Launch costs to LEO are prohibitive. The EELV approach is going to cost MORE than the Shuttle in terms of amount of payload and people placed in LEO. Something like $700-800 million vs. $500 million. This is the initiative's Achilles heel.

Time to sit back and give ourselves another goal first:

Drastically lowering the cost of launching from OUR planet, never mind reaching other planets.

Best way to approach this is through contracting for launch services rather than specific vehicles, and turn to the private sector for that.

It would seem that "retro" technology like the EELVs should cost LESS than Shuttle, not more or even as much.

Where did you get this? An EELV is nowhere near as expensive to launch as a shuttle. The most the Air Force is going to pay for an ELV launch is $250 million, and that's for a brand new vehicle at a flight rate of 4/year. The more that launch, the lower the cost goes. (Probably sustainable at $180 mil per or less.) Since it's an ELV, unlike shuttle, flight rate will not depend on CEV overhaul and refit. $700 to $800 million a launch is a rediculously unfavorable assumption.

Contracting for price-per launch would indeed be much more cost-efficient, but no launch company currently does this for manned vehicles and it can't be magicked into a federal five year budget plan that intends to actually achieve objectives and goals (as opposed to hopes that may or may not be fulfilled.)

Perhaps these numbers represent the one-time cost of man-rating an EELV. As of right now, neither Atlas V nor Delta IV are rated for human spaceflight. I would be willing to bet that $800 million could easily be spent by Boeing and Lockheed Martin certifying these vehicles.

The only way I see this can be done with out costs getting out of hand is to use a shuttle derived HLLV .
It;s basicly the shuttle stack minus the heavy 100ton spaceplane the engines would be placed in a recoverable pod or you could just attach 3 RS-68s or TRW-108s on the bottem of the ET and gain a few more tons of lift by not having to recover the engines.
It costs time and money to plan and get clearance for a launch so the more you can send up at a time the cheaper those costs will be.
Also EVA is dangerous so it's best to send the whole lunar vehical up in one launch Von Braun made the saturn 5 for a very good reason.
He'd laugh at the very ideal of building the trans lunar injection stage and space craft in three or more launchs when you could do it in just one.
A shuttle derived booster can lift 80tons easily and 150tons with some work for less then the cost of a single shuttle orbiter launch probley around 160million to 300million per launch.
Thats cheaper then the saturn 5 it's cost per ton would be the lowest of any commercial booster in service.
Also the shuttle launch hardware allready is man rated.
Also the same booster is big enough to be used to build a "safe" mars ship one with enough mass and power for a good margin of safty.
That you don't have to wait to invent a new rocket or use a death trap of a ship like boeing's mars vmission preposel which would have a high likely hood of failure.
Also on a mars mission I sugest all crew members be around 45 to 60 as they'll be less likely to develope cancer later in life.

Wouldn't want to have the young kids have all the fun, right ;-)

Not that I'm complaining - by the time these things a flight rated and ready to go I'll be in the 45 - 60 age range ... and queing up for a ticket.

Ok, shuttle is an extremely powerful asset that should not be ignored. SSMEs are the most powerful cryogenic engines ever built.

But cobbling together an ELV from the shuttle stack would require that nearly the entire shuttle system currently in place be maintained. That means you can throw out the savings from ending Shuttle and thus forget about the current plan altogether.

By the time we see a need for massive lift boosters, it'll probably be better to start from scratch with the newest available technology, rather than late 70's tech.

Tom Merkle