Here's an excellent example of why the monolithic, "study it forever and then select a single concept" NASA approach is the wrong way to do vehicle development. With private enterprise in the game, and competing concepts, we'll be able to let the market sort out which is best. And I'll bet that there's market for both.

As far as NASA's ability to turn concepts into working spacecraft, what ever happened to the way NASA developed the Saturn?

Prior to Shuttle, Saturn was perhaps the only NASA launch vehicle -- Atlas and Titan came from Air Force programs and Redstone came from the Army, although there was Vanguard, which was abandoned early on.

Consider the Saturn V stages. First stage was called the S-IC, second stage the S-II, third stage the S-IVB. If the third stage was "ess-four", what happened to the original third stage?

The explanation was that Saturn was a kind of modular family of rockets to meet different mission requirements of which the Saturn I, Saturn IB, and Saturn V were the only variants that got built. The stage Roman numeral/letter variant reflected all of the variations on Saturn that could have been built depending on the direction the Apollo program took.

Even the 1.5 million pound thrust F-1 engine had this "if you build it, they will come" aspect to it. Development of the F-1 started long before there was a Saturn or even an Apollo program in response to the greater lifting capacity of Russian rockets. Someone got development of this engine going before there was even a rocket, let alone a mission for it.

Event the Saturn I/IB first stage was a kind of kludge to demonstrate a heavy-lift rocket. Didn't they size the central tank out of the Jupiter IRBM and the peripheral tanks out of the Redstone, and didn't they stick 8 booster engines of the type that the Atlas had 2 off (in addition to the center lower-thrust sustainer engine)? I heard it referred to as "Cluster's Last Stand", but that kludge worked quite well, although it was said to be expensive compared to a Titan III.

I suppose the Stick and the Ares V are supposed to be reinventions of the Staturn IB/V duo, only this time repackaging Shuttle solid rockets, tanks, and perhaps SSME's or maybe Delta IV main engines. Only this time, they don't seem to have any flexibility adjusting to power of the rocket to the weight of the payload. It is like we are in the 1960's when the Saturn I first flew, the F-1 is on the test stand, the EOR/LOR options are being debated, only this alternate timeline the moon landing might take place by 1980 or perhaps 2000.

I know a lot of the answer is funding -- if there money for a crash Apollo-style program, perhaps things would happen. But the amount of money spent on Shuttle over the years is huge -- is the problem that NASA can't take small amounts of money over long time and make things happen?

The problem I see about the new Moon program is not just the taking a long time, which is OK by me, but there does not seem to be any flexibility to evaluate tradeoffs and different designs; it all appears to be committed to a design that I hear is not workable.

There's no such thing as an "unworkable design". There are designs that are unworkable within the limits of budget or schedule. There are designs that are unworkable within the limits of manufacturing technology. There are designs that are unworkable because they're funny-looking, or designed by people we don't like, or designed to be flown by civilians instead of proper blue-suited Officers And Gentlemen.

The problem with "market-based development" is that the market two years from now will be completely unique as compared to the market we see now--but I don't think anyone's going to be willing to throw away their space vehicles because now we're all using, e.g., XDR connectors instead of HDMI.

I disagree with Paul's implication that "inflexibility" is a bad thing.

Paul, you wrote:

Only this time, they don't seem to have any flexibility adjusting to power of the rocket to the weight of the payload.

Keep in mind that it's not that big a deal to be inflexible with respect to payload sizes. If a rocket is designed to lift 100 tons, then an 80 ton payload with 20 tons of ballast (or anything of value) flies just as well. I see inflexibility in this aspect as a way to reduce the overall cost of the system.

Later, you use inflexibility in another way:

The problem I see about the new Moon program is not just the taking a long time, which is OK by me, but there does not seem to be any flexibility to evaluate tradeoffs and different designs; it all appears to be committed to a design that I hear is not workable.

Here, inflexibility occurs to support a prior decision. So to summarize, inflexibility can be a result of a prudent effort to reduce costs. Or it can be in support of a questionable decision. But the presence of inflexibility isn't in itself a sign of something wrong.