OK docm (by the way, first thanks for your positive words) , I do realize that my comments on the Saturn V were somewhat off the wall! Yes, having a purely none reusable heavy lift launcher of the class that NASA now needs to go back to the moon ("and do the other things" ) would indeed be too expensive, which seemed to me was the same conclusion as the Augustine Commission on the Ares V)! No doubt about that.
And yes, NASA at the very least shares in the responsibility for the current Orion fiasco, if nothing else. But once again, with proper funding NASA would not have had to come up with such a kluge (which like the shuttle eventually proved to be even more expensive in the long run)! So, my comment about how Congress handles our manned space program still proves to be true!
I am however, hopeful that the results of this commission will now at least stop NASA and congress from an even bigger fiasco, in even trying to built the Ares V as originally envisioned!
There has got to be both a better and less expensive way of getting back to the moon, and even going beyond!
I personally think that NASA could even use the Delta IV Heavy as a start point, and remember we are not talking about a manned vehicle, so the argument about the so called man-rating thingy does NOT apply here! And then have ULA start to think about building a pure liquid engined, and reusable Very Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle. Especially as NASA has itself now found out that even transporting a Heavy Lift Vehicle with two of the far heavier 5 segment SRB's is going to be too heavy for the current transportation system from the VAB to the launch pads. And rebuilding that system would be just about as expensive as the building of the Ares V itself would have been!
Whereas, with an entirely liquid engined vehicle, regardless of just how much it could place into LEO, it would continue to be fueled with propellant at the pads, and therefore would always be light enough for the current crawler tractors and trackways to handle!
We are the ONLY space program on this planet that uses such heavy and low ISP propulsion elements as the SRB's, and with the retirement of the kluge (although a magnificent kluge) that the space shuttle system was, we should also be retiring these vastly over rated, (and even polluting) SRB's. This is even the position of such newer alt space elements as spacex!
Even the use of the original four segment units for the space shuttle was for political and not technological reasons to mollify the powerful senators from the state of Utah!
Making such a decision would make the program for going back to the moon far less expensive, and generate just as many jobs at the teams of Boeing and LM as it would lose for ATK in Utah. It would then position the possibly far less expensive spacex future vehicle to even lower the program costs by even more in the next decade or so!
And that would be both a better technological solution, as well as an economic one!
Heck, I even think that (like Von Braun did) having a true higher orbit space station (benefiting perhaps Bigeloe, and his excellent space station ideas) as a transfer station, with a dedicated moon transfer vehicle (powered perhaps by the far more fuel efficient and far better ISP VASIMIR engines), with another transfer space station to a dedicated moon lander vehicle in lunar orbit, is by far the more reliable and over all less expensive way to go back to the moon, and even eventually to go on to Mars. Using materials from the moon itself to actually build the space vehicles to go further out into space both safely and far more efficiently.
But, I must admit that would require far more advanced thinking on the part of both Congress and even NASA itself. The current NASA Apollo type of program for going back to the moon will be both far more unreliable (remember Apollo 13?) and in the long run far more expensive than what I have just outlined!
Both Wernher Von Braun and such other early pioneers of the space program as Arthur C. Clark (who was a true scientist and not just a great SCI-FI writer) had all of what I have just outlined down pat in the early 1950's! They were the true technologists, that had both NASA and Congress followed would have had humanity in space as a true space faring civilization by now!
I would like to think that others may be just now coming to that realization, and therefore there is indeed true hope of it being done correctly. But, I still admit to having my own doubts!
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