On Monday 12 October Flightglobal reported that NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that a heavy lift vehicle was necessary for exploration and that a vehicle was being costed
Talking to sources within the Ares V project and close to the Space Shuttle programme office's Shuttle-derived Heavy Lift Vehicle team it has become clear that while Bolden' choice of words suggested a single vehicle concept was under study, the reality is that HLV is still in the running
Bolden's comments on what he thinks is needed, a heavy lift rocket for exploration and commercial vehicles for LEO access within a constrained budget (Bolden mentioned that he would need to organise "overguides", additional funding requests for the FY2011 budget, for the likes of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a replacement for which - after its launch failure - has not been budgeted for), pointed to a decision by the administrator that the Augustine panel's second option and its designated "Ares V lite" heavy lift vehicle had been selected
On Friday 16 October at the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea NASA's Charles Cockrell, associate director at the agency's Langley Research Center's systems engineering directorate, said that the Ares V project office was working on "trade studies of Ares V variants to feed that [human spaceflight policy] decision making process"
However sources close to the HLV team tell Hyperbola that "Yes the shuttle derived side mount, HLV, is one of the heavy lift launch vehicles being considered"
As Bolden is an ex-Shuttle astronaut it is perhaps not surprising that he might be open to the Shuttle programme office's ideas and so this blog asks the question, will anything of Constellation survive this review?
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Bolden's "heavy lift vehicle": Ares V and HLV battle it out
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on October 17, 2009 2:51 AM | Reply
"said that a heavy lift vehicle was necessary for exploration"
absolutely TRUE since all "beyond LEO" explorations can't be accomplished with the (weak) EELVs or (much weaker) "commercial space" rockets!
unfortunately, ALL the concepts to design the new HLV (Ares-V, Ares-V-lite, Ares-IV, the RESIZED-Ares-5-called-Direct, the redesigned Shuttle-C, etc.) are TOO expensive and/or seriously FLAWED
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on October 17, 2009 3:03 AM | Reply
post edit: ...too expensive, seriously flawed and... dangerous!
on October 17, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply
A new inline SD-HLLV (NLS/Jupiter like) has appeared ...
on October 18, 2009 12:56 PM | Reply
Please, stop spamming Gaetano. You down own any copyright on space concepts nor are you rocket scientist. Heavy lift is not the only option. "weak" EELV and commercial rockets are enough to go beyond LEO, but with a different approach, instead of brute force, use some fuel depots and/or in space assembly. And yes, space is dangerous, Lindberg's flight was dangerous, Cugnot's fardier was dangerous, my car is dangerous. So what?
on October 18, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply
"A new inline SD-HLLV (NLS/Jupiter like) has appeared ..."
and it's called "Ares-5-lite" (or RESIZED-Ares-5) NOT "Jupiter" or "NLS" or "Direct"
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on October 18, 2009 8:13 PM | Reply
First lets consider LEO. The Orion and Dragon can serve ISS . But to gt out of LEO you need a HLLV either the Aries V or its lite version.
Lets assume that the ability to reach Mars with a manned mission is a final end goal. Then an Aries V class booster get you 140-180 ton to LEO. Due to radiation exposure we want to minimize the flight time you use a nuclear powered VASMIR tht by th way gets you flights to narly anypoint in the solar system.
You need a NERVA sized reactor generating a 500 MW of powr to drive a VASMIR to cut the trip out to Mars to 3 months with a propulsion mass of around 40000 pound of hardware. Give the reactor work to Naval Reactors and you7 will get a robust power plant with a 57 year history on submarines. The rest of the mass is for the crew and propellant.
Send cargo and a hab module to Mars unmanned and then send the cr3ew,. You cut the radiation dose from cosmic rays from 85 rem to under 25 rem.
And you get a set of vehicles that can reach asteroids, Eruopra and Titan as well as Mars all at the same cost structure to support.
LE(O can be done on Falcon 9 and Delta VI Heavy. Exploring will take a HLLV.
I would not luike to be ATK right now and being told sorry you wont gt to play for a decade. And the real winner is SpaceX
Jane Fonda and her buddies can have a heart attack about nuclear power in space. Lets go explore again and have set of destinations beyond Apollo but with the wisdom of Zurbin.
on October 19, 2009 9:12 AM | Reply
Wake up guys!
EELVs are not man-rated and NASA will drag its feet helping them jump that hurdle.
Falcon 9 and Taurus II have never flown... why does everyone assume that they will be successful? Falcon 1 wasn't very successful.
Yes of course you need HLV to get out into space ,, but which one? Ares V Lite needs 2 launches to get to the Moon.
The solution is the Ares VI from UPLIFT (me...and no I don't have the copyright!). This is a modified Ares V lifting both Altair AND Orion in one launch. You can't get any more efficient than that.
on October 20, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply
Gaetano, I know Ares 5 lite which is another thing. I'm not talking about it, I'm talking about an inline SD-HLLV.
Stay tuned.