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No you idiot, if one of those 6+ motors fails, with the extremely high thrust they produce, the imbalance in thrust vector will knock the capsule into an unrecoverable spin. Also, if one of these high-powered rockets explodes, the capsule will surely be destroyed and the crew killed. 6+ has a much higher risk of explosion than 1.

Furthermore, these motors will be heavy; heavier than the single motor on the LAS tower, because they have much more casing than volume due to the cube/square law with their smaller diameter.

And lastly, your idea to use the puny low-thrust attitude control motors on the capsule to control the ~10G LAS separation is nonsense, they don't have anywhere near enough thrust to do the job, and being closer to the capsule and not on the end of the tower also reduces their effectiveness further since they cannot then leverage against the center of mass.

I also reject your casual dismissal that by putting the LAS motors around the rim of the capsule the SM faring must taper to less than the capsules' diameter will cause no problems; the panels will be very close to the solar panels, if they can fit at all.

There are a number of possible designs, but your crazy idea isn't one of them.

Which is spam

Huh? The biggest structural load, and hence how sturdy and heavy it has to be, would be due to the aerodynamic pressures of launch. Eliminating these pressures permits a lighter capsule, how is this hard to grasp?

Your dumb underside LAS idea is ridiculous, numerous abort motors mean increased risk of deadly failure right next to the crew or else knocking the capsule into an unrecoverable spin. They are also much too small unless you use an unrealistic number of them, and their small size leads to them having much more casing mass for either the tower LAS or MLAS system. And last but not least, the extra explosive bolts, wiring, and...

...oh yeah because the capsule is the same diameter as the rest of the Ares-I, your stupid underside LAS motors would HIT THE ROCKET when they are jettisoned as the SM faring would have to taper to a smaller diameter than the capsule in order to to tuck under the LAS motors, so you can eject them before reaching orbit. Your idea is awful.

Edit: Oh, and looking at your terrible design with the SM faring being much smaller than the capsule, where do the solar panels go?

Yes an ISS replacement... that when the present ISS wears long in the tooth, the ESA and Russia might consider building a brand new station based on multiple ATVs (up to six?) with a Russian hub, or maybe ATV(s) with inflatable modules on the front.

No they won't gaetano, the LAS faring may be larger, but the reduced aerodynamic strain on the Orion capsule allows the capsule itself to be lighter. Every pound that can be transferred from capsule to LAS saves several pounds of capsule mass. This is because the LAS is discarded well before reaching orbit.

The capsule then only needs to resist compressive force along the axis during reentry instead of compressive force against the walls of the capsule during launch. Viola'

And nobody is ever going to use the "underside LAS" because bolting anything to the heat shield is a terrible idea, and there would be too much equipment protruding into the service module.

Ehhh under those ultracold conditions, what we traditionally think of solids/liquids/gases is only loosely applicable.

Again the same problem, the Hydrogen ions would repel each other too strongly to effectively bottle any useful mass of them.

What you might want to look at is radical Hydrogen, Hydrogen atoms with only one electron, dissolved into something else.. something solid, cryogenic, and highly inert.

No. No concieveable electrostatic barrier could possibly withstand the expanding force from all those negatively charged ions trying to repel each other.

Besides, even if you could, it wouldn't accomplish nothing because H- does not react with itself to form H2, as it has too many electrons. H- would also be ridiculously corrosive. What you want is monoatomic radical hydrogen, not hydride (H-) ions.

When you don't need the structural margins and redundant systems for a 0.05% risk-of-death rocket, you can afford to bump up the performance quite a bit I'll bet.

I've actually handled SO3, its pretty scary stuff, reacts (often violently) with water to yield sulfuric acid. One thing it won't do is react strongly with plastics, which are generally pretty inert, with some exceptions. Which plastic did you have in mind?

Actually Jumpboy, Dichlorine Heptaoxide would have much worse Isp than LH2/LOX, because the exhaust products are much lighter (H2O). Chlorine and a lot of Oxygen are pretty heavy.

Cl2O7 would classify as a "nightmare chemical" too... You couldn't pay me enough to work with the stuff under any circumstance. Wikipedia even says it will form Perchloric Acid, not something you want in a rocket!

Depends. Payload, fuel budget, power supply...?