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Washington DC (SPX) Aug 25, 2004<br /><br />NASA planners working on the next generation of spacecraft that will ferry cargo, robots and astronauts to the moon beginning in the next decade are seeking as inspiration the work of their predecessors, both in the space shuttle program and even going back to Project Apollo of the 1960s.<br />At the moment, two teams at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are studying booster rocket design concepts.<br /><br />One team, assembled by the space agency's Exploration Directorate, has been examining rocket designs from the top down, according to Michael Lembeck, who heads the directorate's Requirements Division.<br /><br />At the same time, Lembeck explained, a second team at NASA's Launch Services group is conducting a bottoms-up review, meaning the services group, which purchases launch vehicles for NASA missions and payloads, is accumulating background on and analyses of all available U.S. boosters and their capabilities.<br /><br /><br />Link