<i>> There is going to be plenty of technical risk in the Constellation program when we get to developing the systems to return to the moon. Why take a risk on your LEO transport vehicle when you have the stick now, it works, and you have the infrastructure in place to fly it?<br />As much reservations as I have about the stick, I'd be a lot more confident in it from a safety and program success perspective, with it's hundreds of successful flights, than with the Delta IV or Atlas at this time.</i><br /><br />We don't"have" the Stick now: it will require almost a decade of development and billions of dollars to work. Compare this to Lockheed and Bigelow discussing man-rating Atlas with internal funds. If you swap 'stick' and "delta" in your statement you get the same results. Boeing's factory can make around 40 Delta IV cores every year, and they have more pads available than Stick ever will. Right Now, not in 2012. The Stick requires extensive mods of both the vehicle and facilities - it is unfair to claim the Stick (5 segment, different mounting etc) is the same as a Shuttle SRB. And remember, Atlas was the original US manned launcher.<br /><br />The Stick has ZERO successful flights. The Shuttle SRB is not the Stick - it is heritage hardware for said. Otherwise, you'd be more confident in Delta and Atlas with their hundreds of flights. Or Soyuz. <br /><br />Why do you and NASA insist on copying existing capabilities?<br /><br />Not to go to far offtopic, but NASA should be building deep-space hardware (which they are very good at) and buying launches of crew & cargo. The commercial sector is already there (Atlas, Delta, SeaLaunch, Arianne, Soyuz) for ground-to-LEO. Many smaller flights will drive costs down and demand up much faster than a few, monolithic launches. Lockheed is openly talking about various fuel depots and modular Lunar hardware. <br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>