Pat Flannery wrote:

I think the odds of CEV ever getting built and heading Moonwards are
fairly slim.
We are running one hell of a deficit, and NASA looks like a juicy target
when budget cuts come along.

At one time I thought the book I'm working on would have a chapter on
VSE/ESAS. In the event it's just a few pages, because try as I might I
can't believe that (or a lot of other discretionary spending) will
surviving the fiscal hangover that's coming well before RttMoon.

This isn't a partisan shot; it's arithmetic, as surely as when high
hopes for post-Apollo withered under Democrats in 1967-1968.