Jon Berndt has an article in the current issue of the Houston AIAA newsletter on the subject of heavy lift, citing yours truly, among others. (Warning, it’s a three meg PDF). My only quibble is that he misses one of the other problems with a heavy lifter–lack of resiliency. If we develop an exploration architecture that’s dependent on heavy lift, then we should have multiple means of providing it, which means two development programs with inadequate flight rate to amortize the costs.

Along similar lines, Bob Zubrin has a long essay on space policy in The New Atlantis that’s now available on line, with a harsh critique of NASA, including the Bush-era NASA and Sean O’Keefe. Surprisingly, I agree with much of the early part of it (though as always, the tone is a little problematic). I don’t agree with this:

The ESMD plan requires a plethora of additional recurring costs and mission risks for the sole purpose of avoiding the development cost of a big new rocket