Re: Man-Rating Atlas V


Will McLean wrote:
Jonathan Goff wrote:

Will,
Which is probably adequate for a LEO ferry, but not for the CEV, which
has an explicit requirement of being roomy enough for the longer lunar
mission and having enough delta-v to come back from lunar orbit.

Of course, the particular architecture ESAS settled on was far from the
only way of skinning the cat. For instance, for the ~30klb CEV weight
under discussion, you could launch one capsule, one Bigelow Sundancer
module, and one LOX/Kero or LOX/Methane propulsion module capable of
providing the delta-V.



On the other hand, NASA was probably correct in believing that, all
other things being equal, the fewer launches the better.

If you replace the stick with the simplest Atlas V, then a two-launch
mission becomes a three-launch mission. This mission should be compared
with other three-launch options, and so on.

Just imagine if NASA needed 18 Earth Departure Stages, 2 CEVs, two crew
landers, and two cargo landers launched per year, each at about 20-25
tons. That would be a bulk order for 24 launches every year.

What would that do launch costs?

.

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