I saw on the spacedaily site that Nasa office of exploration systems in the program overview document that nasa wants to take on pg5 of this pdf an initial flight for the CEV (must mean drop tests and such) being in 2011 but has unmanned flight in 2014 followed by manned flight in 2017. Six years seems like a very long time from first flight to manned use not counting the lead time from 2026 to 2011 for a working design.

Excerpt from email I recieved for return to flight:

A new organization has been created within NASA to develop the technology necessary to achieve this goal.
The Exploration Systems Enterprise will develop the systems required to implement the President's vision for exploration. Over the course of the next 6 months, the Enterprise will
evaluate various component architectures, including requirements for heavy lift capability, and report its findings to the NASA Administrator.

Is Nasa's only reason for this time line to be so strectched out, just cash flow or is there other problems that are not seen.

Well, NASA employees reason is they have a culture of coming up with the perfect design before they test any of it. That leads to longer development times, then things fast track, where they build a little and test a little. Cause if its disovered that one thing complately fails that another one depends on, they have to redesign everything. That leads to delays.

As NASA the entity, (who tend to make the culture the perfect design) Is the longer it takes the longer the Shuttle is in use. As soon as the Shuttle Fleet is retired, there will be large Layoffs in many powerfull congressional districts. The people that are actual NASA employees will just refocus to the new "vision". But the contractors that are in the congressional districts will loose money and more then likely Jobs. So NASA as an entity is politically pressured into keeping the shuttle running as long as possible.

Great Shuttle c component variants view I think on pg31 of greenfield presentation on the nasa news highlights returntoflight page dated 2/17/04. There is also a shuttle service life extension program summit or slepsummit that also is looking at the investment of getting the shuttle back into space.

I guess the big question that I have for the shuttle c configurations are with regards to the remain modules left for ISS completion. Does the ISS cranes have the cability to place the modules once brought to the ISS station into there correct locations. Or is this an oversite since we seem to be unable to get the shuttle back into space.

Shuttle-C can be equiped with the Robotic Arm employed by the STS.

I thought based on the pictures that the section behind the capsule was expendable. This would be very expense if this were true.
So Nasa has come out and stated that there was once liquid water on the surface of mars were one of the rovers has landed. But still has not found any still there yet.
On another note for the mars Next generation rovers that are to be much larger. They are planning to some version of a sky hook trick, I mean skycrane would it not be better to revisit the ROTON to see if it would be do able now for a mars lander.

As I was typing my previous posting that fact occured to me as well. The robotic arm on the STS is very expensive. Dunno. Maybe they can adapt the existing STS arm to work from the ISS truss (like the existing ISS arm).

I suspect the Marsian atmosphere may not be dense enough for ROTON (Rotary Rocket) to work effectively as a lander.