We could have put together each of the Constellation launch systems in stages. The Orion spacecraft should have been given priority, with the joint development of the non-Heavy Lift launcher that would’ve sent it to near-Earth space. Once it was viably flying—–and it did NOT need the ISS as any reason-to-be, because its primary mission was to be a deep space transport vehicle——then later down that road, a Heavy-Lift rocket & a lunar lander could’ve entered full development.

In absence of the ISS we could have still flown sortie flights with the Orion in LEO, just like the Shuttle did; until the Heavy-Lift/lunar surface craft was ready. I still believe that the problems with the Ares 1 could very well have been solved, if some patience would’ve prevailed. But even if it didn’t, another small, replacement rocket system could have been invoked as the Orion launcher. Using a giant Heavy Lift rocket, just to send this capsule on its way, is egregious overkill. Sure, Heavy Lift will be required to re-reach the Moon, but a far less massive booster could’ve done the job more easily & efficiently.

The Chinese are very likely to NOT copy the ISS, and hence NOT get themselves over-wedded to LEO. Even if they build some intermittently-occupied, Skylab-type of facility, they’d avoid a lot of the pitfalls that would tend to keep their space program contained & limited to LEO-only exploits. Indeed their Tiangong “station” target, used for their Shenzou craft to reach, might turn out to be no more of an LEO trap, than the Agena target vehicle was to the America of the 1960’s; which used it to practice rendezvous with a Gemini capsule, prior to the Apollo program. The Tiangong might be just an over-elaborate, orbital target vehicle, that gets them experience & practice with reaching a deep-space cis-lunar module assembly, attached to an earth-escape-rocket-stage. The kind of system that gets humanity back into the business of deep space journeys again!

ISS provides us with an environment to learn how to live and operate in space. When will that education end? I’m guessing it will continue until long after you and I are gone.

I doubt the government will ever lead a meaningful manned Moon program. It just costs more than they are willing to spend. I believe the Moon will be developed and possibly settled when the private sector decides there is adequate reason to do so. That’s where the serious money exists.

I believe you folks who are constantly yelling for NASA to forget everything else and go to the Moon are indulging a fantasy whose time is long passed.

NASA went to Moon, looked around, and reported what they found. It’s up to others to do more than that if they think it’s a good idea. Government has already done their part.

I believe that getting the practice of this, by doing automated or remotely-directed lunar lander-sized payloads on the Moon first, will definitely help in paving the way for such farther-future interplanetary ventures. Even if we opted for the idea of sending a lunar lander into low lunar orbit, unmanned & ahead of a Moon crew, for a rendezvous there, like the Golden Spike people proposed doing, we’d still be gaining some good practice for future Mars missions——–as the design reference plans tend to include an advancedly-sent-to Mars-orbit earth-return-vehicle, which awaits a Mars ascent vehicle, for a rendezvous there, prior to the main earth-returning flight phase.

I swear, this “there-has-to-be-an-ISS-or-we’ve-got-nothing” attitude has got to change!! In many ways, NASA is highly distracted & held back from doing anything else, precisely because of being so heavily burdened with the ISS. If a permanent LEO station were removed from the equation, you’d be seeing some real progress, in the way of actually LEAVING LEO.

If you look around, you might have discovered that they got their Licenses.

And also the point. Value of imported electronics and meaterials are much bigger in russian space industry then cheifs of Roscosmos think. Yes, they are SO incompetent. Now therea re some unofficial orders don’t use imported components without even any sanctions. And this orders stop or at least slow down design process. It’s common point of view that, we, for example, can’t build new ISS modules (NEM/SEM) independently.

It would be fascinating to dig into the Bush archives in College Station to establish to what extent he knew Constellation was a dog program. He certainly was never a strong proponent of it (as opposed to his at least brief commitment to VSE) and, as I said, he pretty much cut its balls off by strangling its funding. On the other hand, in his mind, the importance of Constellation may have been in starting it, and not completing it. He knew he wouldn’t be President if and when it was completed anyway. That it wouldn’t be completed would be blamed on someone else, as is done here.

Not that Obama has any great interest in ARM, but same is true with that one. His “accomplishment” with regard to NASA will be looked at as finding something that NASA human space flight could do, but not necessarily following through to make it happen. Unlike Constellation, ARM will probably die before the president that created it leaves office.

Of course, the excitement now turns to Mars 2021 which, rationale-wise, is almost as vacant as ARM, except perhaps geopolitically. Apollo was about beating the Soviets. Mars 2021 is about beating Mars around the Sun, because after 2021, it’s going to be harder. Who knew that expression of soft power was dependent on orbital dynamics!

Interesting comparison. Our presence at the South Pole is almost totally about science. But our human presence on the Moon would not be. Constellation had science firmly in the back seat. The science community remains very interested in the Moon, but is a little skeptical about the value of sending people there to learn what we need to learn. It’s a very expensive way to do that. Not so for Antarctica, whose science opportunities are unique, and the cost of which is $300M/yr (at least an order of magnitude smaller than for a Moon base). Our technological capabilities for learning about the Moon are vastly greater than what we had in the Apollo era.

It is telling that in your three paragraphs above, you never say what we’re actually going to do once we’re back on the Moon, besides “being there”. You know … what it “delivers”. I’ll say it again. What the Moon gives us (besides more flags and more footprints) is He3, which we don’t know how to use, and water (and perhaps regolith) to support expeditions to Mars that we can’t afford. I know it’s hard to understand, but the rationale to return humans to the Moon isn’t that we can get cargo there to support them, have them do longer surface stays, or reuse lunar roving vehicles. Nope. That’s not rationale, any more than the rationale for our presence in Antarctica is to wear heavy coats.

In the context of this thread, such a return might be, like the ISS, an international cooperation vehicle to relax Russian tensions with the U.S. But unlike during the Cold War, when those tensions were based strongly in missle and space technology, they aren’t now.

Returning humans to the Moon would be exciting, and an adventure. Not clear, however, why the federal government should be paying for excitement and adventure.

Sure, our beginning expeditions will resemble the Apollo J missions, but this will be a transitory situation, because our newer, 21st century space vehicles will need at least a few “test flights” to prove their capabilities. Again, did the Space Shuttle start out from day one servicing a space station or actually assembling one? Of course not! It took 60-plus Shuttle flights——sorties in LEO——AND a decade-&-a-half——till STS was ready for any of those challenges. The thing with the Moon, is that we will NOT have to wait for anything near such a long span of time, nor such a huge number of individual flights, before the Lunar program delivers on its first outpost expedition.

Within say, 2 or 3 years of our first successful 21st century crewed landing, a cargo-only version of our new lunar lander can be introduced, and flown to the Moon to drop off base supplies, at a chosen site, in advance of a crew, who’ll arrive later on board a more conventional lander-craft. The astronauts will then arrange the equipment, and access a base module, activating it for a much longer surface stay——anything from a fortnight to multi-week spans longer. If enough provisions can get delivered to a single landing site, this’ll lead to stays lasting for multi-months.

Even on the beginning sortie missions, equipment like a lunar roving vehicle, coming down one-way on a specified flight, might even be able to be reused on a different landing, provided that the global distance is not overtly long. I recall seeing a Moon expedition documentary on TV, which floated the idea that such a lunar rover-car might be made able to unmannedly be traversed overland, to reach another crew’s landing site. That is, if such a Moon-car can be designed to withstand the harsh airless, dusty, temperature-swinging environment, for a duration of a few months.