NASA Receives Crew Exploration Vehicle Proposals

Nasa has just recieved the new concept designs for the new CEV!

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida -- The future of human space transportation, not only into Earth orbit, but also back to the Moon and onto Mars, kick-started this week as NASA received contractor proposals for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).

“Our CEV will certainly be capable of servicing station,” McKenzie stated, but the company’s proposal did not address that use as a key top requirement. This prospect would receive a thorough look early in the execution of a CEV program if the firm is selected, he said.

What do you guys think of the new concept?

www.space.com...


[edit on 3-5-2005 by rufi0o]

Care to post a working link?

Thanks


[edit on 3-5-2005 by Aelita]

Right here...
www.space.com...

Sweet! I think this concept make much more sense than the current shuttle design. Using disposable booster stages, that can be modular depending on the mission and keeping the cargo seperate will be much safer and cost effective.

yep, plus its a lot more safer for the crew on re-entry as its a lot smaller than the shuttle.

That's very cool, glad to see some initiative being taken. They look pretty fancy, but definitely influenced by the shuttle.

The third pic, especially, is a total throw-back to Apollo.

Interesting. Has to be 40,000lbs to fit a Delta 4 or Atlas 4, it would be nice if the landing module was 20,000 to fit with a Falcon 5.

It also appears that it may be a 2-4 person vehicle.

Wonder what Boeing comes up with.

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Realist05]

Yuck. Lifting Bodies is what morgue workers do. Just forget the wings- it's a spaceship, darn it. Apollo re-entry capsules are not retro- physics is physics, then and now. Lifting bodies glide like (remember the Real Steve Austin from the novel Cyborg?) poop, and gliders re-enter like gut-shot geese. Make it a cone with a canopy, please.

We tested these things for years at Dryden. They suck.

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Chakotay]

you should of waited a bit before starting this thread (oh well)...I say that because this proposal is Lockheeds design, very shortly we should see Boeing's design emerge...In case ya didn't know there planned to go head to head in 2008.

The concept isn't as good looking as I was expecting from Lockheed, but at least its a spaceplane and not a capsule.

Realist05
It also appears that it may be a 2-4 person vehicle.

no, one of the original requirments was for it to be able to hold 4-6 people depending on its mission and config.

I'll be anxiously awaiting Boeing's concept and also a lot more info on Lockheeds design.

Notice the similarity to the Russian "Klipper" design. (encyclopediastronautica)

Originally posted by Murcielago
...but at least its a spaceplane and not a capsule.

Gaa. Lugging wings (such as they are) through the ascent atmosphere to vacuum and then to the moon, mars and beyond and back is like carrying a canoe across the desert. Every structural kilogram and effective kilogram-orbit of drag is a kilo that can't go on to Mars. You lose twice.

Canopies are lighter, steerable, and redundant, tovarich.

At least its NOT a Roton (Rotten?).

Try this. Go to estes.com. Build one of these with a booster, and a capsule config of the same weight and specific impulse. Launch and record altitudes. Continue until one fails to land safely (oops, did you need a chute on your lifting body? Then why bother with the stub-wing drag losses? Did you cover it with an aeroshell? Then you squandered that weight of effective payload to orbit!!).

The answers are in the math.

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Chakotay]

Chakotay, is this the canopy you're talking about?

space-where-i-want-to-be.120host.net...

A hypersonic canopy? Fascinating.

I was thinking along the conservative, proven lines of a Recovery/Parachute System and Rocket Terminal Landing System- ablative heat shield (ballistic re-entry), steerable parafoil (drogue/terminal parachute) and Soyuz-style terminal rocket for land-touchdown.

The bulk of the CEV would remain in orbit for refit/resupply on end of mission- only the descent module (crew return capsule) would de-orbit.

Boring, efficient, practical, proven. Boeing.

I fly an aircraft built in 1962. It worked then, it works now, and if it ever becomes unairworthy I will reproduce it rivet by rivet. New avionics, sure. Sealed bearings, ok. But I figure if I found a UFO in an archaeological site, I wouldn't consider it 'retro' to back-engineer it. Same with space- Soyuz rules by default of continuity in the Apollo program, and the sooner we dust off Apollo (with updates) and fly it, the better. Or buy Soyuz. But lifting bodies or Sanger spaceplanes are just spit in the wind-

(until we get maglev launchers)

-and those who spit in the wind acheive a predictable result.

[edit on 4-5-2005 by Chakotay]

I personally like the look of a spaceplane more then a capsule. and as the main link explains it has its adventages. Lockheeds proposal looks like it will use a parafoil for its landing, combine that with a lifting body and that equals precision landing, like the shuttle does, while the soyuz land anywhere (within a pre-picked area).

Also:
BTW, it appears that while Nasa will get a new shiny CEV, there gonna stick will the current firststage...which is the 2 large solid rocket boosters and the big external tank.
Do you like this idea...or not?

AviationNow
Griffin: NASA Will Pick Cheapest Option For Boosting CEV
05/04/2005 09:06:09 AM
By Jefferson Morris

Administrator Michael Griffin said during a speech in Washington May 3 that NASA will pick the cheapest option for launching the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) into orbit, but added that he will not discard the space shuttle's launch stack "lightly."

"It's my job now to be a responsible steward of the government's money," Griffin said during a breakfast sponsored by Women in Aerospace (WIA). "I will be advocating whatever method of getting Crew Exploration Vehicle to orbit that seems to me to be the cheapest."

The two leading candidates for boosting the CEV are a shuttle-derived system or an upgraded version of the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. While professing indifference toward which launch system is used, Griffin said the shuttle launch stack already offers the kind of performance needed to send hardware to the moon.

"As NASA administrator today, I already own a heavy lifter," Griffin said. "Every time I launch, I launch more than 100 metric tons into low orbit, which of course is what you need for returning to the moon. ... I will not give that up lightly, and in fact, can't responsibly do so, because it seems to me that any other solution for getting 100 metric tons to orbit is going to be more expensive that utilizing efficiently what we, NASA, already own."

Griffin said that NASA's best estimates put the weight of the planned CEV at 30 metric tons or more. NASA recently received proposals from contractors hoping to build the CEV.

Murcielago, I like something called NOVA or JARVIS. Or the SATURN-V itself. You see, I am old, and I remember real muscle cars, loose women, and virile German rocketry.

I hate the idea of using the Shuttle main tank and SRB's for anything other than recycling. The Administrator's comments are absurd, show no understanding of the physics of space dominance, or- we've got something new and black and NASA is pulling the usual smoke-and mirrors routine.

[edit on 4-5-2005 by Chakotay]

You might want to check out: www.astronautix.com/lvs/ares.htm

This may not be as bad an idea as it sounds; developing a new launch infrastructure and assembly procedures could be as expensive as using throwaway Delta 4's, depending on launch rates, and you can't say the shuttle stack lacks engineering studies or launch experience.


I agree that a capsule is definitely the best option, the latest Boeing promotional art released yesterday shows them going that way.

Originally posted by Realist05
I agree that a capsule is definitely the best option, the latest Boeing promotional art released yesterday shows them going that way.

Link, please

The image is included in the header for this article:

www.space.com...

But the vehicle described in the article sounds like a better bet than the CEV!

They've been talking about this for years. They've been making designs for years...why don't they do it? In the time they've been trying to get that old, expensive deathtrap spaceshuttle ready to fly again, they could have built a new CEV.

Originally posted by Flinx
They've been talking about this for years. They've been making designs for years...why don't they do it? In the time they've been trying to get that old, expensive deathtrap spaceshuttle ready to fly again, they could have built a new CEV.

Just look at it this way, the longer we wait the better tech we will be able to cram in there, including but not limited to new composit hulls made from exotic mixtures of Nanoparticles and Conventional Alloys.