Quote:
The currently planned CEV is little more than soupped up Apollo


For getting people into and out of space, Apollo was much cheeper then the Shuttle missions. The early designed shuttles probably could have been cheeper and able to do more space exploration, but the military pretty much mandated certain things about the shuttle design so we could launch missles from space and such. Of course there has never been a real military use for the shuttle, (and would have likely been impractical), but the damage was done.

I just can't imagine "The Russians launched nukes, quick, send the shuttle up!" working well, when it still takes a decent amount of time to just wheel the shuttle to the launch pad.

At least the new CEV is back to pure space use. Seeing a CG video of proposed uses, it even still does the trick of detaching from a part, turning around, and picking up cargo for the lunar surface with the nose.