The Return of Apollo?

hpulley writes "Bell bottoms are back, the Stones are still touring and Time has a piece on how NASA's _new_ space vehicle may actually be the return of a very old friend, a highly modified and modernized version of the Apollo Space Capsule. Manned spacecraft might actually leave low earth orbit again! Initially they'd fly with Delta and Atlas but more powerful boosters could be developed. We could go to the Moon again, and perhaps to Mars but I'm getting ahead of myself. Does that mean the last 30 years of space flight have been for naught? Expensive steps backward?"

Comments

Re:Build a Saturn VI to go with it?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Better to go with a more modern launch platform. When the asteroid made 2014 look like a bad time on my calendar I was working out a camparitive chart of the various launching platforms available to the modern designer.

Several items popped to my attention. First, the Russians have some fabulous Kerosene/L02 engines. Second, said engines have made their way into the Atlas and Delta launch suites. Both of which have configurations that will easily lob 20,000 lbs into LEO.

The difficulty is in rating these expendable platforms for manned flight. There are a whole lot of extra things to check for when sending people instead of freight. Indeed, the simplest answer might be to adapt the Soyuz launch system. Replace the third stage with our new whizbang spaceplane, or simply put our own capsule up top.

If the plan is to grow our own, the Atlas/Centaur seems to be a good cost effective way to lob a capsule up.