Apollo 2.0

Jeffrey F. Bell comments on ESAS and the VSE:

'The four lunar astronauts hang in the middle of a huge empty pressure cabin. It almost looks like a space gymnasium.
What possible use is all this space on a short trip to the Moon, or the even shorter Earth-entry phase of a Mars mission?
...
'This slide tells us that the ESAS program is not really designed “from the top down” as Griffin claims, but rather “from the bottom up”. The Mars return capsule which Griffin claims to be the basic CEV version has not yet been designed and doesn’t even have a weight budget!
...
'The effort at KSC required for each moon mission will be roughly equivalent to preparing and launching two Shuttles simultaneously. Any defect found in either booster will lead to a delay in both launches. Considering the frequent delays and mission cancellations that have occurred in the Shuttle program, it seems unlikely that lunar missions could be launched on any kind of regular schedule.
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'Everything about the ESAS architecture is optimized for political advantage, not efficiency. Every current Shuttle contractor and every NASA Center gets to stay at the feeding trough. And this program will need a lot of feeding.
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'I suspect that Griffin’s strategy is akin to Lenin’s: things must be made much worse before they can get better. By rigidly conforming to the dictates of his political masters he has proven how absurd the overall VSE plan is. Already the Vision is colliding with reality in the form of the $3-6B cost overrun in Shuttle ops. It will soon become clear even to politicians that the plan as announced in January 2004 is unworkable and must be radically modified – probably by canceling Shuttle and ramping back US participation in the ISS.(link)

It's, if anything, a good read if you have nothing to do. After reading this though you're going to find it mighty hard to imagine the Shuttle lasting much more than a couple flights, or for NASA to ever be going to the mooon anytime soon.

Though he makes one point I'm heavily stroked by:

The main justifications for preserving so much 1970s Shuttle technology in Apollo 2.0 are:

1) it will speed up development and therefore reduce the length of the inevitable gap in US manned spaceflights.

2) it will reduce development costs so that the early stages of the program can be carried out in parallel with a continued Shuttle/ISS program.

The problem with these claims is that virtually every Shuttle element has go through a major redesign before it can be used in the new boosters.

No kidding. Everyone seems to assume that using a shuttle derived design can save mula by lower dev. costs. Just watch these shuttle derived versions going into massive cost overruns 'cuz they're desperately trying to adapt these old systems for new purposes...