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Has anybody been paying attention to the Space Launch Initiative ? I've been looking at the designs and I see some exciting possibilities, for both expanding the ISS and going to Mars, being opened up by this program.
Almost all of the SLI designs use a small crew taxi as the final stage to orbit. What if we accelerated the development of this taxi? It could provide us with a crew rescue vehicle for the ISS, and a crew return capsule for Mars Direct.
The same goes for the winged, flyback boosters that are being designed. The inherently unsafe SRBs on the Ares can be replaced with safer and more powerful flyback boosters when we finally build the Mars rocket.
I'm particularly intrigued by the Northrop Grumman proposal that uses a large flying wing as the first stage. This eliminates the need for fixed launch pads, enables more flexibility in choosing launch sites and times, and it makes it easy to ferry the booster back to the launch site.
"I'm not much of a 'hands-on' evil scientist."--Dr. Evil, "Goldmember"
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I hope NASA gets it right this time and doesn't end up supporting another $10k per pound to orbit wonder. It's encouraging though that NASA is actually working on things like this. I especially found it inspiring that NASA wants this technology to be a cornerstone in private space transportation. But I wonder if it'll still be cost effective against the already existing Russian hardware that could do most of the taxiing and launching functions already for a fairly cheap price.
To achieve the impossible you must attempt the absurd
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