[jbstrick]

Good Article. A must read.

(I searched before posting)

[oolatec]

Uh, well yeah... Duh NASA... Russia has been using the rocket thang for a long, long time...

[Jaysun]

Thank God. I was worried that NASA might end up being an irrelevant waste of money.

[BoBToMatoE]

"It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."

---

For me, this looks like a gian step backwards. I think there are some good concepts for an interm solution - but I am afraid we are thinking backwards.

[green iguana]

I like the re-use of major shuttle components. Should speed development up.

[Paleo Conservative]

The new vehicles would sidestep the foam threat altogether, and its supporters say they would have other advantages as well. The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not people, would be some 350 feet tall, rivaling the Saturn 5 rockets that sent astronauts to the Moon.

NASA should never have terminated the Saturn V. It was already evolving into a heavy launch vehicle for very large payloads like Skylab which was just a reconfigured third stage Saturn V fuel tank.

[Dallas59]

Saturn V



Size: 111 m (363 ft)
Payload to orbit: 129,300 kg (285,000 lb)
Payload to Moon: 48,500 kg (107,000 lb)
Manufacturer: Boeing Co. (prime)
1st stage: five F-1 engines
Propellants: RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid oxygen
Total thrust: 33,360,000 newtons (7,500,000 lb)
Manufacturer: Rocketdyne
2nd stage: five J-2 engines
Propellants: liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen
Total thrust: 5,560,000 newtons (1,250,000 lb)
Manufacturer: Rocketdyne
3rd stage: one J-2 engine
Thrust: 1,112,000 newtons (250,000 lb)

[bobjam]

I like the idea of using the boosters as heavy lifters. I don't know if the external fuel tank is strong enough to support the payload shown in the diagram (it's a tank, not a column). The genius behind the space shuttle was that 3 of the 4 principal components are completely reusable. Only the external tank is wasted.

We need to move away from the vertical launch method of sending people to space. We need to look into designing a purely passenger vehicle that can be towed to a high altitude, released, and rocketed to the space station. This builds on the successful lauch method used by Chuck Yeager and also the Ansari X winners. Heavy cargo can still be vertically lauched by a Saturn V with the assistance of the reusable boosters currently used by the space shuttle.

[hopespringseternal]

After leaving the astronaut corps, he went to work for the booster maker, ATK Thiokol, where he now leads the company's effort to develop the new family of rockets.

And therefore proposed continuing business for his employer.

[Gaffer]

Go back and read the original bag of tricks, feats, and payloads (and missions) that the designers claimed for the Shuttle....none have panned out so far.

The problem is dealing with the reentry heat and still having a vehicle that's spaceworthy....why not just get a working space vehicle in space via the payload of another workhorse and build and keep the fleet in space? Concentrate on moving away from this planet and looking for alloys, etc. that can stand the heat of reentry among other things....

If we're gonna explore space, we better be prepared to live in it, not trying to figure out how to get from our house out through the driveway to the car.....

[RayChuang88]

Good idea but forget about the use of an Apollo-like capsule. People forget that sea recovery isn't exactly cheap, since you need to pay for the cost of a recovery fleet to go out to fetch the capsule.

A better solution is a lifting-body spacecraft derived from the old Martin X-24A design, scaled up so it can carry up to seven astronauts into low Earth orbit (LEO). Because it dispenses with the big main engines and the cargo compartment, the lifting body can be quite small, probably light enough to be launched by Lockheed Martin Atlas V or Boeing Delta IV derivatives or the proposed launcher that uses a single Shuttle solid rocket booster. With a lifting body, the vehicle can land anywhere there is an 7,000' or longer runway, which means most of the world's commercial airports.

[Former Proud Canadian]

bump

[.cnI redruM]

Hey, there's the spacecraft that won the X-Prize. We ma be able to buy our next space vehicle COTS/NDI.

[redgolum]

So after 20 plus years, we are going back to the man in a can rocket shot.

All in all, not a bad idea.

[denydenydeny]

In theory, it would be strong enough to haul into orbit whole spaceships destined for the Moon, Mars and beyond....

Along with...I dunno...large tungsten rods?

[Rodney King]

For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle,

Well if they didn't, then it wouldn't be a redesign.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Its a great idea, what I've been for all along.

The Russians had a good model with Energiya by having the rockets attached to the ET and having the shuttle ride as cargo.

Having a simple crew launch vehicle (with escape tower rocket) is prudent, and the way to go. Sending people up should be cheap and easy, spend the money and technology once you are up there.

[Kevin OMalley]

BFLR = bump for later reading