credit JAXA / caption: Has Fig.6-1 spilled the beans?
Has the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency given the game away with this diagram from an International Astronautical Congress 2009 JAXA International Space Station plans presentation?
Is that a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy with Orion I see before me and what's with the human lander demonstration in 2025?
Is this the new plan, broadly speaking? Has the grapevine network between the different space agencies led the Japanese to broadly sketch out how they expect human Moon exploration to evolve after friendly email banter with their NASA counterparts?
It's certainly intriguing but then it could just be JAXA's plan and that Orion like spacecraft could be a JAXA vision vehicle for a 2020-era Japanese manned transportation system. Then again the human lander demo reference could explain the mysterious March International Space Exploration Coordination Group statement that indicated Altair may not be the only crewed lander - I never did get any sense out of the agencies about who this statement referred too. Stay tuned for more info about the international lunar exploration plans this week
on October 12, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply
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all space agencies have excellent powerpoint/photoshop/flash experts today... :)
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on October 12, 2009 4:27 PM | Reply
As all those images of a flying Ares-1, Ares-5 and Altair also prove...
They're as far from reality as any of the above, and at least as likely (if not more) to remain so.
on October 13, 2009 6:31 PM | Reply
I think that the the launcher is not the Delta IV, but an upgraded version of H-IIB with 2 boosters each powered by 2 LE-7A engines and the upper stage having 2 LE-5B engines. Yes, The vehicles's configuration would be very similar to Delta IV but with the capability of similar to Rus-M or Ares-1.