Matt Wronkiewicz's Weblog

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee recently released a summary of their report. The contents of that report mostly reflects the documents they had previously released and their comments during the public meetings. The report lists the most promising of the combinations of different options for exploring beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). Several of the architectures that they recommended include a new heavy lift vehicle (HLV) called Ares V Light, also known as Ares V Lite. Very little information has been released about this HLV, so I'll document… Read More

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: Deep Space (Ares V "Light")
Next: Deep Space (Shuttle Derived)

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 sixth architecture in the list is focused on exploration missions to deep space, assuming an increased budget of $3 billion per year. The committee… Read More

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.

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Previous: ISS Focused (Increased Budget)
Next: Deep Space (Ares V "Light")

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 fourth architecture in the list is ISS focused with additional Space Shuttle flights, assuming an increased budget of $3 billion per year. Of… Read More

Previous: ISS Focused (Constrained Budget)
Next: ISS/Shuttle Extension

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 third architecture in the list is ISS focused, with an increased budget of about $3 billion per year.

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Previous: Program of Record
Next: ISS Focused (Increased Budget)

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 second architecture in the list is ISS focused, constrained to fit the projected budget. This architecture is not recommended by the committee because it… 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