What I especially loved was the recent review panel's conclusion that the Ares program would cost more than originally budgeted...therefore, we should scrap it all and start from scratch. Obviously, that's a much wiser investment, and would be completed in much less time, than continuing to fund a program that's already got to actual flight test articles, and uses existing hardware and proven designs.
This is what happens when you ask accountants for engineering advice.
It's a fucking rocket. You bolt a capsule to the top, point it upwards, and light the sonofabitch. Goddard and Tsiolkovsky thought up this stuff when airplanes were still made of wood. We designed manned rockets with slide rules and sent them to the moon with computers with less processing power than a modern vibrator. There's no way in hell another design could do things significantly better, cheaper or faster. It continually boggles my mind that the US Government will never, ever do things the simple way if there's an absurdly demanding alternative available.
