Lessons learned
With the shuttle falling apart, the NASA had to come up with an alternative solution to the 2 decade old space vehicules. They decided to come back to an older design and specialize the tasks of the vehicules. Instead of trying to carry mens and meterials at once, they decided have a small rocket for mens and a large rocket for material. As always, the American “larger than before” rule applies.
I hope they actually plan on building smaller versions of the material rocket for all those cases they need to launch less than 100 tons of material, like food for the International Space Station crew or the staff that will live on the lunar station (that’s the Bush plan, right?).
No dates are set yet as no contracts to build the rockets have been signed so far, but since the shuttles retire in 5 years and Bush wants manned missions to Mars by 2025, it shouldn’t be too long before these giants fly.