News NASA's Future: The News and Updates Thread

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http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/human_space/

 

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Aviation Week: NASA Deep-Space Program Gaining Focus

 

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NOLA.com - The Times-Picayune: NASA's Michoud facility to add hundreds of jobs as work on heavy-lift rocket gears up

 

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NASASpaceflight: KSC could facilitate military and commercial operators in the OPFs

 

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SPACE.com: NASA's Huge New SLS Rocket Could Power Missions Far Beyond Mars

 

[T.Neo]

NASA's Huge New SLS Rocket Could Power Missions Far Beyond Mars

And I could buy my own private jet, if I had the cash. Such grandiose missions would be incredibly expensive to develop simply owing to their scope. With necessary funding unlikely to materialise, it is unreasonable to attempt to use them as justification for SLS.

 

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NASAtelevision:

Florida Today: Cabana: KSC's future is wide-ranging

 

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Parabolic Arc: NASA Seeks Options for SLS Cargo Payload Fairings and Adapters

 

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NASASpaceflight: NASA outlines SLS Mobile Launcher umbilical plans

 

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SPACE.com: NASA May Unveil New Manned Moon Missions Soon:

NASA is serious about sending astronauts back to the moon's neighborhood and will likely unveil its ambitious plans soon now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, experts say.

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AmericaSpace: New Manned Lunar Missions To Be Outlined By NASA Soon?

 

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[Cosmic Penguin]

Possibly the most detailed article I have ever seen about the Jarvis-M, errr no the Quasar 440, errr it should be the SLS block 1A with kerosene boosters powered by the good old F-1.

NASASpaceflight.com: Dynetics and PWR aiming to liquidize SLS booster competition with F-1 power

 

[Pipcard]

What if NASA decided to use the Jarvis-M?

 

[N_Molson]

Still on SLS : the October 2012 "monthly highlights"

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/705443main_SLS_Highlights_Oct2012.pdf

 

[T.Neo]

Quite interesting to see a 'liquid Ares I', especially considering Mike Griffin's involvement with Dynetics and previous discussions of a liquid first stage 'stick' on the internet.

Also rather amusing to see the LOX tanks of the boosters covered in what appears to be unpainted SOFI while the SLS core still sports its Saturn-esque paintscheme... :uhh:

 

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NASASpaceflight: Exploration Alternatives: From Propellant Depots to Commercial Lunar Base

 

[RGClark]

Possibly the most detailed article I have ever seen about the Jarvis-M, errr no the Quasar 440, errr it should be the SLS block 1A with kerosene boosters powered by the good old F-1.

NASASpaceflight.com: Dynetics and PWR aiming to liquidize SLS booster competition with F-1 power

After that it's just a short transition to realize that by using RD-171 engines but this time on the core stage, and making the core stage kerolox rather than hydrolox, that we can lift more than the 70 mT SLS first version, and as a single stage, not even side boosters required:

Low Cost HLV, page 3: Lightweighting the S-IC Stage.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html


Bob Clark

 

[Pipcard]

I think NASA is stuck on making giant hydrolox core stages because of the 30 years they had with the Shuttle. Everything must be Shuttle-derived! (to reduce development costs, I guess)

 

[T.Neo]

RGClark, I did not look too closely at your math, because it is too full of trivialised engineering decisions that are by no means trivial. For example, you cannot simply magic away costs by 'doing it the SpaceX way'. The "SpaceX way" is very dependant on the actual vehicles that SpaceX has been developing. Other factors aside, you're dealing with very different hardware and very different requirements here. You're bound to get different results.

Of course, if you 'develop SLS the commercial way', you've put a huge upset into the whole story. You might as well award ULA a contract to develop its Atlas V evolution, for example.

Introducing engineering into a discussion of SLS is a very slippery slope, because you rapidly come up with vehicles that are very much unlike SLS. SLS is the way it is because, essentially, the law mandates that it be that way. And of course, you get into the icky question of why you need SLS at all. But I digress.

The problem with SSTO specifically, has been pointed out at length many times previously on this forum. It is inefficient. If your kerolox SSTO can lift 70 tons to orbit, well, that's nice. But put a second stage on it (you could use something like DIRECT's JUS or SLS's upper stage) and you dramatically increase payload capability.

You could probably build a very nifty launch vehicle using 8.4 meter tankage, RD-171s or similar, and some sort of hydrolox upper stage, in the 70 ton range. It would be smaller, shorter, lighter, less dubious and likely less costly than your SSTO suggestion. There may not be good reason to do it, but you could if you wanted to. But it would not be SLS.

 

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Space Politics:

• Still waiting on a Senate defense authorization bill (and export control reform)
  
  
• What can $300 million a year buy for NASA’s planetary program?