U/S mass. Thin, semi pressure stabalised ACES with RL10 v a heavy, self supporting S-IVB esque upper stage (possibly with loiter ring) and J2-X.
Heavy (5-seg) and Heavy Stretched (5-seg and ~35% increased Core capacity) variants both break the middle case and would require a more robust Crawler design, incurring significant extra costs and schedule impacts.
Not at all Ross, it's all relevant. How come Ares V was so much heavier?
Let's see...if we follow the money trail, and politics, I'd give it more than a 50% chance of having a new crawler, crawlerway, ML...(you taught us well...hehe)I for one hope it doesn't come to that. But there certainly is a case to build a new crawler in the forseable future for a Mars variant launch vehicle, keeping one unit operational and the other as a donor vehicle.
Quote from: robertross on 08/14/2010 12:26 amLet's see...if we follow the money trail, and politics, I'd give it more than a 50% chance of having a new crawler, crawlerway, ML...(you taught us well...hehe)I for one hope it doesn't come to that. But there certainly is a case to build a new crawler in the forseable future for a Mars variant launch vehicle, keeping one unit operational and the other as a donor vehicle.That is my biggest fear too.If they don't work hard to ensure that this becomes a cost-effective and sustainable system, I believe it will get canceled by the next administration, in a similar way to how Ares got canceled by this one.But if this happens again in 4 years time, a lot of other companies will be much better positioned to take over the entire operation and I believe NASA would find itself permanently removed from the marketplace -- if they are not smart enough to get it right this time.Ross.
Is it true they are also called Hans and Franz?
The names Hans and Franz come from the old Saturday Night Live skits with Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon--they were characters called Hans and Franz-they were body-builders with the i guess German accent and they were here to pump you up. This was mentioned by a crawler driver in the 1994 Discovery channel program "The Space Shuttle" thats how know about it.
Jupiter-130/246 stacked on a new ML with a full-size 750 ton Apollo/Ares-I style LUT (service and umbilicals combined) will exceed the Crawler's capabilities.