Again how do you do .5 a launch???
Quote from: HIP2BSQRE on 01/05/2013 04:15 amAgain how do you do .5 a launch???Assuming you are not being tongue-in-cheek (I know perhaps you are ), it's more like the show Two and a Half Men, just a metaphor for two full sized men and a third (half grown male) who's not as large. You have two rockets, one really large and the other about 0.5 times the size of the first (though still huge). It's the architecture that is 1.5, not the number of launches. Some might see it like a bad joke: sending up one and a half rockets in two launches.Following STS-107, Griffin felt strongly (some would say obsessively) about sending up most of the cargo on a mega CLV (cargo launch vehicle), then sending the crew on a smaller LV with as little propellant and as little hardware as possible other than their capsule, so that the crew launch would be as safe as possible. Many felt using a modified SRB for the ride up defeated that purpose and gave a particular irony to the whole notion.
The descent stage of Altair would not have had to be so oversized due to not having LOI requirement. Alternately, had they still wanted to do LOI with Altair, it would have had drop tanks rather than taking the big tanks all the way to the surface.
3) Build a completely new scalable Kerolox-core 25-100t IMLEO launcher similar to the Atlas-V Phase-2/3A - The most costly as you'll be developing just about new everything. However, it would actually be a better option if you are wedded to the "1.5-Launch" concept as you won't need a different core for your CaLV heavy lifter, just a cluster of your CLV cores and maybe a wide-body upper stage.
No ATK.Giant 5-segs and keeping ATK in the money was the biggest problem.Unfortunately... well
The best CxP, IMHO, would have been switching to all commercial launches with NASA pushing technology forward (similar to NACA, back in the day) done in parallel with NASA developing a first generation LOX/LH2 orbital fuel depot. I'd also have kept Orion, Altair, and EDS (launched on a commercial launcher). Having NASA focus more on the actual beyond LEO part of CxP should have been emphasized instead of the "1.5 launch" architecture, which only gets you to LEO when you assume the EDS is classified as part of the "beyond LEO" part of the program.