US Space Launching System

[pmn1]

http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/sls.htm<br /><br />How accurate do you judge this statement to be?<br /><br />A decision to proceed with the Space Launching System in July 1961 would have resulted in first flight of the A vehicle in mid-1964, first manned launch in mid-1965, first launch of the BC super-booster in mid-1966, and the first manned landing on the moon in late 1967. Instead NASA was given the Apollo program, the Titan 3 was developed for the Air Force's launch needs, and an opportunity to build a flexible launch system that would still be in use today was lost. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[vulture2]

Despite the LH2/LOX core, this vehicle is as complex as the Titan, which was expensive and not particularly reliable. The stacked solids would probably be more expensive and less safe than the Saturn V first stage, and parallel staging is not that much of a benefit when the booster stage has almost all the thrust, as witness the decision not to ignite the core engine on the Titan IV on the ground even though the stages were actually mounted in parallel.

 

[missile_mother]

"How accurate do you judge this statement to be?"<br /><br />Just an opinion that can't be validated. A flexible system was used, Titan, and the program came to an end

 

[pmn1]

Did NASA ever consider using gliders rather than capsules??<br /><br />Edit, i've noticed a section in the Astronautix article on CEV that states that lifting-body and winged configurations that could have been recovered with horizontal landings were possible but time was against their development - how did they compare to the USAF glider? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[qso1]

Two words render the statement inaccurate...those words are "Would have". Those two words IMO, reveal a bias on the writers part against Apollo. If the words had been "Could have" or had been written by an inexperienced writer, I could see it. But this passage is written by whoever maintains the data at Astronautix and that person apparently was biased towards this particular concept. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>