NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) program has received the green light to progress after the completion of a critical design review. The next generation heavy launch system, which is designed to lift the Orion spacecraft for manned missions into deep space, is NASA’s most ambitious project since the 1960s and the most powerful rocket ever built, with 12 percent more thrust than the Saturn V booster used to send the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Scheduled to fly its first mission with an operational Orion spacecraft in December 2017, the SLS is currently undergoing a series of reviews in anticipation of final construction. As part of this process, Wednesday’s announcement moved the rocket from formulation to development, which the space agency says is the first for a NASA exploration-class space vehicle since the Space Shuttle.
Although the SLS will provide a lift capability of 130 tonnes (143 tons) in its most powerful configuration, for its first flight test it will be configured with a 70 tonne (77 ton) lift capacity and carry an uncrewed Orion spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit. The review, known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C), provides a development cost baseline for the 70-tonne version of US$7.021 billion from February 2014 through the first launch and a launch readiness schedule based on an initial SLS flight no later than November 2018.
As development progresses, SLS, its Orion manned space capsule, and the Ground Systems Development and Operations programs will continue to receive design reviews to make sure technical and cost factors are met.
"The Space Launch System Program has done exemplary work during the past three years to get us to this point," says William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We will keep the teams working toward a more ambitious readiness date, but will be ready no later than November 2018.”
Source: NASA
seems like a step backwards 50 years.
No in 20 years. Remeber this thing is built from the 1980's shuttle technology. Congress mandated that NASA stop developing rocket technology and become a life support system for the Shuttle. It is illegal for the US space program to not keep these folks employed, and the factories that produce shuttle parts running, until congress gets behind repealing the law. That is why this thing is "shuttle derived". So that it would keep the shuttle infrastructure employed regardless of how outdated or useless it becomes. That followed on when the space plane program was terminated because material science wasn't ready for the fuel tanks they dreamed up.
There are only two ways to fix the problems that law has created, repeal itt or close NASA. Regrettably NASA is still doing some good science elsewhere on the shoestring that is left after the shuttle infrastructure life support programs, so closing it isn't feasible. Repealing the law would require enough momentum to overpower the senators and representatives fom the states that currently benefit from that life support system which has historically been impossible.
The capsule looks way to small, I see no reason to build and do this, waste of time.
Why go back to the moon ? and I cant see the orion being big enough to carry people to mars, unless they are sleeping the whole time for 6 to 8 months to get to mars.
I see no system here worth doing, unless it can go to mars and back !