The supposed derived engine from Apollo isn’t going to be very derived after all:

“This one has to generate more than 290,000 pounds of thrust,” said Mike Kynard, J-2X program manager. “Not only is the J-2X going to be more powerful, it’s going to be different. Time has seen to that. This engine has its roots in Apollo, but we aren’t just lifting their work. It’s almost a new engine.”

This notion that we were going to save money with all these new vehicles by “deriving” them from existing hardware and designs was always kind of a scam (and it’s gotten more so as the designs have departed further from the original ESAS concepts). A five-segment SRB is also essentially a new motor relative to a four-segment one, in terms of understanding the structure and stresses, particularly when all of the loads (at least for The Stick) will be compressive, rather than some from the side as they are in the current Shuttle stack. The only thing really being preserved is the very costly, but politically essential “heritage workforce.” It may be necessary for political preservation of the program in Congress, but it does nothing to reduce costs of access to space, or truly open up the frontier.

[Update a few minutes later]

Thomas James is similarly unsurprised.

[Update a few minutes later yet]

Thomas also has further thoughts on whether or not space is the new Australia (with some comments on the history of northern Michigan).