NASA Space Launch System

(Credit NASA)

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth's orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station.

The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle program and the Constellation program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs. It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage. SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations. The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons (mT) and will be evolvable to 130 mT. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

The Space Launch System will be NASA's first exploration-class vehicle since the Saturn V took American astronauts to the moon over 40 years ago. With its superior lift capability, the SLS will expand our reach in the solar system and allow us to explore cis-lunar space, near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons and beyond. We will learn more about how the solar system formed, where Earth' water and organics originated and how life might be sustained in places far from our Earth's atmosphere and expand the boundaries of human exploration. These discoveries will change the way we understand ourselves, our planet, and its place in the universe.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• NASA
• Mars exploration
• Space Launch System
• Multi purpose Crew Vehicle
• MPCV
• Barrack Obama
• Presidential race 2012
• Moon
• ISS
• Man on the Moon

[MachOverspeedsPlace]

Let private companies and their investors worry about this or that booster. NASA needs to be all about aerospace experimentation and exploration anyway, and not competing in the satellite launching biz.

Whoever is building the the bad-ass booster ten years from now, we hire them guys to shoot NASA's manned/unmanned exploratory vehicles to Mars or wherever.

Our first goal should be the industrialization of near-space and the Moon. Rapid expansion into mid-space will naturally follow, etc.

[sunRsaturn]

NASA plans 2015 computer animated trip to the Whirlpool Galaxy M51. No longer held back by gravity or reality, NASA head spokesperson tells our corespondant at the Johnson Space center, that not only can we go to places that exist anywhere in the Universe, but we can make them how ever we want. This time we've won and nature can figure us out for a change!

[sunRsaturn]

So NASA has given up on science and gone into computer graphics and animation. Will this be free or will we pay for it in taxes and have to buy it at the store too? And come with tons of adware and popups to sell other products?

[1Guitarslayer]

piece of shit.... buy a Harley

[animus999]

brilliant, its a beast alright! wanna see china team up and we get some ships up and get a astoriod and mine it! go planet earth go!

[PenscratcherG]

Can it lift 120 tones to orbit? No? Then why are we talking about this paper rocket? The only things we physically have are the ATK boosters. Space X could do better than ATK.