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NASA Unveils New Rocket Design

NASA
An illustration of NASA's planned Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle, showing possible destinations for future astronauts beyond Earth's orbit, including the moon, an asteroid and Mars.

By KENNETH CHANG
Published: September 14, 2011

NASA revealed on Wednesday a design for its next colossal rocket that is to serve as the backbone for exploration of the solar system for the coming decades.

The rocket would be the most powerful since the Saturn V that took Americans to the moon four decades ago. NASA expects that it could lift astronauts on deep-space missions farther than anyone has ever traveled.

“We’re investing in technologies to live and work in space, and it sets the stage for visiting asteroids and Mars,” the NASA administrator, Major General Charles F. Bolden Jr., said at a news conference.

In an effort to speed development and control costs, the design is based on pieces from the just-retired space shuttles. The first stage would essentially be an elongated shuttle fuel tank, and it would use the same rocket engines. For the initial test flights, solid rocket boosters — stretched versions of the shuttle boosters — would be strapped on to provide additional thrust.

The first unmanned test flight of the first iteration of the rocket, able to lift 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, could fly as early as 2017. Future versions are to be more powerful, capable of lifting up to 130 metric tons.

The cost of developing the rocket is estimated at $10 billion over the next five years. The crew capsule where the astronauts would ride would cost $6 billion and the launching pad and other ground facilities would add another $2 billion, for a total of $18 billion.

Congressional backers of NASA hailed the announcement as resolving a standoff between Congress and the White House over the future of the space agency.

“This is a day we’ve been looking forward to for a long time,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. “We wish it had been sooner, of course.”

Last year, Congress passed a blueprint for the space agency calling for a rocket like the one announced Wednesday, and President Obama signed it into law. But NASA missed deadlines for announcing how it would implement the plan. In frustration, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where Senator Hutchison serves as ranking member, even issued a subpoena to NASA demanding information.

NASA has yet to work out the details of how it could use the new rocket, and the launching schedule beyond the first test flight will depend highly on future budgets. Internal NASA documents suggest that if the space agency’s budget remains flat, providing about $41 billion between now and 2025, then the first manned flight would not occur until 2021, and the rocket would fly only once every two years, and NASA would not finish the 130 metric ton version until after 2030.

With more money — perhaps as much as $62 billion — the space agency estimated that it could fly up to two missions a year and have enough to start developing the pieces, like a deep-space habitat, that would likely be needed to for a mission to an asteroid.

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quote:
Originally posted by Sunil:
Right they need to get to the space labs, can't depend on the Russians for servicing.
the Russians are using old tech but they still have the most reliable heavy lift vehicle on the planet. They have had some set back due to the fact the are cash poor and just have not been able to invest in new space tech as rapidly as the rest of their European and American partners meet them to to be. The Americans have been subsidizing them heavily.
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