NASA Chooses In-Line Booster
Well, it looks like NASA has decided to go with the ATK Full-Employment Plan instead of trying to develop a lunar architecture that might actually lead to the commercial development of space. Can't say I'm shocked.
posted by Jon Goff at 10:06 AM
7 Comments:
What would be a better, more-commerce friendly path?
Uhh, buying seats from a private company like T/Space? But on the good front, Virgin Galatic said that SpaceShip3 would be orbital.
Bravo,
I wrote a recent article about just that exact thing.....look a few days back down the blog for the "constructive ideas" post.
Griffin is the only one who is going to get NASA back on track.
Jon,
I follow (and agree with) the substance of your comments. It's just that I am not seeing emergent growth in private sector very heavy lift vehicles. I'm on board with launching the CEV - or even better yet, just buying tickets - but the heavy lift seems to be a sticking point.
Why do you need heavy lift? Just because Apollo did heavy lift, doesn't mean the VSE has to. Think multiple launches of medium class launchers.
Bravo,
It's just that I am not seeing emergent growth in private sector very heavy lift vehicles. I'm on board with launching the CEV - or even better yet, just buying tickets - but the heavy lift seems to be a sticking point.
As Dan pointed out already, that assumes that one needs heavy lift for lunar exploration. I'm not sure how real that requirement is. One could do decent lunar exploration with much smaller vehicles if they could deliver a high flight rate. Falcon V size seems about right if you could launch frequently enough.
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