HLV Legislative Language Is Bubbling Up In The Senate

This kinda sounds familiar oh yeah I did a short animation of 2 HLV side mount derived sitting on the launch pad.

http://www.youtube.com/user/pirate12384#p/u/14/LmfY-hAKP5k

2 launches like that and one goes to ISS the other brings a segments of refueling platform or a space craft.

no human passengers necessary. Let the Russians put them up and then they transfer to said craft or construct it or construct a refueling platform.

Its a pipe dream I know but its my pipe dream.

This is welcome news.

The space shuttle has served the country well. It is not clear the idea of the proposed vehicle pictured is cost effective given the past four years.

New thinking should be taking place, it appears it is to some degree. The schedule of such a effort maybe taken more serious in 2012. We clearly do not want to make the same errors that have placed HSF in the place that it is.

It is very unclear what will happen to ESMD!

I hope NASA will give the Shuttle-derived heavy lift launch vehicle a second look. It would be the cheapest plan and use existing systems. It could also save some of those shuttle jobs as well.

I don't care if a vehicle looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption, but I do care that a launch vehicle has the characteristics needed to launch on time from Florida. This is a concept whose importance seemingly was lost somewhere between the ICBM and the STS eras. If you intend to do multiple element launches in the future, it would be nice if you could have some confidence that both launches or at least the second element could go off on time.

Hanging stuff off every imaginable side of a launcher, or using 27 liquid main engines doesn't necessarily mean you can't launch on time, but I wonder if people have internalized Kennedy's we do it "...not because they are easy, but because they are hard" remark in the wrong way.

Legislation for a rocket but not what it will lift. More of the same dead end politics.

Can you get behind this program Keith if they decided this is the way to go? You would still have the "private" sector doing the LEO work and now we would have our national defense systems (SRM's)and heavy lift vehicles under control of the USG which is where I believe they belong. It would also protect our human resource assets that we have worked many years to build. I like this plan. You?

The question remains, what do you do with an HLV for the next ten years with no planned BEO missions? You are just paying an army of operations people to do little or nothing.

Making a near-term operational HLV, regardless of configuration, represents progress in BEO exploration. While a configuration may not end up being optimal, it is clearly the enabler for any mission. After a system is fielded we should evolve that system so that it becomes more optimal to the chosen plan. We keep making the same mistake over and over. We cancel everything waiting for what's perfect then we change our minds and start over.

I applaud congress on this approach. Start developing a non-debatable exploration capability while the rest of the plan is formed. We'll be years ahead and billions of dollars saved before we're done. Redirecting Constellation efforts to produce any derivative heavy lift launch system seems the best way to go at this point.

If you build the HLV now, then you don't have to pay for everything all at once when the time comes for beyond LEO missions and the funding for new vehicles. That's what got NASA in trouble in the first place, trying to do everything at once!

A shuttle derived HLV also gives you a back up man rated launcher for LEO missions using a space capsule or space plane.

And you could always use the HLV to start deploying large customized-- ISS derived-- single module space stations in more convenient orbits for US launches and US space tourist, allowing us to finally decommission the ISS ten years from now in 2020.

I don't believe in the philosophy of having just one centralized space station. An HLV would allow us to launch a large a spacious space station with a single launch. And we could also launch large customized individual space stations for Europe, Japan, India, Russia, and for private companies. This would allow a lot more scientist and businessmen and women to do a lot more work in space.

Marcel F. Williams

Buzz is right: we already have a heavy lift vehicle-it's called the Space Shuttle. Evolve it-don't end it!

So is legislation regarding perchlorate:
http://environmental-legislation.blogspot.com/2010/01/perchlorate-contamination-of-drinking.html
amongst many others.
IMHO Solids are on their way out and flyback boosters are on their way in. Therefore a 'directly' derived SDHLV was never on the table.
Hence the return to kerolox and a forward pass for heavy lift.
Personally I would fund a successful Space-X to develop a 'Super Merlin'; research aerospikes; TANs and more work on hypersonics... whilst waiting to see if Reaction Engines can square the circle of the Rocket Equation.

Alas the STS was a magnificent cludge that should have been allowed to evolve into a mature system. An Orion worthy of the name:
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Social/art/SH13G13.htm
(In memoriam Robert McCall)
but the Intelligent Designers got in the way!