Eric Berger talks about the elephant in the room:
…this battle [over destinations] is a distraction from NASA’s real problem, which neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to acknowledge. Namely, the space agency is being tasked with building a huge and powerful rocket it will not be able to afford to fly.
It doesn’t matter, as long as the jobs continue.
Exactly. NASA is not about opening the space frontier. Its about keeping the NASA rice bowls filled:-)
One other nit to pick with the article: it lists “the spacecraft would be released in rarefied atmosphere with high tail winds to kick it forward” as an advantage over ground launch. The launch from rarefied atmosphere I’ll accept, the “high tail winds” is pure BS. A ground-launched vehicle would be just as apt to benefit from high tail winds as an air-launched vehicle given a specified insertion trajectory.
My oops moment of the day, this should have been posted under the StratoLaunch entry.