I must admit to originally supporting NASA on the Ares I design, as I thought that using the already developed shuttle propulsion system would indeed save funding for other parts of the program.<br /><br />However, when I read that ATK wanted some $3 billion just to develop a new five segment SRB I was truly shocked and disappointed. After all, the total cost of the EELV program to develop the entire launch system was only some $2 billion for both the Air Force and the private contractors!<br /><br />The situation seems to just be getting worse and worse. Then we find the head of the program has intimate connections with ATK, and then he is retiring! I know that NASA does have to play some politics (being a government agency), but at the highly increased costs that this program seems to be getting into?<br /><br />Then they come up with the supposed importance of man-rating systems to keep from even considering the use of the EELV's. Were the Redstone. original Atlas, Titan, and the fantastic Saturn launch systems man-rated?<br /><br />To someone like myself that was actually associated with the early programs the answer is a big no. How could there be, as these rockets were being used for the very first time with manned launches!<br /><br />So what is to stop NASA from using the already proven EELV's, besides politics that is? <br /><br />Besides developing a new five segment SRB should also mean that the Ares I itself needs to be man-rated also, if such man-rating is really that important at all that is!<br /><br />Besides this, I notice that there is no other space program in the world that proposes using such large SRB's. Do they possibly know something that NASA does not know?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />