Almost five years ago the United States was challenged by its president with a Vision for Space Exploration, an ambitious strategy for space that would secure a position in LEO, return to the moon, and provide for a manned mission to Mars. For the next two years NASA developed a launch architecture as ambitious as the strategy it addressed, released as the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. In order to fund ESAS Congress laid out some directions, among the more logical being this nugget:

(a) IN GENERAL.-The Administrator shall, to the fullest extent possible consistent with a successful development program, use the personnel, capabilities, assets, and infrastructure of the Space Shuttle program in developing the Crew Exploration Vehicle, Crew Launch Vehicle, and a heavy-lift launch vehicle.

This common sense approach has a two-fold effect. Not only does it preserve costly talents, skills, and invaluably experienced human resources, but in addition supplies more "pre-tested" subsystems to the final architecture. This is so obvious one would think it wouldn't even have to be codified into law. However, sadly now comes one of those moments when government subordinates are expected to do the right thing and they flat out don't.

At the core of ESAS is the Ares family of rockets, a family as disturbingly dysfunctional as those stereotypical taxpayers that are being stuck with it. The tempestuous Ares I is a swollen stick of unquenchable overkill. Despite desperate attempts to jettison useful weight, to date it still seems mathematically inclined to deliver a load of badly shaken bodies to orbit. Its big brother, the Ares V, is a bloated behemoth too large to drive over the roads designed to handle those famously mammoth launch crawlers. For all its faults this approach has drawn growing criticism as budgets tighten and the global space race warms up.

Anyway, it's being reported that the incoming administration has asked NASA "to calculate the near-term close-out costs and longer-term savings associated with canceling those programs." These questions are interesting not only for content but also just for having been asked. (Like the mule and the 2x4, "First you have to get his attention.") Resolving the status of the space program is high on the list of priorities for the new administration. I am delighted to see them finally call out the Space Agency to account for unchecked profligacy. The Vision for Space Exploration has grown dim in the shadow of swelling Ares. One hopes future moonwalkers will find that a little cleanup has gone a long way.