http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34554517
The rest of the world is going to the Moon while we launch exploding hobby rockets and cheer for Matt Damon. The nation that built the Saturn V has to pay Russians hundreds of millions of tax dollars for a ride to the space station to nowhere that took over ten years and 100 billion U.S. tax dollars to build. The nation whose space agency is fighting with congress over funding the only Beyond Earth Orbit spacecraft being built (the space agency wants the hobby rocket instead). The nation that spends such a mind boggling sum on defense that billions disappear without a trace and nobody seems to question this- yet cannot build a rocket that takes astronauts even into the space-that-is-not-really-space of Low Earth Orbit.
The ice on the Moon is the critical enabling resource for any human expansion beyond Earth orbit. Yet because of the years ago campaign contribution from an internet billionaire who has made himself the invisible head of NASA, discussion of the Moon is….verboten.
Ice on the Moon 
Cheap is no argument because there is no cheap.
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“Russian engines of difficult to ascertain reliability, creates a dependency that is hard to justify.”
That’ not the SLS.
“-will not have much capacity beyond the F9H until well into the 2020’s.”
SLS has much greater capacity- the faux heavy optimistic payload relies on the miracle of propellant cross-feed which is also not forthcoming.
“-the cost will limit the launch rate so severely-”
The NewSpace double agents in the NASA hierarchy have strangled funding to the SLS to the point where only one core per year can be built at Michoud and only one launch pad is available (they gave the other one to SpaceX). That is why the launch rate is limited.
“The Orion ejects its escape tower at a point where there is still large risk -”
Actually, it gets rid of the mass of the escape system after the riskiest part of the launch is complete instead of trapping the astronauts in a capsule stuffed to the gills with toxic hypergolics. And landing “like a helicopter”? One hiccup and it’s all over. I doubt the toxic dragon will ever carry a human being.
In short, it’s a scam. The entire NewSpace flim flam is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Deluded sycophants have flooded the blogosphere with propaganda and lies for years.
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