May 16, 2005
~ Fly Me to the Moon ~

New Scientist is carrying this article providing some details of what appear to be a developing proposal for CEV system, NASA's shuttle replacement. This take: launch the main CEV on a big horking rocket, then launch the crew on a much smaller air-launched vehicle. This should simplify "man rating" the parts that hold the crew, while still allowing existing heavy-lift rockets to be used to put the big stuff in orbit. The problem: the company behind the air-launch component, Airlaunch LLC, would need to scale up their prototype system a great deal to boost a meaningful payload, and their launch aircraft would need to scale up to match.

Still, good to see movement on this project, from all fronts.

Posted by scott at May 16, 2005 09:22 AM

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