The following is what I posted.

Space plan for our future
2/10/04

With the ultimate goal of achieving manned exploration to Mars and beyond, I'd like to see the U.S. develop a solid infrastructure to do this, and any thing else we might want to do, as quickly as possible.

1st... Throw the Shuttle-baby out with the bath-water. It has always had too many unrecoverable failure modes. It's an engineering marvel but an ill-conceived concept. Let's put the remaining Shuttles in museums where they belong.

2nd... Let's step up the pace with more robotic missions to continue to pave the way for Mankind

3rd... As quickly as possible develop a man rated "Apollo" style vehicle for getting people and light weight cargo to low earth orbit in reasonable safety.

4th... Concurrently develop a big, dumb, expendable, but non man-rated heavy lift capability to loft the big chunks to low earth orbit at a low cost per pound of payload.

The establishment of this infrastructure will permit us a permanent manned presence in low earth orbit and beyond.

5th... Lets go back to the Moon if we must, but lets get on to where we really want to visit... Mars, europa, the asteroids and wherever our curiosity leads us.

Thomas Charlton mcharlton[at]cfl.rr.com
Flight Operations Manager for an Aerial mapping company