Thanks BenLurkin. This was rolled out at the conference in Adelaide, Australia, I believe. Elon Musk was also there, with his latest iteration for Mars colonization. In EM's case, I wish he'd concentrate on finishing his bulldozing of his launch business competitors, instead of his untenable Mars imaginings.
Lockheed/Boeing/ULA/Blue Origin/NASA is all part of the military-industrial complex, and space exploration is not what they're about -- they're about pork barrel politics.
The SLS is a system now in development that uses the same liquid-fueled engines as the Shuttle did (for 30 years) and the same solid rocket boosters (SRBs) as the Shuttle did (the new ones will be taller, to burn longer, in order to get the barnacle-like liquid-fueled vehicle off the ground and on its way to orbit) -- so what's the holdup? It uses literally the same *******ed technology as the STS, other than the payload-destroying winged, manned reentry vehicle. And it won't ever go much beyond low Earth orbit, assuming it ever flies at all (which I suspect it won't).
And the Deep Space Gateway is yet another pretext to subsidize the ICBM makers of our enemies -- just as the ISS has always been. [Op-ed: The Deep Space Gateway would shackle human exploration, not enable it]
You and me have a big difference of opinion on this. Why go to Mars, because we ef’ing can. I was a NASA/Air Force designer. I worked on three of the six technologies for hypersonic flight. I’ve walked in on my own work (hypersonics) in the Air Force Museum. Why are we behind the Chinese on this one today, not from major efforts on my part and others, politics as usual. Some would rather spend 100 billion plus a year on illegals instead of employing Americans in high tech jobs.