POLL: Which Human Rated vehicle should NASA invest in?

[sftommy]

Senator Nelson wants to add $700M for ARES I Testing.

Which vehicle's development would you recommend putting the money into?

 

[Crossover_Maniac]

All of them except the first and the last choice.

 

[tampaDreamer]

Any of the first three options. I'm no scientist to make that decision.

 

[halman]

None of the options which you have listed are going to be useful in the long term. Sending three or four people up per launch is not going to be economical when we need dozens of people in space at once. Why dozens? Because private industry wants to build and operate their own space stations for research and manufacturing. Because exploring the Moon is going to take more than a handful of people working at one time. Because preparing a deep space exploration vehicle will require many people for construction/assembly, checkout, and testing.

NASA needs to invest in a second generation crew shuttle, one capable of carrying at least 10 people into space at one time, able to land at the launch site, and be turned around with a minimum of work. We do not need a vehicle with a service ceiling beyond 200 miles, nor do we need one which can support its crew on-orbit for weeks at a time.

See "A Cheap And Easy Way To Space" for more thoughts on the kind of human rated launch vehicle we need.

 

[nimbus]

DIRECT and Skylon.