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<\/p>\nVice President Mike Pence has instructed NASA to land Americans on the Moon within the next five years. That was the headline from the latest National Space Council meeting this week.<\/p>\n
These words will require action and an influx of additional funding to stand a chance of becoming a reality. However, an overriding abstract behind the bold words is to put the Space Launch System (SLS) on notice that it cannot really afford any more schedule slips; more so, it needs to advance its launch dates.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this has happened before and it will happen again\u201d:<\/p>\n
Bold changes to the direction of NASA\u2019s deep space aspirations are by no means uncommon.<\/p>\n
Specific to NASA\u2019s departure from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in the final years of the Space Shuttle, NASA\u2019s Vision For Space Exploration (VSE) called for a Moon, Mars and Beyond roadmap as outlined by President George W. Bush in 2004<\/p>\n
This became NASA\u2019s Constellation Program (CxP) that centered around the Orion crew capsule \u2013 with an initial capability to launch crews to the International Space Station (ISS), an Ares I crew launcher and an Ares V Heavy Lift \u2013 Cargo Only \u2013 Vehicle.<\/p>\n
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Ares I \u2013 with Orion \u2013 and Ares V \u2013 CxP \u2013 via NASA<\/p>\n
Dubbed \u201cApollo on Steroids\u201d, the launchers were based on a mix of flight-proven technology from the Space Shuttle program, not least the Solid Rocket Boosters, plus heritage design and improved technology engines, such as the RS-68 for Ares V (later changed to using RS-25s) and the J-2X for the upper stage of Ares I.<\/p>\n
This 1.5 launch architecture of using a \u201csingle stick\u201d booster dedicated for just launching Orion and a HLV for lofting the heavy payloads out of LEO was in part due to NASA\u2019s wish to decouple crew and cargo from being on the same vehicle, one of the Shuttle\u2019s known safety concerns.<\/p>\n
It backfired. Ares I struggled during development, not least on upmass capability, resulting in Orion undergoing the ZBV (Zero Based Vehicle) process that stripped the vehicle of capability and led to annoyed memos from the Orion management begging the Ares team \u201cto stop hindering our process\u201d.<\/p>\n
Space Shuttle (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n It suffered from contradictions, such as claims it would be the safest crew vehicle ever built \u2013 unlikely to suffer a LOV\/C (Loss of Vehicle and Crew) failure in \u201cthousands\u201d of launches \u2013 yet required a hugely complex and expensive rollercoaster to be built into the pad as the Emergency Escape System (EES).<\/p>\n