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

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:

• The Program of Record
• ISS Focused (Constrained Budget)
• ISS Focused (Increased Budget)
• ISS/Shuttle Extension
• Deep… 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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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