crew is going to take another $2-300 million the following year? That’s not going to change the fiscal train wreck that SLS/MPCV is headed towards.

If I were Jeff, when those FY12 marks came out, I would have been counseling a way off SLS/MPCV towards some rational and affordable exploration lift capability that fits the budget with margin and budget for exploration hardware to spare. Instead, he’s wasting his time nickel-and-diming the commercial programs.

But I’m not Jeff, who is blinded by Shuttle astronaut worship (hence his moniker “51D Mascot”) and constrained by parochial needs of his political masters to keep money flowing to Shuttle jobs and votes.

http://www.ulalaunch.com/site/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf

…HLVs need not apply.