Frustrations with NASA's ESAS

Bob Mahoney gets to the heart of the matter of why many space development insiders are frustrated with NASA's current spaceflight architecture.

Somewhat as a clamor in the wilderness

The Space Review - Monday, February 11, 2008

Why was there an apparent unwritten prohibition against any in-space supporting infrastructure, such as refueling/refurbishment depots for space-based aerobraking orbital transfer vehicles or space tether momentum-transfer facilities in Earth orbit, lunar orbit, or at any of the five Earth/Moon Lagrangian points? How does launch of all hardware from the Earth’s surface (historically the most bottleneck-prone aspect of space operations) on every single flight contribute to the long-term viability of supporting a (presumably) growing outpost on the lunar surface that should in time provide in-situ resources, including rocket propellant?

Why are we choosing to throw away so much multi-million-dollar hardware (e.g., the Earth Departure Stage, the Orion Service Module, the Altair lander stages) with each and every flight to the Moon, when we spent the last thirty-five years of shuttle development and operations advancing the technologies of reusable spacecraft? What criteria determined that this disposable toss-as-you-go scheme was the optimum way to establish a long-term space exploration architecture robust enough to support continued operations on the lunar surface, asteroid exploration, and eventual manned Mars missions?