It has occured to me that sausages and space policy have mnuch in common. Its tough to watch them being manufactured, but the results are enjoyed.

The shutting down of the Delta II production line in order to set up the Shuttle Derivced Launch Vehicle production lines stirkes me as beiing a good trade in the nations interest. Delta II was a fine vehicle, but its payload capability was too small for the commercial market. It will be tough for the Delta II workers, but then it will keep the shutttle workers employed.

The Problem here is the ATK architecture. These engineers have forgotten every lesson learned for the Apollo Applications Program.

What is far worse, they have neglected to give the nation a reason to keep the shuttle manufacturing lines in business. Why not shut them down as well as the Delta II line, and save even more money?

They seem to think that setting twice the crew of Apollo on the Moon for twice as long seems to mean that then nation will view their effort as being twice as good as Apollo. They have not considered that instead the nation may view it as being twice as bad as Apollo.

The answer to this lies in CAPS, but the current ATK architecture is incapable of doing CAPS, and as a matter of fact may get in the way of doing CAPS. With Griffin only required to report to Congree on the impact hazard 1 year out, he could avoid facing this problem only to later find himself in a quandry.

Of course there's also the international aspects of this. Klipr has been designed with a lunar variant, as has the CEV. Would A klpir user be able to trade a flight to LEO for seat(s) on the Lunar Surface Activity Module? Or will the Chinese be able to spend their Walmart dollars acquiring lunar technology from Russia?

If the manned Moon program goes down, could the Mars Cultists actually convince anyone else to pay for their fantasies?

In any case, the future always turn out to be much more interesting than anything we can imagine. I suppose we'll alll just have to wait to see what happens.