Like a car salesman pushing a luxury vehicle that the customer no longer can afford, NASA has pulled out of its back pocket a deal for a cheaper ride to the moon.

It won’t be as powerful, and its design is a little dated. Think of it as a base-model Ford station wagon instead of a tricked-out Cadillac Escalade.

Officially, the space agency is still on track with a 4-year-old plan to spend $35 billion to build new rockets and return astronauts to the moon in several years. However, a top NASA manager is floating a cut-rate alternative that costs around $6.6 billion.null

They're calling this "not-shuttle-C." The *worst* possible outcome for the manned space program is if they go forward with Ares 1 and then don't get the money to build Ares 5. Then we're stuck in LEO with far less capability than we ever had with STS.