The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, often known as the Augustine Committee, held another public meeting today to discuss the final scoring of each option. I previously posted timelines for most of the options, here listed with their line numbers as specified in the summary report.
Over the past couple of weeks I have written several posts about the alternative architectures proposed by the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, also known as one of the Augustine Committees. Most recently I posted timelines of each architecture:
Previous: Deep Space (Commercial HLV)
The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee has drawn up several alternate architectures for NASA to pursue its mission of sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). For a more complete summary, see "Future of NASA: Program of Record". The seventh architecture in the list is focused on exploration missions to deep space using a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift launch vehicle (SDLV), assuming an increased budget of $3 billion per year.
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Previous: ISS/Shuttle Extension
Next: Deep Space (Commercial HLV)
The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee has drawn up several alternate architectures for NASA to pursue its mission of sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). For a more complete summary, see "Future of NASA: Program of Record". The fifth architecture in the list is focused on exploration missions to deep space, assuming an increased budget of $3 billion per year.
Thanks to the committee's Twitter feed and some folks over at NASASpaceFlight.com, I was able to piece together the final options that will appear in the committee's initial report, to be presented to the White House on Friday. In its final report, the committee will not recommend one particular option, but will simply present the facts. Each of these options represents the combination of several architectural choices, adjusted for budget and schedule. Some architectural choices were discarded entirely. Several options will be presented as "for reference… Read More
The final public meeting of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee was today, and it looks like they did their job extraordinarily well. They really kept their focus on the goal of extending human civilization beyond Earth, and this was reflected in all of the options they are considering. To summarize, their recommended options are: maintain ISS and give up on NASA exploration, spend a little more to explore free space, and spend a little more to explore the moon. All of these options included some common recommendations. First, they called Ares I unaffordable and redundant, and recommended dumping it. Given their findings,… Read More