Here are the 'money quotes' that tell us what's REALLY going on here...

The ongoing changes to the CLV are to provide more performance margin to help with possible future mass growth in the US space agency's Altair and Orion, according to NASA's exploration launch project office's advanced planning manager and former Apollo programme rocket engineer John "Phil" Sumrall.

This approach would run counter to the notion of reducing development and life cycle costs for the Ares I and V rockets by using common elements.


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NOT good news for this troubled 'Apollo Done Over, 50 Years later' program.

The lunar vehicles are growing in mass as is most always the case when Power Point design gets translated into actual hardware. As a consequence the development costs of this already politically precarious program will increase and worse yet the operating, life cycle costs increase.

Who wants to bet against me when I say that President Hope & Change cancells or 'indefinitely suspends' this program within the 1st 100 days?