willpittenger,<br /><br />To my mind, it is obvious that the United States would benefit tremendously by partnering with the Russians in our effort to return to the Moon. They have launch vehicles of several sizes, which have been proven, or have at least flown before, and can produce them at a fraction of the cost that we would face in building our own launch vehicles. To duplicate existing capability seems totally ludicrous to me, especially when doing so will take several years, and a large portion of a budget which is almost certainly inadequate to accomplish our stated goals. The Russian Klipper spacecraft could be operational in a year or two, if we were to switch the development budget from the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle to the Klipper.<br /><br />We could achieve a return to the Moon working with the Russians for a fraction of what it would cost us going it alone, and apply those savings to building the equipment that is really important, the stuff that we will need on the Moon. The way the budgets are looking, we could end up building a launch vehicle, and then run out of money to build the craft to make the journey to the Moon, as well as the habitats, solar power systems, rovers, etcetera, that we want to use on the Moon. So we would end up with a launch vehicle which not only duplicates existing capacity, as far as the EELV's are concerned, but which also competes with any private launch system.<br /><br />Building the Lunar exploration equipment will require a lot of engineers and technicians, so we can't claim that having the Russians provide the transportation will hurt our aerospace companies. And that equipment will be new, never-been-done-before type stuff, not rockets which we have been building in one shape or form for 20 some-odd years. We could leap frog past the whole launch vehicle development time frame and CEV development time frame right into the Lunar landing time frame, perhaps saving as much as ten years over what doing it on our o <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>