If you’ve been away from space for a while, here’s what might be launching Americans into space in the next decade.
Falcon 9
From sometimes Canadian, South African & American Elon Musk‘s company Space X. Musk is a PayPal alumni and Tesla Motors co-founder - remember that latter company name for future trivia questions and/or a remake of Back to the Future. After several successful launches on their Falcon 1 rocket, Space X successfully orbited a wheel of cheese last year on the Falcon 9. Space X has a ~$2 billion contract with NASA for delivering stuff to the International Space Station.
The Falcon 9 is a two stage LOX/Kerosene rocket using 9 Merlin engines on the first stage and a single Merlin engine on the second stage. The Falcon 1 also used a Merlin engine, the business idea being (as I understand it) that standardizing around reliable parts & technologies will lead to greater business efficiencies rather than trying to optimize the hell out of everything (for example, by using toxic monopropellents or LH2).
There’s a Heavy Lift version of the Falcon 9 called the Falcon Heavy which looks like the Falcon 9 with two more lower stages strapped on for a total of 27 Merlin engines.
The Falcon 9 can send 10K+ kg to LEO, the Falcon Heavy 32K kg. In contrast, the Shuttle can send 53K kg to LEO and the Saturn V 120K kg, so “Heavy Lift” is all relative I suppose.
Atlas V
The Atlas V is made by United Launch Alliance (= Lockheed Martin + Boeing). Kerosene + LOX going through Russian (!) built engines in the first stage. 24 launches, 23 of them successful and other 1 mostly kinda sorta successful.
These are traditional big government space companies, but with an excellent track record and commercial experience so there’s almost certainly a future for this platform.
10K – 32K kg to LEO, about the same as Falcon 9.
Liberty Launch Vehicle
The new boy on the block (I just found out about this one today). It’s basically a European Ariane 5 on top of top of a 5-segment Shuttle solid rocket booster in a “corndog” configuration. I’m skeptical (and not only me) because:
- it’s not really a Shuttle SRB, it’s a new thing that’s longer,
- ATK (i.e. Morton Thiokol of Challenger explosion fame) and Ariane are basically geared around selling to government, not industry, and
- it might be just a way of resurrecting Ares I/Constellation … and associated jobs.
Here’s more:
- Video
- Space.com
- Spaceflight Now (note references to other NASA plans to reuse 5-segment SSRBs)
DIRECT
I’m just mentioning DIRECT for fun. Soylent Green is made of people, DIRECT is made of Shuttle. It ain’t going to happen — the production lines have been winding down for years and while reuse is cool, no one wants stuff that’s complicated and blows up. They’ve made a company though – it even has a one page website.
A Quick Editorial
I believe the future of manned space will be along the path of Falcon 9 / Atlas V. The two keys to affordability are mass production and maximizing the benefit of fixed costs. Mass production is simple: one you start factory-lining Model Ts, you reach a whole market that could never sit in a hand-built Rolls Royce. For fixed costs, consider: no matter if 4 or 52 Shuttle flights are launched a year, NASA is still paying for the land, facilities and permanent staff to run that operation — what changes is the fraction you get to divide into the cost of each flight.
If inexpensive light- and medium-lift rockets are the future, how do we get to the Moon, to Mars and outwards, all of which have been pushed on the basis of Saturn V/Ares V platforms? Assembly. NASA has decades of experience of putting things together in orbit and will have plenty of time on its hands when it gets out of the launch business.
In manned space, NASA traditionally has two sides: the Wernher von Braun-launch types and the Houston capsule/payload-types. The first part has been mastered to an engineering art and it’s time to move on.