Frankly. All I've seen from direct is a lot of claims made by people who choose to be anonymous. that is not confidence building at it's finest.
secondly. Direct is going to have a lot of the same conversion from paper to real world rocket conversion problems as any other program if it's chosen to replace Ares.
That's not pessimism. that's realism.
whenever you reconfigure the stack you end up having to redesign parts of it to accommodate the new configuration. that costs time and money. And it wastes all the time and money spendt on the previous configuration as most of that work is now invalid.

Funny thing is. None of the alternatives to Ares realy adresses the Real problems. and that is the fact that NASA keeps being pushed around in a new direction every 4 years. Lots of programs keeps being cancelled when they are half done. that's no way to run a space agency. that is just clowning around imho.
Do anyone seriously think Direct will survive any longer than Ares has if it ends up replacing Ares?
I think not. give it a year or 2 and some other interest group is going to start spamming the internet with the new "Superior" architecture that should immediately replace direct. It will never end if they start making decisions based on anonymous interests groups pressure.
I think I'l write my own government officials and try to make them find new partners for our space needs tbh. one that is actually completing it's projects would be a nice change of pace.

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