Taylor Dinerman's article in "The Space Review" this morning raised some
questions for me.

1) It did not appear that the question of infrastructure support was
addressed in the article - only the need for heavy lift. A shuttle derived
heavy lift vehicle keeps getting mentioned, but the part that seems to be
ignored is the cost of the supporting workforce, maintaining productions
lines, etc. I haven't yet seen any plausible situation requiring an HLV to
be launched at regular and frequent intervals that might justify the need
for an HLV. Am I missing something?

2) The idea of using an SRB for a CEV launcher was gently dismissed in the
article with the argument that the SRBs are inherently less safe than liquid
boosters. Having fired successfully 225 out of 226 times, and with the
single failure (SRB burnthrough) being an abortable failure in the CEV
(possibly even an ATO?), I'd suggest that the SRB has earned some respect.
Regardless, the heavy lift forms of the Delta and Atlas that were mentioned
also use SRBs, no? Multiple ones? Now, which launcher might be more
reliable?

Jon