Much better than the PM article. I withdraw the bait and switch suspicion. While I may still disagree with their approach, It's clear they didn't ignore the Mars Issue and I would support this alternative if an unbiased engineering review by true experts recommended it. I'll have to reread Griffen's article after reading all of this to see if he addressed all their concerns and arguements.

If I read the graphs right it looks like you get 115 mt tons to LEO orbit with Jupiter and 155 with Ares V. Jupiter is thus significantly less yet still clearly heavy lift close to what I think was around 120-125 for the Saturn V. I can buy that the development costs and time will be less, but what about the life cycle cost? You have a clearly over qualified vehicle for the ISS vesus a 3 billion dollar marginal cost for Ares 1 and what I would assume is a much higher mission cost. It would seem to me that the mission cost of one Ares 5 and 1 Ares 1 would be slightly less, but thats a guess based on a low cost for Ares 1 assuming greater mass production and the assumption of economy of scale on a larger booster.

You were right that the Mars arguement was silly if you meant it from the basis of the jupiter plan does include Mars. Sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion based on limited info. I'm guilty of being suspicious based on past actions of lunar focused space advocates.

Regards,
Mark