All that builds up for nothing more than another SpaceX infomercial.

Musk may be working (though not necessarily succeeding) on the first of that list, but not the other three.

It may “seem” that way, but these are supposed to be expert panels capable of rigorous analysis. If they are incapable of understanding how such a conundrum can be avoided, they are either incompetent or did not perform such analysis.

http://yellowdragonblog.com/2014/03/27/ula-coaxial-lander-small-fission-reactor-hybrid-powerplant/

I have a deep space version here where the Centaur is a hybrid chemical/NEP stage

http://yellowdragonblog.com/2014/03/26/hybrid-small-fission-reactor-pressurized-argonhelium-capsule-as-ion-powered-sep-stage/

perhaps these are ideas that are “pioneering” in that they take existing ideas and use them in novel new ways,I try to solve for landing in the permanent darkness of lunar polar craters with out a plutonium heat or power source

Manned Mission to Largest Known Asteroid Designed
Sending people to Ceres is no harder than sending them to Mars, study says.
Charles Q. Choi
National Geographic
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 18, 2013
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131118-ceres-asteroid-solar-system-space-science/#

It proposes using nuclear propulsion to keep the flight times down to 270 days, 9 months, each way.
I do want to go to Ceres. However, I wanted to follow a step-wise approach to expanding out into the solar system. Just as setting up propellant stations on the Moon will help with missions to Mars, so also would propellant stations on Mars help with missions to Ceres.
Then we could use propellant stations on Ceres to expand out to Jupiter.

Bob Clark

They thought they did. Pioneers didn’t worry about lawyers, deeds and titles — that came later, after they got “civilized.”

Page 46: “The 260-inch motor was kept in a test pit with its nozzle pointing upward. In February 1966, a night firing near Miami shot flame and smoke a mile and a half into the air that was seen nearly a 100 miles away. In June 1967, another firing set a new record with 5.7 million pounds of thrust.”

SLS is really just an interim solution to the first problem of heavy lift. Pioneering space truly begins with an unhappy revelation; while we marvel at the Saturn V it was in fact a minimal vehicle. The Atlas the John Glenn rode was also just big enough to accomplish it’s mission.

Page 48 goes on to state, “By 1966, NASA officials were looking ahead already to sizes as large as 600 inches, noting that “there is no fundamental reason to expect that motors 50 feet in diameter could not be made.”

Trying to establish a “meaningful” human presence in space is a nearly impossible mission without a certain amount of capability. This is why the private space efforts using inferior lift vehicles are so absurd. A pair of the 260 inch SRB’s would have given a Saturn V follow-on vehicle a lift-off thrust of over 12 million pounds. The third generation of launch vehicles we should be using in the 21st century would be in the 30 million pound thrust range.

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/325solid.htm

SLS is too small. Even Super Heavy Lift Vehicles in this 30 million+ category will still not take us anywhere except to the Moon. It is basic physics that chemical rockets using supertankers of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen can only provide feeble velocities for solar system exploration.

To go anywhere else beyond the Moon will require a Lunar Nuclear Launch capability. We have far less lift than we need to even begin discussing deep space missions. An industrial infrastructure on the Moon is the basic prerequisite. The SLS is just preparation and prospecting before launching the much larger vehicles that will be required. A real space program will require several times the resources being discussed.

The reality is the recent studies by NASA and the NRC are both sad jokes.

The report states unequivocally we cannot go beyond cislunar space with the present budget ceiling. Actually we cannot effectively establish a human presence even in cislunar space. LEO should be categorically branded as “been there” instead of the Moon considering all the ISS does is go in circles at very high altitude. It does not have any commercial role in the telecomm arena.

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson has stated the entire 50 year budget of NASA is spent by the DOD in two years. The doubling of the NASA budget that Tyson advocates is not going to happen with donations by “international partners.”

We need leadership, goals, and money. A regime change is on the horizon but as a goal Mars is pathetic and the money is not going to magically appear by way of a sudden public zeal for space exploration.

I strongly believe the goals are connected with the money and are right in front of our noses. In the commercial sector we have the possibility of GEO space stations as a replacement for the satellite junkyard. In the military sector we have planetary protection and the possibility of moving the entire nuclear arsenal into deep space. In the way of the public interest and international funding is the long term project of space solar power which is also the solution to what is turning into a global energy and environmental emergency.

But all we can propose is struggling to come up with the nickel and dimes to visit a faraway planet that has nothing to offer? What is that going to accomplish? Our Moon is the key to future space exploration and improving life on Earth.