USAF Seeks Flyback Booster

The United States Air Force seeks a reusable flyback booster:

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/20 ... cepts.html

This seems like a lot more sensible successor to launch systems like the Space Shuttle, since it's more likely to live upto the goals of a truly reusable and flexible launch system.

More detail on the flyback booster initiative - seems like NASA will be involved:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... el=defense

Sounds very promising to me, but I really don't understand one thing:


Why is there an "increased overhead" (what kind of overhead?) on the EELV program because of cancellation of Ares I? Where is the connection?

Cancelation of something always creates increased overhead for everything else, unless part of that overhead is being cut back, or what was cancelled is replaced with something that requires at least the same amount of overhead.

Just an idiotic way of saying that the overhead will be transfered over to the other projects using the same overhead pool.