luke strawwalker
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2009
- Messages
- 9,147
- Reaction score
- 40
Well, here's a study by TRW from 1969... a 434 page monster called the "Low Cost Vehicle Study". Pretty interesting concept. The idea was, what kind of rocket would you get if you designed it with the #1 priority being "Design it cheap, build it cheap, fly it cheap". Everything else took a backseat. The entire study is predicated around the 'perceived demand' for launches in the 1973-1985 period, with this vehicle taking most of the load. The launcher they came up with was about the size of the Saturn V, but MUCH heavier because it was designed to use thick-wall pressure-fed single or quad engines with 12 million pounds of first stage thrust for a vehicle just under 10 million pounds in weight (over half again the weight of Saturn V). It would be constructed out of high strength steel for cheapness and strength to contain the 250-400 PSI propellant tank pressure to feed the engine(s) directly, and would use all hypergolic storable propellants, nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, basically the same as the Titan II. The vehicle would put about 100,000 pounds into LEO or 20,000 lbs to geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO). It would cost way less than half that of a Saturn V on a recurring (per-launch) basis. Versions down to 20 tons were envisioned, using combinations of the upper stages modified for first stage use. They also looked at combining a large pressure-fed booster stage with a hydrogen powered high-energy S-IVB stage from Saturn V to get a high performance booster... which could have been cost competitive had they reduced S-IVB costs from $20 million per stage down to $12 million... and if they had done a barrel stretch on the S-IVB to increase the propellant load by 35%, combined with the pressure fed low cost first stage would make a vehicle capable of orbiting over 200,000 lbs! Pretty impressive!
SO, here's the study summarized into the main high points dealing with the design of the vehicles and the supporting infrastructure at KSC. They also give a nice breakdown of costs and capabilities at KSC for the VAB, Pads, MLP's, LUTs, crawlers, crawlerways, MSS, etc... pretty neat stuff, because I've not seen that stuff quantified so succinctly before. I put it all in the summary.
This would make some interesting rockets to go alongside Saturn V's... maybe as "follow-on" vehicles had this path been chosen instead of the Space Shuttle...
Later! OL JR
View attachment NASA Study Summary- Low Cost Launch Vehicle Study.txt
SO, here's the study summarized into the main high points dealing with the design of the vehicles and the supporting infrastructure at KSC. They also give a nice breakdown of costs and capabilities at KSC for the VAB, Pads, MLP's, LUTs, crawlers, crawlerways, MSS, etc... pretty neat stuff, because I've not seen that stuff quantified so succinctly before. I put it all in the summary.
This would make some interesting rockets to go alongside Saturn V's... maybe as "follow-on" vehicles had this path been chosen instead of the Space Shuttle...
Later! OL JR
View attachment NASA Study Summary- Low Cost Launch Vehicle Study.txt