On Feb 17, 10:07 pm, Matt wrote:
is the guy that brought us VSE and ESAS,

Dennis Wingo will be thrilled beyond description that you are
crediting a small space company contractor with creating the nation's
current space program. Who knew he controlled NASA?

Dennis is a neocon from the old days, he's been around.

Ok, maybe it was Rand Simberg, he worked on OSP, right?

I feel personally responsible for the entire NASP fiasco myself.

But I do feel that I vindicated myself with the SLI, but look what
came of that? I think they were totally on the right track with the
Delta Clipper or DC-X, what happened to that? $60 piddly million
bucks. What about this $174 million bucks going down on Tuesday, what
do you think will come of that? Another Delta II clone, or some kind
of Boeing craft?

As far as Dennis and his new 'craze', if the Shuttle C hasn't made it
in 30 years, it just ain't gonna happen. And I won't let it happen
unless he uses RS-68s anyways. My working group already has a shuttle
C using the retired orbiter skids and a pair of RS-68s on the drawing
board all last summer, and sure it will work, but what's the point?

You're looking at what, 3 fights, and if he's talking about stripping
them down anyways, one could do just as well with my single SSME
system, and that has a very clear path to LRB booster assistance and
full reusability, with the associated very high flight rates (one per
week).

We just plain don't need heavy lift, and we don't need a human
exploration program at this point. We can't afford it, and we need to
greatly expand the LEO system we already have in place, including an
equatorial commercial second generation space station, with solar
power satellite and solar powered closed ecological life support
systems demonstration, and a far more robust Earth and near Earth
asteroid observation program. The shuttle C or anything SRB derived is
a waste of valuable resources, we need to focus on reusability and
unmanned cryogenic light launchers, and start flying small capsules on
the fine Air Force funded vehicles we have in our inventory, simply
for the experience. We're starting the space race all over, with a
very fine set of assets, that we can use just long enough to create
the second generation systems from the mistakes that we made the first
time.

Change is good. Change is the requirement.