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Cool but they'll have to design a service module for the VA vehicle as it's normally launched attached to a TKS vehicle that provides propulsion,life support and living quarters. You gained access to the TKS station via a hatch in the heat shield. The VA reentry craft by it's self is only capable of a few hours of autonomous operation.

It seems a lot of bad science comes out of Oz any more. I can find a lot wrong with their prediction one super massive black holes are also tend to be self regulating the more the eat the more the radiation from the resulting quasar pushes back in falling matter. The mass ratio of a black hole to it's host galaxy has been found to almost always be 0.1%. Also the universe is young enough that every M class star that has ever formed is still around and will remain main sequence for another 20 to 100 billion years. The Sun is a G class star these have a life span of around 10 billion years. Same with white dwarfs and their theoretical cold counter part the black dwarf. The universe is not old enough for a black dwarf to exist. Really they need to spend more time studying telescope data then playing with theoretical numbers. A mathematical theory that is not backed by observations is just speculation. Our present theories could be completely wrong since they do not fit what is observed.

Really what they need to do is Scrap Ares and switch the shuttle-C or Direct. Also maybe even scrap Orion and have Dragon and possibly Dreamchaser take over it's mission as well. OSC can modify Cyngus for unmanned cargo transport. Other stupidity adapting flight avionics from a jetliner to a spacecraft. It would be easier and cheaper to adapt the ATV's,Cynus's or Dragon's avionics for the task. For this to happen a lot of management at NASA HQ is going have to get the boot. They are the problem not the budget the ESA operates ona fraction of the budget. A good example of waste at NASA is Ares I it's just another 24T LV. There will be three LV larger then 24T with plenty of flight history to choose from by 2014. The Detla IV-H, Atlas V heavy aka Atlas phase II,and Falcon 9-H. They all have a larger payload then Ares I.

Gates controlling the weather why does that scare me so much?

This is a very inaccurate story and the truth is actually quiet the opposite. The Ares I booster cannot go any farther then ISS and requires Ares V to go anywhere then low earth orbit. Technically the Delta IV-H and F9-H are more powerful then Ares I. Each can lift about 3 and 4 tons more then Ares I respectively. Now the alternative SDLV Jupiter/Direct or even shuttle-C are different in that the CLV and cargo LV are essentially the same LV. To perform an Apollo 8 type mission all you need to do is add a Delta IV upper stage to the stack. To perform a lunar landing on Jupiter/Direct launcher you use two J246s to launch Orion and Altair with their own EDS for an LLO rendezvous. With SHuttle-c you make use of two shuttle-cs and one delta IV-H Both setups would have more TLI payload then the 1.5 launch scenario you have with Ares. They also can double the lunar surface payload so all the doom and gloom is BS.