Pictures: NASA's New Rocket—And 4 "Lost Launchers"

NASA's Next Big Rocket?
Illustration courtesy NASA
NASA's new, supersize rocket system announced this week will ferry people-packed spaceships to the moon, Mars, and perhaps even more exotic destinations in the future—or maybe not.
The Space Launch System (SLS), as NASA calls its new three-rocket configuration, could one day tower 97.5 meters (320 feet) tall—higher than the Statue of Liberty—and haul the equivalent of 12 fully grown elephants into low-Earth orbit.
With the end of the space shuttle program, the new system is meant to eventually carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Module to get humans into space. (Also see "After Space Shuttle, Does U.S. Have a Future in Space?")
Both SLS and an even bigger system to follow would recycle space shuttle technology, including the liquid-fuel systems and twin solid-fuel rocket boosters. However, experts note that the SLS comes from a troubled lineage of "lost" rocket designs that were warped beyond recognition, derailed from original missions, or altogether abandoned.
"SLS may not end up being built at all," said Jeff Foust, an aerospace analyst and editor of the Space Review website. "A lot depends on continuing debt-reduction efforts, changes in the White House and Congress, and the whims of politicians."
The U.S. $18-billion price tag and planned test launch date of 2017 are particularly suspect, Foust said.
"I'm skeptical they'll build it on the cost and schedule they're talking about," he said. "It's rare for any spacecraft this large to come in reasonably on budget and on schedule."
—Dave Mosher
Published September 15, 2011
Nova a No-Go
Illustration courtesy Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA
The large Nova rocket booster, illustrated at right next to Saturn I and Saturn V rockets, was in development in the 1960s before NASA decided on the smaller Saturn V as the thunderous launch system to deliver Apollo astronauts and their gear to the moon.
(Also see pictures: "Eight Moon-Landing Hoax Myths—Busted.")
The Apollo lunar-orbit rendezvous system involved a Saturn V rocket launching two spacecraft—a main vehicle and a lunar module—toward the moon. The two craft went into lunar orbit, and the module detached for landing on the moon. When the mission was complete, the lander returned to orbit, rendezvoused with the main craft, and both headed back to Earth.
By contrast, the five-stage Nova rocket would have sent everything directly to the moon in one colossal blast—with the uppermost stages actually landing on the moon and later returning the crew home. The technical challenges of building such a monstrous rocket soon became apparent, however, and NASA abandoned Nova in 1961.
Published September 15, 2011
Nuclear Mars Mission
Illustration courtesy Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA
While the Apollo program raced to complete the first moon landing in the 1960s, NASA asked other engineers to develop ways to reach Mars. One idea was chock full of uranium.
The Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application, or NERVA, was to be fitted to the upper stage of a big rocket. Many engines would be clustered together in orbit to give enough power for interplanetary travel.
To create propulsion, NERVA pumped liquid hydrogen into a reactor loaded with nuclear fuel rods. The expanding hydrogen gas spewed out of a cone-shaped propellant tank.
NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission built and successfully tested the device—which packed the oomph of a solid rocket booster in half the weight—on the ground. Engineers deemed NERVA flight ready, but it never flew: The Nixon Administration pulled the plug on Mars-bound plans in 1972.
(Related: "Astronauts Could Ride Asteroids to Mars, Study Says.")
Published September 15, 2011
Abandoned Ares
Illustration courtesy Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA
As talk of ending NASA's space shuttle program arose in 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the Constellation program, which aimed to return people to the moon by 2020.
Constellation's heaviest cargo, such as the proposed Altair lunar lander, was to head into low-Earth orbit without astronauts, on top of the never built Ares V launch system. (See pictures of the planned Constellation spacecraft.)
The crew would have later ridden atop the much smaller Ares I rocket—illustrated above—to rendezvous with their heavy equipment. The Ares I design was derived from the space shuttle's solid-fuel rocket boosters, and a prototype weathered an unmanned flight test on October 29, 2009.
But on February 1, 2010, President Barack Obama canceled the entire Constellation program, diverted some of its allotted funding to commercial spaceflight development—and this week supplanted the Constellation moon shot with the SLS deep-space mission and its massive new rocket design.
Published September 15, 2011
Scrapped "Fly Back" Booster
Photograph courtesy NASA
In the 1980 picture above, a NASA engineer observes a model of a space shuttle orbiter attached to a liquid-fuel booster rocket in a wind tunnel.
NASA initially imagined the space shuttle as the ultimate reusable spaceship, with not one but two manned components: the space shuttle orbiter and a liquid-fuel "fly back" booster, which onboard astronauts could glide back to Kennedy Space Center, making the booster easy to reuse. (See illustrations of one concept for the fly-back booster from 1970.)
Budgetary and political pressure piled on, however, and ultimately led to a different beast. Instead of the fly-back booster design, each space shuttle lifted off via an unmanned external fuel tank and two solid-fuel rocket boosters, which were difficult to reuse after falling back to Earth.
In the end, each launch of the space shuttle—research and development included—is estimated to have cost about U.S. $1.5 billion.
"Like Apollo, the liquid-fuel boosters were expensive up front. But the cost per flight would have been smaller" with the fly-back booster, said former NASA archivist David Portree, now a historian at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center. "In the end, the space shuttle we got was more expensive than what NASA could have built."
(Also see "The Most Unforgettable Space Shuttle Pictures.")
Published September 15, 2011