AviationGeeks.com - NASA Takes Inventory For The Next Steps

Launch vehicle engineers here believe a shuttle-derived vehicle built around the space shuttle main engine (SSME) is probably the fastest route to a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Some kind of heavy lifter is emerging as a centerpiece of the compromise space policy being worked out between Congress and the White House.

But that is only a rough call in a close race with vehicles based on the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) RS-68 or a kerosene-fueled engine NASA may develop in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force. The internal study of families of heavy-lift launch vehicles based on the three engines is helping NASA managers catalog the capabilities they control as they try to find ways to fit them into the next phase of U.S. space exploration, whatever that turns out to be.

Read More...