Keith Cowing has a roundup.

I don't necessarily agree with all (or even any) of them, but it's useful to see what the space-interested community has to say.

Has anyone ever checked to see how the foam acts when it is painted (like it was on the first few missions)?

I am getting increasing bothered by the space is dangerous excuse which seems to keep coming up with regard to NASA. When you fly as often as the Wright Flier it is dangerous, when you fly as often as a 737 it is not.

You will always have a statistically measurable failure rate from which you learn. When you are flying a million times a year losing one or two is manageable. In only flying a few times a year it will always be a game of Russian R**lette. In this manner NASA actively chose low reliabilty.

He didn't do it as a flash animation so he's more rigorous than most.

In addition to the flight rate, isn't it important to have a diversity of designs? I'm troubled that once again NASA wants to have a single vehicle and fly it for 20 years. In contrast, we have a variety of airliners, and a serious problem that grounds, say, the DC-10 fleet doesn't put the airline industry on the shelf for three years, because we have 747s, 757s, 767s, and AirBus models to fill the gap.

In addition to the flight rate, isn't it important to have a diversity of designs?

It is to me, and anyone who wants low-cost, reliable launch. It obviously isn't important to NASA, or the federal space policy establishment in general.

Also, like the adage about 'generals being ready to fight the *last* war over again,' some people seem only to remember the last disaster.

One of the selling points of the CEV is that it's situated *above* any such shedding problems...but it's riding roughly (yes, I know the joints are much better now) the same SRB design that everyone was afraid of, post-Challenger...

And 'Apollo on steroids' looks like familiar, comfortable, safe, 'proven' technology, but we forget the close call of Apollo 13...

Me, maybe it was from reading about all the cool SSTO and TSTO proposals of the late 60's through 80's, and watching '2001' too many times, but I'm still scratching my head and asking; "Why the devil would we still be getting into LEO on ballistic capsules, launched on (almost) expendables in the early 21st century, anyway?"