Carolyn Porco, unlike many of her colleagues in the planetary science community, seems to like Ares V (or at least, she’s attempting to make lemonade out of it). Like Jeff Foust, I think that she’s being unrealistic (read the comments as well).

While an increase in flight rate for additional missions will bring down per-flight costs somewhat, it will still be a very expensive vehicle to operate, and will cost several hundred million per flight. Where will the planetary science community come up with that kind of money, let alone the money that will be required to develop and build the kinds of megaprobes she has in mind?

No, we won’t be able to carry out such grand ambitions until we get the launch costs down. Ares is not on the path to that goal.