I also hope that this will increase attention, and discussion, on the importance of putting in place policies that prioritize human and robotic exploration of the Earth’s Moon.

Ares I would be the cheap small manned launcher that currently could be done by Falcon9/AtlasV/Vulcan and their role is similar enough to compare them not for injection to lunar transferr because all of these are way too small to lift the old apollo CM+LEM to LEO let alone to TLI.
My point is that delivering small payload/crew on a vehicle that has periods of no abort during launch like Ares I had thanks to SRM booster is a good change.
+Falcon is useless in cislunar space because of it’s rp1 engines.

Vulcan also provides interesting capability with the AECS and it’s very long time and refueling on orbit might provide a very good cislunar thug thanks to it’s hydrogen propulsion.

Ares V was really meant to be a Mars rocket, not a cislunar rocket, hence the giant size.

Technically, a 70 to 100 ton (metric or otherwise) capacity to LEO would be enough to support lunar infrastructure. Even if SLS doesn’t meet the 130 metric ton milestone, it can still work for supporting a cislunar infrastructure.

It is anyone’s guess about Vulcan. And Falcon 9 really depends on if SpaceX manages to pan out in its promises. One loss of human space flight, and they’ll be lucky to survive.

Hopefully, the ULA will quickly see the wisdom of simply combining their LOX/LH2 storage tanks with a solar powered electrolysis and cryocooler system, allowing them to store water from Earth and from the Moon indefinitely until some of that water needs to be converted into propellant for a beyond LEO missions.

I also hope that propellant depots will eventually end the SLS as a– crew launch vehicle– so that the SLS can be– most efficiently utilized– as a cargo lifter for large and heavy payloads: manned and unmanned extraterrestrial landing vehicles, deep space habitats, lunar habitats, large reusable interplanetary orbital transfer vehicles, 50 to 100 meter in diameter inflatable kevlar biodomes for the Moon and Mars, etc.

Marcel

(1) Ares V was the heavy lifter and Ares I was the crew launch to LEO vehicle for Constellation Systems.

(2) The SLS Block I is less than the Ares V but far more than the Ares I.

(3) The SLS Block II is a rough equivalent of the Ares V.

(4) The SLS Block I is a rough equivalent of the Shuttle Derived Side Mount configuration and thus very suitable for dual launch Human Lunar Missions as described to the Augustine Commission (which ignored the facts) by John Shannon.

(5) Falcon 9 could only be used for Human Lunar Missions by launching at least 4 to 5 missions (in a short period of time) to LEO and either performing re-fueling or assembly (adding to complexity and chance of failure on each hypothetical mission).

(6) Details of what the Vulcan will be able to do is still to be determined.

So your “analysis” seems suspect as to the Falcon 9 and premature as to the Vulcan.

Sending 6 people at a time to the Moon (either to a shielded workshop space station or perhaps a giant lava tube) 8 times a year for a quarter century could send over a thousand people there. With a 3 year tour (probably only possible with artificial gravity arrangements) that would keep well over a hundred off world. Not a thousand. With a big Gemini type capsule carrying 12 (SLS could easily send that to the Moon) the numbers double. An international effort with other countries buying our Super Heavy Lift hardware and running their own launch facilities means the 1000 people figure is by no means impossible. It could be happening by the middle of this century. Compared to expenditures like the Ohio missile sub replacement program and the new stealth bomber it would not cost that much. Really.

I was born in 1960 so there is the vanishing small possibility I might see it happen. After 911 I believe almost anything is possible. Except space tourists retiring on Mars.

But for now I would skip all that “nit picking”. To me the interesting point is that you have a high a ranking member of a major firm (that was Bruno at the very beginning) openly supporting use of extraterrestrial materials. Lower ranking engineers have done it for years, but without public backing of their management.

Like I said, it now has to be determined how serious they actually are.

The real mess to expose is our hyperfixation on Mars and the beliefs that we need new fangled technologies to get there.

We need to realize that the Moon is where the real future is. From that, everything else follows.

Here’s an interesting take on what we can do with a depot based infrastructure:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/infrastructure.php#chemicalisenough

The particular point I notice is this:

>
Indeed, Rick Robinson noticed that with access to an orbital propellant depot, most cis-Lunar and Mars missions are well within the delta-V capabilities of a sluggish chemical rocket engine. You do not have to use a nuclear thermal rocket. Hop David noticed this as well. Dr. Takuto Ishimatsu’s ISRU optimization algorithm calculated that NASA’s Mars Reference Mission was more optimal with no NTR but with ISRU (“optimal” defined as “requiring less mass boosted from Terra into LEO”).

This is also an argument for orbital propellant depots in Low Earth Orbit. Remember that once the rocket has traveled from Terra’s surface into LEO, you are “halfway to anywhere”. This means for a one-way trip, LEO is the mid-point of the mission.
>

Not sure about the point of 1000 people working in space in a few decades.
Maybe on a much longer timescale….