I do appreciate that the model is so different from Apollo that it takes time and thought to understand what it is about; I did not see it at first myself — but once I got past my preconceptions, I found the logic of this approach overwhelming. This is simply what exploration looks like in a world where the budget doesn’t double for a few years and then halve again. You build a piece at a time and as soon as you can start doing things with the pieces, you do so.
Jeff Greason about the Flexible Path, commenting on Rand Simberg’s superiorly excellent Popular Mechanics piece.
Rand Simberg in the article:
I would claim that in fact, this is the most visionary space policy that the nation has ever had, including Apollo. It finally, forthrightly declares a national goal of large numbers of humanity living off planet, with many of them going on excursions into the solar system, and it harnesses the vital element of private enterprise and competition to make it happen in a way that will drive costs down instead of up.
May I add that yours truly proposed something of a flexible path of his own in 2006, though only for launching.