Over at the first issue of The Space Review for the new year, Grant Bonin writes the essay that I would write if I wasn’t swamped with proposals and other work, on the wisdom of building a heavy-lift launcher. He provides a good overview of the economic considerations, and the myths surrounding them.

As he points out, the cost of NASA’s proposed new Shuttle-derived vehicle will be very high, and since development isn’t planned to start for several years, there are many events that could occur between now and then to forestall it. It is a shame that NASA has essentially ended any further architectural analysis (unless they’re continuing such activity in house), because we ought to be thinking about more innovative ways of getting propellants and hardware into orbit, and storing them and assembling them. That is much more of a key to becoming a space-faring nation than building bigger (and more expensive) rockets.