Ok, let me explain my logic to you: Obama and many other candidates want to cut manned spaceflight to the bone, disbursing the money to Earth environmental observation satellites (and, of course, their own pet social projects), and essentially killing VSE in the process and trapping NASA in LEO with the ISS. One way such a President could covertly kill VSE (although he would hardly need to be covert about it) would be to say "Ares I is costing too much. Cancel it and fit the Orion onto one of the existing EELVs." This would force NASA to make Orion smaller, perhaps to such a degree that it would no longer be capable of doing Lunar missions.<br /><br />"We'll put that capability back in later, right now we need to service the ISS." NASA will most undoubtedly say. But once NASA has some means, any means of replacing the Shuttle, it becomes all that much easier for Congress and/or the President to say "We really can't afford VSE right now, you know, the war and all. We'll get back to it later."<br /><br />You and I, however, know that once something is removed from NASA's budget, it usually stays gone forever.<br /><br />All Congress is really is concerned about with NASA is fulfilling our international obligation to the ISS, because, for some reason, Congress is concerned about pissing off France.<img src="/images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> Outside of that, all Congress sees in NASA is money that could be spent on their pork barrel projects. The only reason that Republicans in Congress support VSE is because it's Bush's idea.<br /><br />I hate Ares I just as much as the next man around here, but many of the most expensive main components for Ares V will be developed with Ares I. Once NASA has finally gotten Ares I to work after going several billion over budget, it will be all too easy for them to say to Congress "Well, for just a few dollars more you can have this big fancy rocket." And who can't resist a cheap, huge rocket.<br /><br />I know it doesn't make sense, but when <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>