Durka-Durka-Muhammed-Jihad!!
Coolness!
NASA to unveil plans for 2018 moon missionSupreme coolness!!WASHINGTON — NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion and the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the moon by 2018.
[...]
That plan, called the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, was presented by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, his space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier and several other senior agency officials Wednesday afternoon to senior White House policy officials, including an advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and the president's Deputy National Security Advisor J.D. Crouch.
NASA's plan, according to briefing charts obtained by Space.com, envisions beginning a sustained lunar exploration campaign in 2018 by landing four astronauts on the moon for a seven-day stay.
The expedition would begin, these charts show, by launching the lunar lander and Earth departure stage (essentially a giant propulsion module) on a heavy-lift launch vehicle that would be lifted into orbit by five space shuttle main engines and a pair of five-segment shuttle solid rocket boosters.
Once the Earth departure stage and lunar lander are safely in orbit, NASA would launch the Crew Exploration Vehicle capsule atop a new launcher built from a four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster and an upper stage powered by a single space shuttle main engine.
The CEV would then dock with the lunar lander and Earth departure stage and begin its several day journey to the moon.
NASA's plan envisions being able to land four-person human crews anywhere on the moon's surface and to eventually use the system to transport crew members to and from a lunar outpost that it would consider building on the lunar south pole, according to the charts, because of the regions elevated quantities of hydrogen and possibly water ice.
If possible, I'll try to get copies of those briefing notes from Space.com...
UPDATE: Here's the Crew Exploration Vehicle image from Space.com that I found this morning.
Looks pretty cool and the crew 'capsule' looks a lot like the Apollo capsule which stands to reason that it was a tried and tested design which I'm sure will be 'upgrade' to reflect 21st century technology.
Of course, bear in mind that this is a conceptual drawing and the difference(s) between what's envisioned and what makes it to the launch pad will differ.....just look at the conceptual and actual designs of both the Apollo vehicles and the space shuttle designs....
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