Can NASA Get Its Groove Back?

Cost and Schedule of Shuttle sidemount compared with HEFT alternatives. This is the only HLV option that meets all legal requirements and fits within the budget and schedule assumptions of HEFT. Data derived from SSP Study NSTS 60583, dated June 8, 2010
A real comedy of errors and misunderstandings collided this week between the new NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and the agency’s Human Exploration Framework Team (HEFT) Congressionally mandated 90-day report (their initial findings on how to implement agency direction). Though flush with the usual beautiful graphics and platitudes, the report’s bottom line is that under the existing budget and schedule, the agency cannot make the new heavy lift launch vehicle specified in the new authorization bill. In other words, you can’t get there from here. Can’t be done. Period.
Reading through the new report is an exercise in déjà vu for space policy geeks. It reads very much like the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) of 2005. No big surprise, when one realizes that many of the people who wrote that report are involved in the new one. But more than that, the sense of a previous life stems from the rocket design that has resulted from this ...