People would be forgiven for thinking they\u2019ve stepped back in time after NASA held a press conference to announce they would be using old methods to take up their next major goal \u2013 returning to the Moon. <\/p>\n
Using what can only be described as an Apollo on top of a Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) \u2013 NASA\u2019s long awaited press conference failed to note the full plan for NASA\u2019s return to the Moon \u2013 which rather appeared to be a way out of the Shuttle program than a resolute effort for a manned base on the Moon. What NASA is planning to use the $104 billion \u2013 spread over 13 years \u2013 on the effort to send four astronauts to the Moon is for a six man Apollo style vehicle on top of a SRB.<\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n From 2012, that will serve as the US\u2019 manned vehicle to travel and service the International Space Station (ISS), before \u2013 and some years later \u2013 the SDLV, or Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle, will be ready to launch a transit stage service module and propulsion system that will take man back to the Moon.<\/p>\n \u201cThink of it as Apollo on steroids,\u201d Griffin said.<\/p>\n No real plans were made public on the long-awaited news that this will be part of an effort to set up a Moon base \u2013 with only hints being forthcoming about it coming many year past NASA\u2019s 2018 \u2018sortie\u2019 mission to the Moon, with many more sorties on the schedule before NASA thinks about a base on the outpost.<\/p>\n The SDLV uses current STS (Space Transportation System) elements, with two five segment SRBs helping launch the vehicle \u2013 half extended External Tank (ET) and half payload \u2013 which has five SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) aiding assent. Another SSME will be on the service module, with the CEV running off an engine that uses Liquid Oxygen and Methane as its propellant.<\/p>\n Although Griffin noted their future plans do appear like NASA\u2019s Moon missions of the late 1960s, early 1970s, that wasn\u2019t the intention when designers and engineers met to work on the plan to head out of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a significant advancement over Apollo. Much of it looks the same, but that\u2019s because the physics of atmospheric entry haven\u2019t changed recently,\u201d he added. \u201cWe didn\u2019t set out with the intention for it to look like Apollo.\u201d<\/p>\n One positive to come out of the announcement was the increase in the safety ratio that has haunted NASA since the loss of two Shuttles (Challenger and Columbia) \u2013 with the STS program currently under the 1 in 220 mission loss of vehicle (LOV) estimate. The new ship will have 10 times the safety ratio \u2013 rising to 1 in 2000 LOV.<\/p>\n While Griffin noted the same vehicles will be the plan for the next stage \u2013 a mission to Mars \u2013 he had no timelines for that effort, with the announcement proving to be more of an anti-climax, based mainly around the new vehicle that will take astronauts to the ISS and on short (Apollo type) mission to the Moon before 2020.<\/p>\n <\/font> <\/p>\n Live update and image thread: Full conference audio and animations: People would be forgiven for thinking they\u2019ve stepped back in time after NASA held a press conference to announce they would be using old methods to take up their next major goal \u2013 returning to the Moon. Using what can only be described as an Apollo on top of a Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/font>http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/forums\/thread-view.asp?tid=486&start=1<\/font><\/p>\n
<\/font>http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/forums\/thread-view.asp?tid=492&posts=2<\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"