I would just like to start by saying:
Carrying on though! The rocket will be of a Saturn V class, only bigger.
“The initial version of the heavy-lift rocket will feature two five-segment shuttle-derived solid-fuel boosters strapped to a 27.5-foot-wide first stage powered by three RS-25D/E shuttle main engines. The second stage will use an upgraded Apollo J-2X engine, giving the Space Launch System — SLS — rocket the ability to lift 154,000 pounds of payload with a first stage thrust of 8.25 million pounds.”
My favourite sentence of the whole article is this though:
“An upgraded version equipped with five shuttle main engines will have a liftoff thrust of some 9 million pounds and be able to loft more than 130 metric tons, or 286,000 pounds, to low-Earth orbit.”
FIVE SHUTTLE MAIN ENGINES. I was just admiring the Saturn V last night actually, imagining seeing such a thing upright and lifting off the ground. I’ve seen one at Kennedy, on it’s side, and those thrusters are huge, but this rocket is going to be even bigger! I can scarcely comprehend that.
(above: the Saturn V with nearby person to scale.)
I can feel the thunder already.
NASA hasn’t specifically said, “YES, we’re going to Mars now, that’s the plan; an asteroid by 2025 and Mars before the 2030s are out.” Just to reiterate, they have not said that, though I wouldn’t mind hearing it.
(above: an artist’s impression of the rocket which, come to think of it, I’m not too sure of its name)
Baby steps though. According to Spaceflight Now the plan is for test flights in 2017 and to start off duty with missions like servicing satellites in geosynchronous orbit or in Lagrangian points which, in the past, are basically written off if there’s a breakdown. This could be great for James Webb’s lifespan, provided it can get off the ground.
Mars, of course, is not out of the picture. Hopefully with the money saved on getting astronauts to the ISS in the shuttles a little more can be put into deep space plans.
Read the full story at Spaceflight Now (http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1109/14heavylift/)
![Sandy Gas Jets Hypothesized on Mars
I can never fully express the love I have for NASA’s conceptual arts and illustrations on just about anything. But once they feed me concept art from our neighboring cousin planet Mars I get twice as giddy.
Every spring, strange dark spots appear near the Martian poles, and then vanish a few months later. These spots typically span 50 meters across and appear fan shaped. Recent observations made with THEMIS instrument onboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey, currently orbiting Mars, found the spots to be as cold as the carbon dioxide (CO2) ice beneath them. Based on this evidence, a new hypothesis has been suggested where the spots are caused by explosive jets of sand-laden CO2. As a pole warms up in the spring, frozen CO2 on the surface thins, perforates, and begins to vent gaseous CO2 held underneath. Within this hypothesis, interspersed dark sand would explain the color of the spots, while the underlying frozen CO2 would explain the coolness of the spots. Pictured above, an artist depicts what it might be like to stand on Mars and witness the venting of these tremendous gas and dust jets.
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Ron Miller (ASU)
[Click image for better view/resolution]](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0608/marsandjets_miller_big.jpg)
