Jeff Foust has a good wrapup of the current state of play in the space activist community over the proposed exploration architecture, from this past weekend’s Space Frontier Conference, over at today’s The Space Review. Bottom line, to quote Bob Zubrin, is that it “sucks.” Those in the community who (unlike Space Frontier and Space Access) aren’t saying so officially are doing so only to be polite, and operating on the principle that if you haven’t anything good to say about it, say nothing at all.

Unfortunately, as Jeff points out at Space Politics, the sophistication of the debate on space policy in Washington is less than informed or reasoned. It’s very easy to confuse criticism of NASA’s chosen means of executing the vision with the vision itself. Nonetheless, if NASA has chosen a hopeless path for our goals (which in fact they have) we must state that. There’s little point in supporting a program that will once again end in tears, after many more billions of taxpayer dollars and more wasted years just because it is ostensibly a “space” program.

And speaking of debate style, Jeff was overtactful in characterizing Bob Zubrin’s as “contentious,” in which he repeatedly interrupted anyone who disagreed with him, shouting “stop, stop,” “it’s impossible!” “stop.”

This heavy-lift issue is one that needs a vigorous, informed (and civil) public debate, since it’s not at all clear that it ever received one in the workings of the exploration team at NASA. Cyberspace, and the blogosphere, would be a good place for it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey points out an Aviation Week article that indicates that many are in agreement that the “all eggs in one basket” approach is potentially disastrous (and does little to advance our abilities as a spacefaring nation), and asks:

What is going to happen to the lunar program when (1) there is the inevitable long delay in the development of the HLLV and (2) when a HLLV fails and destroys a really big collection of lunar exploration hardware, and (3) the HLLV is then grounded for a long period?

Hey, Clark, didn’t you get the memo? We’re not supposed to ask those kinds of questions.

[Update at 7:40 AM PDT]

Clark has further thoughts:

…NASA’s plan is already under considerable stress due to budget restraints.

This further emphasizes the need for NASA to focus on lowering space transportation costs significantly rather than on getting to the Moon by a fixed date with a straight-forward but very costly and impractical system. With cheaper space transport, NASA can still reach the Moon within a budget that probably won’t grow and may even shrink.