Re: An alternative to Orion/Constellation?



Jeff Findley wrote:
Such a vehicle would be much more expensive to develop than Orion.

And would be called Dynasoar.
You want to get the maximum number of people into orbit on the smallest sized rocket, you go with the capsule, not the glider or lifting body route.
ESA thought Hermes would be a great idea, Hermes became a complete mess by the time they got done designing it, and they dropped the whole concept.
Scott Lowther dug up some interesting full-color artwork on Hermes showing the non-recoverable giant rear module they ended up adding to it just to get it to work: http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=2427

Pat
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