Fred Kiesche asks if we can keep politics out of the CEV program.

Sorry, but politics intruded as soon as Dr. Griffin decided to build Shuttle-derived hardware as the launch vehicles, in order to assuage the politicians in Alabama, Utah and Florida who were worried about the loss of Shuttle jobs. Politics intruded with the decision to complete the useless (or at least, very poor value for the money) ISS, to maintain the international commitments.

It’s completely unrealistic to expect a massive taxpayer-funded space bureaucracy to be unencumbered by politics.