There are several develpments that could lead to the LM Orion (and who says Boeing still will not end up with even a piece of that, Boeing lost the F22 to LM and now makes about 40% of that vehicle in sub-contract to LM!) being launched on Boeing launch vehicles. One is indeed the greed of ATK, and the other is that it now seems that the performance of the single stick is itself in question.<br /><br />The Delta IV also has two very great positives over the Atlas V also. One is that the Delta IV Heavy has already flown, and it may even be that the Atlas V Heavy may never fly as LM is more interested in the medium range for commercial satelites.<br /><br />Also, (while I don't necessarily like this kind of thing) the engines for the Delta IV are RS68's manufactured by the American company Rocketdyne. Now ironically (as they used to be the bitterest if rivals) a division of United Techmologies Pratt & Whitney!<br /><br />While international cooperation on the ISS is understandable, I don't see our present congress being very happy with placing Americans on the moon with Russian engines! I personally like both the Russians, their space program, and their very good equipment, but I don't see our congress doing this. Perhaps that might just even be one of those kinds of hidden political reasons that LM won the Orion (so as to end up giving the launch vehicle contract to an all American vehicel in Boeings' Delta IV Heavy, without badly hurting either Boeing nor LM)!<br /><br />And as Mike Griffin himself seems rather put out by ATK's attitude, I would say there is a very good possibility for the Delta IV Heavy being used for the Ares I, and even more an upgraded version being used for the Ares V!<br /><br />It would seem to me to be relatively easy to upgrade the number of Common Booster Cores from three to four, surrounding a larger new central core for an upgraded Delta IV Heavy. Also, some of my contacts at Rocketdyne were talking about a possible program to upgrade t