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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA Plans to Build Two New Shuttle-derived Launch Vehicles

According to a new NASA study, when America goes back to the moon and on to Mars it will do so with hardware that looks very familiar.

NASA has decided to build two new launch systems - both of which will draw upon existing Space Shuttle hardware. One vehicle will be a cargo-only heavy lifter, the other will be used to launch the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

Something Old, Something New

According to sources familiar with the study's final recommendations, the heavy lifter will be a "stacked" or "in line" configuration (one stage atop another) and not a "side-mounted" configuration as is currently used to launch the space shuttle. The first stage will be a modified shuttle external tank with rocket engines mounted underneath. The first configuration will use 6 existing shuttle (SSME Block II) engines.

A growth version for lifting heavier cargos will use three RS-68 engines. The RS-68 engines, manufactured by Boeing, are currently used in its Delta IV family of launch vehicles. Additional engines would be clustered for launching heavier loads such as those needed for Mars missions.

The second stage will have a liquid engine capable of restarting multiple times. The payload will sit atop this second stage inside a large aerodynamic payload shroud.

More here: www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1040

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Excellent on the new planning, but it should have been done years ago. Onward...Let's get on with it!

[Rocketman]

admin said:

Excellent on the new planning, but it should have been done years ago. Onward...Let's get on with it!

I agree wholeheartedly! This should have been done at least ten years ago.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA engineers reportedly will abandon the basic space shuttle design in the next generation of U.S. spacecraft to make them safer and more powerful.

The design would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets, the New York Times reported Tuesday. That would keep space crews as far as possible from engines and falling debris, which caused accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and shuttle Columbia in 2003.

The plan, originated more than two years ago, is being detailed as attention is riveted on space shuttle Discovery, whose crew will make the first emergency spacewalk in history Wednesday to repair a potentially hazardous problem.

The plan for new vehicles will be officially announced later this month, the Times said. The project is already being questioned. Alex Roland, a former National Aeronautics and Space Administration historian, says the plan so far revealed has "the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem."

The three remaining space shuttles are to be retired by 2010 under the Bush administration's plan for space exploration, which includes sending humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
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Well good, as the present design is a poor one.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Redesign Is Seen for Next Craft, NASA Aides Say

For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.

With so much riding on the Discovery launching, critical changes have been made to the shuttle. Also, a look back at the history of the shuttle program.

Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle's components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.

The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.

By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.

"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper," the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.

The plan, whose origins go back two and a half years, is emerging at a time when it may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet.

More here: www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/space/02nasa.html?ex=1280635200&en=c97b63d7bb47af82&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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Now this is quite a smarter way of stacking the assembly. Follow the old school ways, with the crew cabin on-top, ala Apollo and earlier space crafts!

This I like...

[Rocketman]

Now that's a nice rocket! I bet take off is meaner than hell.

[billybad69]

www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/futurex/index.html#1

[mahesh pherwani]

so what about Saturn 5, lifting off for the wonderful Apollo missions? and President Bush's vision of going to the Moon and Mars?? Like Kennedy's, before him?

why give up on such beautiful infrastructure? comparably, it has been just as good as the proposals of the future, or am i talking thru' my hat here?

all missions have had crew on top except..... on the shuttle, because the way it's built and takes off..... attached delicately, to another rocket.

let us please not forget the Martin Thiokol engineers who refused to sign off (1, 2, 3, umpteen weeks before) for Challenger's scheduled lift-off one cold January 31... back in '86....
but the authorities went ahead anyway....please, i don't mean it in any way, disrespectfully, either for Challenger crew (bless them all) or the all the folk working hard at NASA.....oh excuse me, i am sorry, my brain goes loopy thinking about challenger and columbia.

i suppose..... c'est la vie...number is up, you gotta go. but seriously, this was avoidable and some one could have cautioned more , like the two engineers at MT did try to do (and resigned), but everyone in charge was preening............

please excuse me.... i am gonna take a deep breath here and shut up....

au revoir, my friends

mahesh

[Rocketman]

Ack! Francias...

Today is a good day, do not spoil it! What's done is done, there is no going back. It's just a bit late in the day to worry about whether or not it was avoidable.

I don't like to think about it as well... it's simply too depressing...

RIP 107

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

I understand that...

NASA no longer has the "blueprints" to reconstruct a Saturn V rocket assembly. The reams and reams of technical info were destroyed to make room for newer technological innovations.

I'm sure it could be built from the ground up if need be, but the myopic tossout thinking is just incredible...

The proposed plans for the payload sitting on top makes perfect logical sense...and really should have been the concept executed, instead of the more glamorous but less efficent external tank design.

But, let's see what they can do with the foam problem for Atlantis in the meantime.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

New Details About Space Shuttle Successor

(Oct 12, 2005) A Northrop Grumman/Boeing team has unveiled new details about the successor to the space shuttle: the Crew Exploration Vehicle. This new spacecraft, reminiscent of the original Apollo capsule, is expected to carry humans to the International Space Station by 2012 and return them to the Moon by 2018. Unlike Apollo, however, the CEV will carry four astronauts to the Moon and back. It will orbit the Moon autonomously, allowing all four astronauts to descend to the surface.

While similar in shape to the Apollo spacecraft that carried astronauts to the moon in the late '60s and early '70s, the new CEV is a quantum leap forward in terms of performance, reliability and on-orbit mission capability.

"The CEV we plan to build will benefit not so much from a single, technical breakthrough but rather from evolutionary improvements in structural technologies, electronics, avionics, thermal-management systems, software and integrated system- health-management systems over the past 40 years," said Leonard Nicholson, the Northrop Grumman-Boeing team's deputy program manager.

According to Nicholson, the CEV offers many fundamental improvements over Apollo. Among them:

- CEV's crew module will have much more internal volume than the Apollo capsule, but will only be slightly heavier, due to the use of advanced structural materials and technologies that reduce the size, weight and power consumption of key subsystems.

- CEV's crew module will carry up to six astronauts, while Apollo carried just three.

- CEV will carry more fuel for lunar return than Apollo, allowing it to change its orbit rather than relying on the moon and the Earth to be in the right relative positions.

- CEV will be able to operate as an autonomous spacecraft orbiting the moon for up to six months while its crew of four descends to the lunar surface in the lunar lander. Crew members and ground controllers will be able to communicate with the CEV and monitor its "vital signs" remotely. During the Apollo era, one astronaut stayed with the "mother ship" while the lunar lander carrying two astronauts descended to the moon.

- CEV will use two fault-tolerant subsystems and integrated system-health- management systems to allow it to detect, isolate and recover from subsystem failures. By comparison, Apollo generally had only single fault tolerance.

More here from Universe today: www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cev_new_details.html?12102005
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I like it, but I would be fearful of leaving the orbiter unmanned and to it's self...

You know...HAL might have ideas of his own and maroon the astronauts!...

[Rocketman]

Joe. We should volunteer to go to the Moon! Of course it'd be a must before flight type contract thing that women are brought along. You know!

Ok so when are we going to blast off Joe?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Grady,

I would certainly want you as a crewmate and leave all the instrumentation to you. Got to tie down your long mane of hair tho, as it would interfere with the final landing approach.

Of course the women and martini's would be a part of the deal...as I want to be the first person to shake a martini on the surface of the Moon with a young lovely... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Critics of the new Space Craft design

Apollo 2 Will Take Real Money To Emulate The Original


Honolulu HI (SPX) Dec 01, 2005
Many critics say that Mike Griffin's planned Moon program is too much like Apollo to excite anyone. The real problem is that it is not enough like Apollo to be affordable.
For some time now, I have been reading comments on the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. As it is on every issue, the space community is deeply divided. Some love it, some hate it - and Bob Zubrin loves it and hates it simultaneously!

Many critics oppose this project because it "looks just like Apollo", i.e. doesn't involve fancy winged spaceplanes or other radically new technology. These people are wrong. The real problem with the ESAS architecture is that it isn't enough like Apollo. It tries to achieve a major increase in mission capability with spacecraft and boosters that are too heavy, too expensive to develop, and too expensive to operate.

Externally, the ESAS study does look like an uninspiring rerun of Project Apollo. The CEV looks just like the Apollo CSM with solar panels. The lunar lander looks like the Apollo LM with a descent stage bloated up by the shift to LH2 fuel. The overall mission plan is a combination of the competing Apollo EOR and LOR plans. Only the names have changed.

But underneath this superficial similarity, Apollo 2.0 is actually much more capable than Apollo 1.0. It will land 2x as many astronauts for 2-4x the stay time as Apollo 1.0. The basic designs of the vehicles are intended to eventually allow 6-month stays on the Moon (although this would require a buried hab module, since the LSAM has no radiation protection).

Full story here: www.spacedaily.com/news/lunar-05zzy.html
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I think that the design is a sound one. It's the people who wanted something different and flashy, like the Shuttle desgn, that stagnated the US Space manned space program.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

CEV Makeover: NASA Overhauls Plans for New Spaceship

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Project Constellation program has been overhauled to include a slightly smaller Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and a new human-rated booster with an Apollo-era upper stage engine.

Project Constellation is the name NASA has given for the effort to develop hardware necessary to replace the space shuttle and return astronauts to the Moon late next decade.

NASA still intends to make use of the solid-rocket booster technology that has helped lift the space shuttle off the pad for a quarter century. But the agency recently approved CEV launcher plans calling for development of a new five-segment solid-rocket booster instead of the four-segment motor currently in production.

NASA also has dropped plans to power the so-called Crew Launch Vehicle’s upper stage with a Space Shuttle Main Engine modified to start in flight, opting instead to go with an updated version of the J-2 engine that was used on NASA’s Saturn 5 rocket.

Other newly approved changes to the CEV, according to sources familiar with the details, include reducing the diameter of the vehicle from 18 feet (5.5 meters) to 16.4 feet (5 meters) for additional weight savings and using existing Russian docking hardware for missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Previous plans called for using a U.S.-developed system.

These sources said NASA’s overhauled space transportation plan probably will not save money in the near term, but should prove cheaper in the long run because both the J-2 engine and five-segment solid-rocket booster are needed for the heavy-lift cargo vehicle NASA is developing for the lunar sorties it still hopes to begin as soon as 2018. By going with the J-2/five-segment booster combination for the initial CEV flights, NASA can skip development of an air-lit Space Shuttle Main Engine and put its resources toward producing an expendable version of that engine, which NASA still plans to use for the heavy-lift rocket’s main stage.

Original story here at Space.com: www.space.com/news/060120_cev_overhaul.html

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It's the Apollo all over again.

Let's hope they don't use the same faulty 25 cent relay that failed on Apollo 13.