Hi Raoul -

I disagree with you on the need for HLLV for manned Moon flight. What needs to be done is to break it into 20 ton chunks, about the size that the communication satellite launchers handle. Man rating these launchers will also reduce their insurance premiums, and the increased demend lowers their marginal costs.

You can perform a review of lunar and mars architectures at Mark Wade's encyclopedia astronautica site, or Portree's site. There are only two inexpensive architectures for manned Moon flight, my own and Mazanek's. Manned flight to Mars simply does not matter right now-its best done with a variant of Aldrin's cyclers, and these can be built out of 20 ton chunks.

ep