NYT Editorial: NASA's Predicament

Pat Flannery wrote:
If they intend to get the ball rolling on their new CEV and heavy lifter
programs then it behooves them to ditch the Shuttle and ISS ASAP;
although that may be politically impossible.

So you want to spend billions to develop that CEV thing that will go to
the moon for short camping trips perhaps 5 or 6 times before people get
bored and then what ?

After the couple of camping trips to the moon to prove the USA can still
do it, CEV will be useless unless it can be used as a ferry to some
orbiting structure. CEV is useless to go to Mars.

So if you're going to spend billions and billions to develop a new
Apollo capsule, you'd want the ISS to remain usable because that is what
Apollo V2.0 will be used for after it's done its couple of camping trips
to the moon.

Like it or not, the ISS is far more worthy than CEV or Shuttle if the
goal is to go to Mars. This is the place where you can really test
systems to measure their reliability, MTBF, maintainability and how many
spare parts you'll need in a mars mission for each system. Neither
Shuttle nor CEV can help with those.


Like it or not, modules that have already been paid for are stored at
KSC waiting to be launched, and their value is far greater than the
value of operating the shuttle. It would be a much bigger waste of money
to leave them unused on the ground than to continue shuttle ops to
launch the modules that are already ready to be launched.

When americans found Apollo V1.0 to be limited, they set out to build a
vehicle that could do mo The shuttle. Now, the shuttle's reputation
has been stained and americans are returning to Apollo. Once they
realise how limined Apollo V2.0 will be, they will again want to design
a more versatile vehicle.

In the end, it would cost far less to build a new/improved shuttle right
away than to go back to Apollo only to come back to shuttle 10 years later.