Free Republic

NASA and aerospace company ATK Aerospace Systems successfully tested Tuesday the most powerful solid-fuel rocket engine ever, even though its future in the space program remains in doubt. A huge roar and massive flames accompanied the two-minute "static" or non-flight test of the five-segment DM-2 (Demonstration Motor 2) rocket booster in the western desert state of Utah. The DM-2 was designed as the first stage of the Ares I rocket to provide the lift-off thrust for the next generation of Orion spacecraft, which NASA hoped would return astronauts to the moon by 2020. US President Barack Obama has said he...

series of demonstrators is being planned by the U.S. Air Force to mature technology for the Reusable Booster System (RBS), its chosen replacement for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) family beyond 2025. The first of the demonstrators, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) RBS Pathfinder, is planned to fly in 2013 to evaluate the “rocket-back” maneuver that would enable the unmanned first-stage booster to return to a runway landing at the launch site. An RBS architecture combining a reusable first stage and expendable upper-stage stack is defined in the new spacelift development plan now in the final stages of...