A long, long time ago in a NASA far, far away, the Ares V rocket was invented to carry American astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars. It had two five-segment solid rocket boosters developed from the Space Shuttle program, and four or five SSME’s taken directly from the Space Shuttle program. Eventually the SSMEs were replaced with RS-68’s because SSMEs are damned expensive and it’s kind of a waste to simply throw them away. And then President Obama cancelled the whole thing, and Ares V died.
But it didn’t go away. A number of influential Senators realized that the end of the Shuttle program meant the end of a boatload of jobs in their home states, so they demanded that NASA revive the design. The Senate Space Launch System was officially unveiled today, and its design is back to the early Ares V design, using five SSME engines. Since the SSME is no longer in production, where would they come from? Why, NASA has several in stock, ready to go. Of course, not a whole lot of them in stock, so all the Space Shuttle due to go to museums? Yeah… they might get there without engines. And eventually… no more SSMEs.
The design is truly hugenormous, with the biggest cargo version taller than the Saturn V and capable of carrying more payload.
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9 Responses to “Space Launch System”
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And from what I read in the press releases, no flights with crew until 2021, and only one launch per year. Of course, we’ll have to maintain the support infrastructure and personnel for 365 days per year. Yeah, that’ll be cheap.
Oh, and no defined mission for the thing, other than “Let’s go to Mars! … Or maybe an asteroid or something …”
Not just madness, but obscenely expensive madness.
you sure about SSME ?
while in News they talk about 5 RS-68 engine and J-2X in upperstage…
This one is going to use a stock diameter Shuttle ET; Ares-V was going to use a larger diameter one.
This is basically the Jupiter/DIRECT design that a lot of people at NASA wanted instead of Ares-I/V:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIRECT
Though it has 5-segment SRB’s on it rather than the stock 4-segment Shuttle ones.
NASA decided long before the SLS design was finalized to send the Shuttles to museums with fake engines cobbled together from discarded parts.
Isn’t there an SSME-based design not intended for reuse?
There apparently is a design for one, but it always seems to categorized as an expensive development cost – though to lay(-ish) people like us it might not seem like it would be that hard.
Time to party like it’s 1968.
A wonderful birthday present for me this month, this is. Before DIRECT, before Longfellow, this was Bill Eoff’s MAGNUM. (I wanted Ares V myself, but this will do fine.)
[…] increased to five – ensuring a truly awesome spectacle at launch. (Scott Lowther at the Up-Ship blog has pointed that no new Space Shuttle Main Engines will be built for the SLS, it will use examples […]