Sunday, August 15, 2010

Congress as rocket designers


Creature of Congress: The Ares V heavy-lift, last seen in 2007 and as part of the Constellation program. Thrown out with the bath water in abandoning Constellation in FY2011, does the congressional consensus for NASA now call for the same vehicle, with no Altair to fly, or is Congress looking for something similar to the Saturn 1-B? [NASA]

Jeff Foust
Space Politics

While the Senate version of the NASA authorization bill, S. 3729, made it clear that the heavy-lift launch vehicle it calls for, the Space Launch System, should be developed by “extend[ing] or modify[ing] existing vehicle development and associated contracts”, it wasn’t specific beyond that in terms of vehicle design.

However, as Space News reported Friday, the report accompanying the bill goes into additional detail about their desired vehicle design.

Read the Post, HERE.

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