It might require a little more balance between publicity and information sharing, especially concerning the more scientific missions. I flinched every time I a heard a cable newshead say “Bombing the Moon” …

For most of the reasonable and more silent portion of the population, the shear weight of the concepts being explored by missions like LCROSS is enough to spark our interest and ensure ongoing fascination and support.

The orbiters are magnificent vehicles with untapped potential. The only problems they have ever had are due to the cumbersome and dangerous way they are launched. Faulty boosters and debris hitting the vehicles during launch account for all of its failures.

If an orbiter were mounted on top of the new Ares V booster, no debris would hit it during launch. Since the planned Ares V is the most powerful rocket ever designed, it could launch a shuttle orbiter into earth orbit without the orbiter having to use its main engines.

If large fuel tanks were installed in the payload bay, and the main engines were modified so that they could be started in space, a shuttle orbiter could be placed in earth orbit with the capability to perform a trans-lunar injection burn with its main engines and reach lunar orbit, where it could rendezvous with the planned Altair lunar lander, which would be launched separately.

After lunar operations were concluded, the orbiter would fire its engines again and return to Earth, where it would reenter earth orbit by performing a multiple pass aerobraking maneuver, in which the orbiter would skim through the upper atmosphere and slow down enough to go back into space and enter an elliptical orbit which would automatically bring it around for another pass through the atmosphere. The orbiter would make several passes, never getting hot enough to exceed the limits of the thermal protection system.

After two or three passes, the orbiter would enter a standard orbit around Earth and dock with the International Space Station.

This would be the achievement of an extremely sophisticated Earth-Lunar flight capability and would tie all of the threads of the space program, the X-series rocket plane program, the Apollo program, the Shuttle program and the Space Station, into a unified structure that would look as if it had been coherently planned.

Humanity would be inspired to see that the achievements and knowledge gained from past programs have not been wasted, but have all been woven into an elegant and sophisticated consolidation of our hard won victories in near Earth space.

I have a graphic of a shuttle orbiter mounted on the Ares V and will send it to you if you give me an address.