Posted on 09/14/2011 7:43:02 AM PDT by Loud Mime
The Obama administration on Wednesday will unveil its much-delayed general plans for its rocket design, called the Space Launch System, which will cost about $35 billion, according to senior administration sources and information obtained by The Associated Press. It will carry astronauts in a capsule on top and start test launching in six years.
The size, shape and heavier reliance on liquid fuel as opposed to solid rocket boosters is much closer to Apollo than the recently retired space shuttles, which were winged, reusable ships that sat on top of a giant liquid fuel tank, with twin solid rocket boosters providing most of the power. It's also a shift in emphasis from the moon-based, solid-rocket-oriented plans proposed by the George W. Bush administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Yep, Gary was the driver. As part of the release of the book I’m going to try and see if there is a way to get the car back from German museum it’s sitting in...
solar power = green energy = only union jobs = pay offs.
Was this for some sort of follow-up lander program?
Make no mistake. This was not what Obozo wanted.
He fought it tooth and nail. Wanted to delay building a heavy lift rocket that Bush admin had set course on, and also wanted to flat out CANCEL Orion crew vehicle!!!
He was over-ridden by congress.
Now that shuttle is retired, I think the American people want to see this new vehicle and rocket succeed.
My dad pitched them a Hyrogen Peroxide based system first (no natural gas, that was just a marketing gimick for the Flame). After his presentation they went with the hydrazine solution.
This is a boondoggle. It won’t launch humans for at least ten years and that’s if everything goes well. It took us less time than that to get to the moon fifty years ago.
The real reason the Shuttle needed wings was so that it could launch, capture a Soviet satellite, and return to land all in one orbit. A mission it was never used for.
Seems like things take longer these days than in the 60s, whether building the WTC or launch vehicles.
I was watching a special on the Hoover dam. They said they could build a better dam these days with fewer men, with greater worker safety, but it would take twice as long, mainly because of environmental approvals.
Wow. It’s 1965 all over again.
1961, actually. And we should only be so lucky. The Shuttle was a long and costly cul-de-sac on the road to the stars.
The initial SLS will have a 70-ton payload, far less than the 125-ton payload of the Saturn V. The follow-on SLS with advanced-technology boosters will have a payload of either 130 or 143 tons, depending on the source. Either way it is far in excess of the shuttles 30-ton payload.
Google "Timberwind". The Air Force was planning a nuke-powered upperstage as late as the '80s. The project was scuttled after someone leaked a summary of it to the bloody Union of Concerned Scientists.
But last I head there were 30,000+ variable-yield W-31 warheads still in the stockpile. That could launch quite a fleet. ;-)
.....so that’s what was going on in your parents basement all these years?
#Lard.
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