PWR Offers Shuttle Engine Alternative
Aviation Week
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) says it could rapidly stand up an expendable space shuttle main engine (SSME) if the Obama administration decides to use a shuttle-derived throwaway heavy lifter as an alternative to the Ares I crew launch vehicle.
The company has told a White House panel reviewing human spaceflight options that it could have a sufficient number of SSMEs ready within a year using a combination of leftovers from the shuttle program and newly-built engines. It has also proposed developing a modified, lower-cost SSME as a follow-on, PWR President Jim Maser said July 14 at a Space Foundation roundtable in Washington.
Maser stressed that PWR is not advocating any particular launch vehicle architecture to the study panel, which is headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. “We’re assuming any solution they choose would have some liquid propulsion in it … We’re ready to support any architecture they recommend,” he says.
Read the full story.
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GREAT NEWS… INDEED!!!
3.5 years later my best suggestion… they’re (finally) close to find the “right way”!
now they can build MY (3.5 years old) concept of a TRUE shuttle-derived FAST-SLV “rocket kit” using the available (and already man-rated) SSME engines:
http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/005_SLVnow.html
and 17 (new and already paid) + 9 (from the shuttle fleet) SSME engines are ready available NOW and FREE to be used for tests and real missions of the new rocket!
of course, i will be much better if they can make an expendable version that costs less…
just hoping they’ll never use them for the (FAST-SLV-like but FOUR months LATER and BAD copied) seriously flawed “Direct”… http://ow.ly/hd8s
“PWR is recommending that J-2X development continue”
they’re right, but changing the engine’s specs and design goals
“has also told the Augustine panel that it could develop a different-sized upper-stage engine if needed”
another great idea! …as, after all, I’ve already suggested TWO years ago with my idea of a J-2″Y”:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/006superengine.html
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But can it serve as an upper-stage engine, any better than the original SSME could?
(Which turned out to be not at all)
UPDATE: July 21,2009 5:15pm PST A New Plasma Ion Engine Thruster has just been added to the CYRUS SPACE SYSTEM! This is the space system that NASA has been keeping from the Augustine Committee. See it at: http://www.cyrus-space-system.com WELL WORTH CHECKING OUT!