NASA Engineers Work On Alternative Moon Rocket

Gibson writes "A team of 57 engineers at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight center feel that the Ares rocket is not the best solution for launching the new CEV. They are currently working on their own time developing an alternative launch system known as Jupiter. The 131 page proposal, along with other information, is available on the project website. Proponents of the project say that it is 'simpler, safer, and sooner' than the Ares project, predicting the ability for a return to the moon in 2017, two years before the current goal. Ares management has so far dismissed the proposal as a 'napkin drawing.'"

Comments

It is a better system than Aries

[caseih]

If you look at the overviews of their ideas, you can tell right away that this launch system would have several advantages over Aries. It does not require a modification of the boosters, which is one of the more significant design challenges that Aries, especially the crew lift system, is facing. Additionally they don't call for a significantly different vehicle to lift the crew. While they do propose a few different systems for lifting cargo vs lifting cargo and people, the base vehicle engineering is the same, unlike the Aries system. In short, it really looks like this Jupiter system is more flexible, maybe cheaper, and certainly easier than Aries is turning out to be. I also think that Jupiter could be built, tested, and launched quicker than Aries.

This group's ideas are not new though, they proposed them a few years back, but NASA seemed to be set on Aries from almost the very start for some odd reason.