There are only two explanations for this apparent contradiction that I can see.

Either

1) Some new data has come to his attention that calls the safety of the EELV as a human launch vehicle into question;

or

2) He realises that Ares-I is in a very vulnerable situation and is engaged in a desperate 'full court press' to rubbish every possible alternative before it gets selected over his baby's canned corpse.

I feel that NASA doesn't want competition with its Ares 1. NASA should be funding COTS D right now. How about a back-up plan to Ares, in case vibration an other problems are deemed insurmountable. If nasa funds COTS D now, Planetspace or Spacex could have a working certified crew transport vehicle by 2011 or 2012. It would also encourage Orbital to develop a crew capable vehicle.

What is NASA going to do in 2015 or 2016, if Ares 1 doesn't work? Any smart company has a back-up plan, what is NASA's back-up plan?

Even money says that pretty soon the Chinese will have a space plane, using the great R&D product of the USA. I can visualize a neat little four-place craft the size of a biz-jet with huge Chinese characters plastered over the sides. Meanwhile, back at NASA Makeworks, they're still fussing about with an incremental upgrade of the old Apollo program. ("This will work...No it won't...Yes, it will...No it wont...Yo momma...Sez you...)

This is ridiculous. NASA, stop this Ares I mess immediately and use the boosters that we have already paid to develop. You want to design a rocket? Focus on Ares V.
There is absolutely no reason why we should have a flight gap unless the Orion ship is just not ready.

You want to design a rocket? Focus on Ares V.

NASA shouldn't be in the launch vehicle business at all. We don't need heavy lift. We need affordable and robust lift capability, not dependent on any single vehicle type.

As a retired "rocket engineer" (Titan 34D/IV, Shuttle SRB Decelerator Subsystem, and other programs), I am not privy to all of the technical details about the Atlas V and Delta IV EELV's. Considering the reliability that has probably been designed into these LV's, if for no other reason than their commercial and military payloads, though unmanned, ARE high value, I can't believe that they could be any riskier to ride (with proper modifications to interface with the Orion and its escape systems), than the old Atlas-D's that carried the Mercury spacecraft into LEO were!

I wish Mike Griffin would explain the reason for his flip-flop on the safety of the EELVs for manned flight!

@BH

Ares-V is, if anything, more unlikely to be ready on a reasonable timescale than Ares-I. Yes, I know how astonishing that fact is, but there you are. The thing is so overweight that I feel that there should be reasonable concerns as to whether the thing will even get off the pad. That is one of the consequences of the bizarre super-small/super-large Ares combination.

If you want no flight gap, then you go with EELV for LEO and start working on a modular archetecture for going further. If you want NASA to still have an in-house launcher of some description, go with Direct.

Man...

This reminds me of the movie "Weekend at Bernie's".

Of course in this "reboot" of the story the main main characters, Ricard and Larry, can be played by any number of actors.

Clearly, Bernie is played by the Ares I.

I know some engineers have been working on the "Jupiter" project. Is it possible to redsign the LOX tank on the ET to stack a payload on top (I guess one would have to strengthen the LH2 tanks as well)? If you are going to use a shuttle launch system would it not make sense to use the current configuration as a baseline? I would think the all the vibration issues would be solved with the ET between the capsule and the SRB's. Any comments would be appreciated.

Also, isn't the vibrations even more pronounced in the large Atlas and Titan launch vehicles? I thought the satellite payloads had to be hardened for the high loads assocated with vibs. Is that true or bull?

Thanks....

The two main reasons I remember from ESAS for not using EELV's were that they did not meet the two-failure tolerant requirement and they were too expensive and took to long to modify to do so. The Ares I was supposed to use an existing 4-segment solid and SSME upper stage which were to make it quicker and cheaper to develop and would meet the two-failure tolerant requirement (this is probably disputable). Now that the EELVs are ruled out due to ESAS, NASA has relaxed the two-failure tolerant requirement in NPR 8705.2 to single-failure tolerant. The 4-segment existing solid is now 5-segment with a new propellant mixture and the upper stage is powered by a brand new engine design in the form of J2-X (the only thing common with the old J-2 is the number in the name). It is now a completely new development program that is going to take 8 years and $20 billion to develop. Both Atlas V and Delta IV could be modified to carry Orion to orbit in much less time for much less money and we would have assured access to space for humans by having two independent systems. We could extend Shuttle for 2 years and have this in place by 2012 with no gap. We would also have a more reliable system which is cheaper to operate and is more robust (2 independent systems). We could save billions in development costs and use that to start Ares V development earlier than planned. EELV could also make human flights available commercially, further reducing costs due to increased production rates. Add to that the fact that SpaceX could come onto the scene and we could be well on our way to reducing the cost to getting humans to orbit and becoming a true space-faring nation. Commercial opportunities we can't even conceive of right now would then develop, as they always do when a new affordable capability is made available in a profit-driven economy such as ours.

possum: You have it right. One thing missing, however, is the political optimization resulting from Ares I. That is, the supposed avoidance of loss of jobs at ATK/Thiokol, Michoud, MSFC and KSC. The original 4-segment S-1/RS-25 (expendable SSME) Ares I would have quickly replaced the Shuttle for near-term ISS transportation. Once NASA realized that the performance projections for this vehicle in ESAS were way too optimistic, they transitioned to the advanced 5-segment/J-2X design. Griffin is clinging onto the Ares I because of the Shuttle infrastructure it keeps in place.

I don't think this is a selling point anymore. ATK/Thiokol, Michoud and MSFC are in states whose influence has been greatly diminished due to the election. KSC benefits more by going with an EELV-based launcher due to the shorter development time and reduction in the Gap.

The country benefits much more by discontinuing Shuttle and developing an EELV-based launcher. If ambitious human exploration is still in the picture, there are other alternatives to Ares V (e.g., EELV heavy, Direct, multiple launch) that could be developed.

Rand Simberg wrote, "NASA shouldn't be in the launch vehicle business at all."

He's right, NASA should be stimulating America's commercial space companies, not competing with them.

NASA is the problem that must be overcome to close the Gap. They levy unrealistic, unreasonable requirements on Contractors. Ask the Orion Contractor Team. Ask the folks working Ares 1-X.

Get NASA out of the way and let the guys that know how to design safe, reliable rockets do their job for our nation.

When do we get some adult supervision to clean up this mess?

NASA's approach to safety doesn't make any sense. Why do you need 2 fault tolerance when it doesn't buy you any more safety? What difference does it make that you have triple redundant avionics on a rocket that blows up every 150 launches? Does a 1x10 to the 9th avionics failure rate make any difference in the overall vehicle? Obviously not. It still blows up every hundred and fifty launches. Even so, NASA will spend billions on a new rocket and use triple redundant avionics to justify the entire cost.

The same sort of thing is true in the software world. Safety critical software has to meet the level A criteria of DO-178B. This level A certification requires lots and lots of paperwork and some inane bit level testing. Does it make software any safer? You'd think that would be an easy question to answer, wouldn't you? You'd think no one would spend billions on software development without knowing that the specification they want the software to meet has value, right? Well, if you think that, then you are wrong. There is no empirical evidence that DO-178B Level A software is one bit safer than commercially developed software. Not one shred of empirical evidence.

Why is that true? Why does the government spend billions of your tax dollars to meet safety standards that make no sense and that don't even work? Because they can. Because if you disagree with how they spend your money you have no recourse against them. Because if you don't give them your money, they will send a man with a gun to your door and make you pay or take you to jail.

This 2 faced speak is strictly status quo for the Emperor.

No sooner than the ink was dry on his agreement with Ron Sega (DoD) to maximize the use of EELV's for ISS servicing than the Emperor issued a behind the scenes directive to discount all EELV based COTS proposals.

He talks of integrity to the MSFC crowd while knowingly lying about EELV's ability to close black zones and provide the required performance to support Orion.

Despite all of his incredible technical degrees, no one person has done more to harm America's space program. The Emperor created the gap and is responsible for demanding an unaffordable exploration program.

A truly open and honest replacement can't come soon enough.

The EELVs have not "together, successfully flown 20 times" since Griffin's 2003 testimony. They have flown twenty times since the beginning of 2003, but two of those twenty flights were launch vehicle failures.

The first failure was the December 21, 2004 Delta IV Heavy inaugural flight, which left its dummysat payload more than 17,000 km short of its planned orbit and lost its two microsat payloads altogether.

The second failure was on June 15, 2007 when the Centaur stage of Atlas V AV009 shut down four seconds early, leaving its classified payload(s) in lower than planned orbits.

- Ed Kyle

First, the DoD has classified those two launches as "successes".

Second -- and more importantly (as somebody could argue that the DoD had a conflict in deeming them a success) -- the context of the current discussion is to evaluate the "safety" of the EELV for human spaceflight. Each of these launches successfully made it to orbit, and potential humans on each would have been safe.

Moreover, even with these hicccups, I don't think anybody in the industry would argue that the EELV track record -- considering that they were new LVs -- has been anything short of amazing.

- Anon