Some have asked my opinion of the Direct Launcher concept. Frankly, I haven’t taken a close enough look at it to have one, other than it suffers from the same fundamental flaw as ESAS–that NASA will once again be developing its own vehicles, for its own unique purposes, and they will be very expensive to operate for very little in the way of results, and won’t move the ball down the field much in terms of opening up space for The Rest Of Us. But for those into arguing the technical issues, here’s a discussion page on the concept. Jon Goff has some related thoughts:

NASA may be lousy at doing commercially effective R&D, but they are far worse when they try acting like an airline. If NASA deserves to exist at all, they should be spending most of their money on trying to help “encouraging and facilitating a growing and entrepreneurial U.S. commercial space sector,” not trying to fund and run their next Amtrak in the Sky. People like to point at how much X-33, SLI, NASP, and other such programs have wasted, but what they seem to be missing is that while these were “R&D” programs, they were “R&D” programs trying to lead to another NASA operated space transportation system. Which is basically what the money for CEV, Ares I, and Ares V are. Sure, Ares I and Ares V aren’t trying to break new technological ground, but they are trying once again to establish the national space exploration transportation system. The fundamental flaw in all of those failed research programs wasn’t so much that they were trying new technology, and new technology is bad. It’s that they were trying to make yet another NASA owned and operated transportation system. Ares I and Ares V aren’t so much a bold break with past mistakes as they are an unimaginative repeat of the same.

[Update at 1 PM EST]

No, Mark, I don’t “hate” it (once again, one must wonder at his feeble powers of reading comprehension). I’m indifferent to it.

[Late afternoon update]

OK, I will say that Direct Launcher has one thing to commend it. It is indeed preferable to develop one new launcher than two. Of course, my point is that it would be even better to develop none, and let the private sector provide crew and cargo deliveries to LEO, so that NASA can concentrate on getting to the moon affordably.