Clark Lindsey, in response to NASA’s “rebuttal” of Ares criticism:

Still waiting for a sensible rebuttal to the rumor that the Ares I is a stupendously overpriced way to send people into space in the 21st Century.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Rocket Man” has some more thoughts:

“If we change the approach in architecture of Constellation…we simply won’t ever get off the ground,” King said. So instead of using either the Atlas V or Delta IV rockets, both of which are flying and building statistics, one of which is being man-rated commercially, King claims ARES involves less development risk (ahhhh, we think Atlas and Delta are already developed, Dave), would be about a fifth cheaper (ahhhh, buy Atlas and Delta in quantity and see what happens to the price, Dave), and twice as safe for the astronauts on board (ahhhh, paper is always safer than the real thing, Dave, you know that).

No, the reason for the dissension is not coming from the contractors who lost as the Emperor theorized and King echoed. The reason for the debate is that ARES is no longer heritage hardware being employed as designed and King’s own folks can’t see how to make it work. From the casings, to the fuel mix, to the addition of segments, to the control systems, ARES is brand new from the inside out. The upcoming ARES 1-x test flight is a hoax designed to generate momentum, not to test as-designed hardware. King’s premonition scare tactics (“If we continue to argue over how to accomplish this mission, we run the risk of losing the opportunity to do the work.”) will come to pass, not because of the arguments, but because no one stopped long enough to have the arguments in the first place.

Yup. If this program fails, it will be entirely on the heads of the people who chose this flawed architecture, not its critics.