<i> >>"...We have the technology...."<br /> /> ...on animated websites. </i><br /><br />No. You are denying the existence of the RS-68 and that Atlas B flight. Also, the Saturn IC (I think) had the mass fraction for SSTO with a couple hundred pound payload. I also mentioned Stage-and-Half. If NASA is going to operate their own vehicles, the craft should make sense and be progressive. The ARES architecture is starting to look a lot like SEI and all the other viewgraphs. I just don't buy it that they can take that many budget cycles and survive, never mind make it efficient. Their major concern seems to be who gets what chunk of the tax-dollar pie in 15 years. It's still simply cheaper to just use existing ELVs and deal with their limitations. NASA could be ordering the lunar hardware now if they were willing to take the logical step toward current launchers. <br /><br /><i>>A clean sheet design would never make it as far as the funding needed to cut metal today, or any time in the reasonable future. </i><br /><br />What you call clean-sheet, I'd call "evolved again". As I posted before (and I wasn't referring to DIRECT), a lot of the technology is off-the-shelf. Boeing and Lockmart have both proposed bigger, better core stages. ATK has played us all for suckers. "Use our fire cracker or we'll sick Orin Hatch on you!" <br /><br />What do you want out of NASA? I want top quality science and human/robotic exploration, not a state-run trucking company. <br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>