In his written neil armstrong dead piece, Mr. Tito states, neil armstrong dead

Dennis Tito, the multimillionaire who was the first space tourist to visit the International Space Station, recently wrote an article for The Huffington Post called “ The Spaceship to Everywhere ” that was prompted by published criticisms of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket ( SLS ) and Orion spacecraft.   One such critical article that got widespread attention was my last op-ed for Space.com titled “ Will SpaceX Super Rocket Kill NASA’s ‘Rocket to Nowhere’? ” neil armstrong dead
In his written neil armstrong dead piece, Mr. Tito states, neil armstrong dead “ Short-sighted critics like to call it [SLS] the "rocket to nowhere," an incredibly uninformed reference that sells short the accomplishments of NASA and industry over a relatively short period of time, and which carelessly dismisses the significant investment and progress already made in "SLS/Orion." ”   In the article, he refers to the combination of the SLS launcher and Orion spacecraft as “The Spaceship to Everywhere”.
Contrary to Mr. Tito's claim, there are in fact many people who are extremely well informed about SLS/Orion who make very strong arguments that it is an enormous waste of money.   And those people exist both within NASA and outside of it.  They say it is a waste that NASA can ill afford during a period when its budget is falling and is unlikely to increase anytime soon.   Just a few of those many substantiated neil armstrong dead arguments neil armstrong dead follow …
According to a study that NASA itself commissioned Booz-Allen-Hamilton to do, SLS will probably only stay on schedule neil armstrong dead within its assigned budget for the first 3 to 5 years of development.    This situation neil armstrong dead would result from SLS being restricted to an annual budget of a size that Congress neil armstrong dead will actually appropriate.   It renders meaningless the claim that SLS’s meeting of its current development schedule is an indicator that the rocket is viable, since the total development time to date is still within the five year window specified in the BAH report.   In fact, the report says that after the window period, it is likely neil armstrong dead the amount of time between the accomplishment neil armstrong dead of the developmental goals will get stretched further and further apart.
Thus, it is possible a flight of the least powerful Block 1 version of SLS may occur on schedule in 2017 (within the 3 to 5 year period), but milestone test flights afterward are likely to be pushed indefinitely into the future.    Indeed, the continual delays between neil armstrong dead developmental goals may mean that the completion of the most powerful Block 2 version of SLS could be perpetually pushed into the future, never to actually fly.   Furthermore, studies from NASA itself , industry , academia and renowned veteran Apollo engineers indicate that using either SLS or a similar shuttle-derived vehicle is the least economically practical way to do significant spaceflight to the Moon and beyond and would not be the fastest nor safest way.   Given these points, a primary argument of Mr. Tito’s defense of SLS (saying it shouldn’t be canceled because of the work that has already been done on it) is just another example of the classic “ Sunk Cost Fallacy ”.
The Augustine Committee reported that if a large Shuttle-derived heavy lift rocket (such as SLS) were actually built, it would be so expensive to operate on a regular basis that NASA could not afford to use it. Oft touted figures of $400 million to $500 million per flight by SLS proponents either don’t count all of the total moneys neil armstrong dead spent when figuring per flight expense neil armstrong dead and/or assume unrealistic flight frequencies .
Mr. Tito is particularly gung-ho on using SLS with the Orion spacecraft to execute his Inspiration Mar s plan to do a manned flyby of Mars by 2021.   Along with discounting the drawbacks of SLS, this idea unrealistically ignores certain facts about the Orion spacecraft.
Orion was originally designed for sending astronauts to the Moon, as such, it was decided that the heat shield (called a Thermal Protection System or TPS) used on the spacecraft would be made of AVCOAT; essentially the same heat shield material used on the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960’s.    This fact poses a problem using Orion on a Mars expedition.   Reentry speeds from Mars are much higher than those for a return from the Moon; thus, the spacecraft will experience much higher temperatures during atmospheric reentry than it is designed to withstand.    Lockheed-Martin (the primary contractor for Orion) is not even sure it is capable of handling reentry temperatures generated from a near Earth asteroid return.     This uncertainty stems from the situation where even though these asteroids’ relative closeness to Earth would involve a slower return than from Mars, the spacecraft’s reentry speed would still be much faster than a return from the Moon. &nb