Several recent articles in space publications have called into question NASA's ability to assemble a reasonable space exploration program plan. In summary, NASA is apparently building the Space Launch System (SLS) which supports an exploration architecture that is quite similar to that used for the Apollo Lunar Program, i.e., launch the entire mission equipment and crew on one launch vehicle for travel beyond low earth orbit.

Thus, in order to send three men to the moon, with the ability to land and recover two of them from the lunar surface, a Saturn V launch vehicle was required. Given the available technology and the limited exploration objective of the moon, this was reasonable for that time. Here we are, 50 years later, with an objective of sending larger crews well beyond the moon, but NASA's thinking has not advanced beyond the 1960s.

In 2009, at the time of the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle and the Augustine Panel deliberations on "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation," Launchspace published an enlightened opinion piece that offered a much more logical approach to advanced human space exploration. This is reprinted below:

Are We Missing an Opportunity to Build a Long-Lasting Solar System Exploration Architecture?

Guest Commentary by: George W. Jeffs, Former Rockwell Apollo and Space Shuttle Program Manager.
During the past week, both Aviation Week and Space News published reports that speculated on the six or seven options being considered by the Augustine Panel on the future of NASA's human spaceflight program.

If these are, in fact, the options to be presented by the panel to the Obama Administration later this month, the U.S. space program may well miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a truly magnificent solar system exploration architecture. Somehow, it seems the decision-makers in NASA and on the Augustine Panel just don't get it!

The U.S. has spent the last 30-plus years developing an astronaut transportation system and space station that allows us to routinely ferry men and women between Earth's surface and low Earth orbit. The importance of this capability is twofold: this system deals with the extremes of reentry and provides roughly half or more of the needed energy to explore the near-Earth parts of the solar system.

Now NASA wants to throw this capability away and replace it with a far inferior (less visionary?) architecture, i.e., one that requires the development of a very limited and costly launch system and uses a 1960s' astronaut capsule design. Furthermore, even the Augustine Panel seems to recognize that this approach does not get us to Mars within the foreseeable future.

With such a magnificent ferry system already in place we are presented an opportunity, not to replace it, but to build on it. Let's use the Space Shuttle to ferry astronauts and valuable cargo to the ISS and use expendable launch vehicles to transport consumables and low-value cargo to low orbit.

Use the ISS as an assembly, integration and test facility for a modular reusable solar system human exploration transfer stage (HETS). In the early years, a rather simple HETS can be used for flybys of near-Earth points of interest such as asteroids and the moon.

In the later years, the HETS might be evolved into a Mars vehicle. Upon return to Earth, the HETS could rendezvous with a space tug at high altitude, enabling the tug to tow the HETS back to the ISS. From there, the crew can transfer to the Shuttle and on to a welcome home on Earth.

This approach allows the continued use of an already existing and proven system for achieving low orbit and eliminates the requirement for an exploration vehicle to carry the added mass and complexity of surviving atmospheric reentry. The ISS would be used as a utility and service station for solar system launches and recovery. The only required new systems would be those elements needed to explore space above low Earth orbits.

Augustine Panel - Please don't miss this opportunity to get it right!