[NYPOST] NASA’s top official says the space agency’s new rocket won’t be ready for a moon shot next year.Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a Senate committee Wednesday he’s considering switching to commercial rockets to preserve the June 2020 launch date.
Bridenstine says two commercial rockets would be needed, one to launch the Orion capsule and its European-built service module, the other to launch an upper stage. Orion would have to dock with the upper stage in orbit around Earth, before heading to the moon.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket could do everything in one fell swoop.
"For sure is cheaper in PX, GI, but PX no have!"
Bridenstine says NASA will decide in the next couple weeks whether to stick with its rocket and delay ‐ or go commercial for this one test flight.
| Heh, Discussions here and many other places. To me the most interesting one was a two Falcon Heavy launch. The first launches the Orion space ship with the European attached unit to low earth orbit. The second launches an empty Falcon Heavy. The second stage would use almost no fuel in that scenario and have 80 to 90 tons of fuel available to it as there is no payload. It docks with the Orion EU unit and drives it to the moon. If the margins on the first launch are too tight for NASA do the EU unit as a third Falcon Heavy launch. A FH launch is $90 million so three launches would be $270 million. A Delta 4 Heavy launch is about 495 million and the SLS launch that is not happening as it is not on schedule is over $1 billion. So 3 FH's at $270 million is a massive cost savings. This is an un-crewed launch to test the Orion around the moon and it's heat shield for high speed re-entry from earth so it's a good cost savings plan. For a 2 FH launch SpaceX might want to replace their strongback at Vandenberg with a new one able to support a FH. That would let them have two FH on the pad at the same time. 3 FH would require a delay so another rocket could be readied on a pad. The 2nd pad in Florida is not capable of launching FH rockets without modifications to it's flame trench that would put it out of service for a long time and disrupt lots of other launches.  |