STUDY SUMMARY- SLS MISSION REQUIREMENTS AND REFERENCE VEHICLE TECHNICAL DATA

Here's an interesting short document listing some of the specifications and design requirements for the SLS vehicle, specifically relating to potential bidders for the Advanced Boosters contract. The document and summary give some facts and information about the SLS, and the snipped pics from the study give various specifications and information about the launch pad and vehicles as currently envisioned. There's also information in the report about the size limits of any Advanced Boosters and why those limits apply.

View attachment STUDY SUMMARY- SLS Mission Requirements and Reference Vehicle Technical Data.txt








Enjoy! OL JR

Luke....good stuff as always....thanks for posting! its a cool looking rocket!

Here's some of the proposals that have come out for the Advanced Booster competition...

Enjoy! OL JR

And a few more still...

OL JR

https://news.yahoo.com/audit-nasa-doesnt-money-big-rockets-213251012--politics.html

Audit: NASA doesn't have the money for big rockets

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA doesn't have enough money to get its new, $12 billion rocket system off the ground by the end of 2017 as planned, federal auditors say.





The Government Accountability Office issued a report Wednesday saying NASA's Space Launch System is at "high risk of missing" its planned December 2017 initial test flight. The post-space shuttle program would build the biggest rockets ever — larger than the Saturn V rockets which sent men to the moon — to send astronauts to asteroids and Mars.

"They can't meet the date with the money they have," report author Cristina Chaplain said. She said it wasn't because the space agency had technical problems with the congressionally-required program, but that NASA didn't get enough money to carry out the massive undertaking.

The GAO report put the current shortfall at $400 million, but did say NASA was "making solid progress" on the rocket program design.

NASA's launch system officials told the GAO that there was a 90 percent chance of not hitting the launch date at this time.

This usually means NASA has to delay its test launch date, get more money or be less ambitious about what it plans to do, said former NASA associate administrator Scott Pace, space policy director at George Washington University.

NASA is working on the problems GAO highlighted, but delaying launch or diverting money from other programs would harm taxpayers, NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier wrote in the agency's response.

"Welcome to aerospace," Pace said, pointing out that large space projects often end up as much as 50 percent over budget. He said that "is why you shouldn't believe initial cost estimates."

The space agency has been reluctant to put an overall price tag on the Space Launch System. The GAO report says it will cost $12 billion to get to the first test launch and "potentially billions more to develop increasingly capable vehicles" that could be used for launches to asteroids and Mars.

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Online:

GAO audit: https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/664969.pdf

not much surprise that they don't have the funding....but without a real defined mission, I don't see the money coming...I hope I am wrong.

would be neat to see that F-1A developed!

NJRick said:

would be neat to see that F-1A developed!

Click to expand...

F-1B... F-1A was basically an uprated and slightly simplified version of the original F-1.

F-1B is basically a new combustion chamber and nozzle and turbopump exhaust duct on the original F-1/F-1A turbomachinery. Turbopump design is about probably 3/4 or more of the work of designing a new rocket engine... hitting the pressure and flow rate goals while overcoming problems like cavitation, propellant duct induced pogo, flow rates through the nozzle sufficient to prevent hot spots and burn throughs of the combustion chamber or nozzle, and without vaporizing the propellant itself, in kerosene engines avoiding coking (where the kerosene cooks in the nozzle cooling tubes and forms solid "gunk" (carbon and other hard deposits) that can block off the passages and create a hot spot, etc. F-1B uses the original F-1/F-1A turbomachinery pretty much as-is, but drops the very labor-intensive individual tube hand-laid-up nozzle and combustion chamber, which had to be brazed in what was then one of the largest autoclaves in the world. Instead, it uses a channel-wall nozzle and combustion chamber (a design that greatly simplifies construction and manufacture of those engine components) and also drops the gas-film cooled nozzle extension of the original F-1, which consisted of thousands of high temperature alloy "shingles" overlapping each other and with small gaps around them and between them, to allow the "cool" fuel-rich turbopump gases (at only around 2000 degrees IIRC) to pass over and between them and create a "boundary layer" insulating the nozzle extension from the extremely high (5500-6000 degrees) temperature exhaust gases coming from the main combustion chamber and main nozzle, which was cooled regeneratively by the circulating kerosene passed through the tubes making up its walls. The F-1B design will drop this complex piece of construction for either an ablatively cooled nozzle extension, or one constructed from niobium or some similar extremely high temperature resistant alloy as the nozzle extension of Falcon 9's Merlin engines, which literally glows red hot as can be seen in their upper stage videos. The turbopump exhaust, which in the original F-1/F-1A was passed through an intercooler and then through a complex tapering manifold duct surrounding the nozzle, to distribute it evenly around the nozzle extension for the proper flow for film cooling as that engine was designed for. The F-1B will drop this complex set of parts for a simpler straight exhaust duct dumping the turbopump exhaust directly out the bottom of the duct at the exit plane of the main combustion chamber nozzle extension. (This means that unlike the original Saturn V liftoffs, where the flow of gases looked "dark and dirty" leaving the engine nozzle and then a few feet behind the nozzle, turned a brilliant dazzling white-hot as the turbulence behind the nozzle allowed the extremely white-hot combustion chamber gases from the inside of the nozzle to 'break through' the thin layer of much cooler (relatively speaking) turbopump exhaust gases surrounding it like a thin veil, and appear to be "chasing" the "black gases" emerging from the nozzle itself). The F-1B won't look like that in operation-- white hot gases will be pouring directly out of the nozzles, and the duct will be spewing "black gases" that then break up into flames, much more like the old Atlas launch footage or the early Saturn I launches that dumped their turbopump exhaust directly out of ducts around the base of the rocket, allowing them to pour out and then mix with air, where the remaining fuel-rich gases burn with atmospheric oxygen to make a long "tail of licking flames" as the gases disperse.

It would be a sight to see for sure! Hope that it actually happens!

OL JR