NASAs SLS Rocket
All programs undergo certain milestones as they progress. One of the earliest is the Preliminary Design Review or PDR. This review process includes meticulous, detailed analyses of the entire launch vehicle. Representatives from NASA, its contractor partners and experts from across the aerospace industry validate elements of the rocket to ensure they can be safely and successfully integrated. The SLS system was started when NASA’s ARES rocket program was canceled.
“This phase of development allows us to take a critical look at every design element to ensure it’s capable of carrying humans to places we’ve never been before,” said Dan Dumbacher, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development in Washington. “This is the rocket that will send humans to an asteroid and Mars, so we want to be sure we get its development right.”
The there are two versions of the SLS, one to used to carry astronauts into space, The other is the heavy lift version which will be complete in 2030. They use common components and reuse parts of the Space Shuttle including the Rocket Engines.
“The preliminary design review is incredibly important, as it demonstrates the SLS design meets all system requirements within acceptable risk constraints, giving us the green light for proceeding with the detailed design,” said Todd May, manager of the SLS Program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. “We are on track and meeting all the milestones necessary to fly in 2017.”
The SLS is targeted for a test launch with no crew aboard in 2017, followed by a mission with astronauts to study an asteroid by as early as 2021. NASA is developing the SLS and its new Orion spacecraft to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. It will be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in the solar system.
For more information on SLS, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/sls
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They should be called millstones rather than milestones. Every dollar that goes into this boondoggle is a dollar that takes us away from a viable and permanent presence in space. The missions proposed are no part of a planned process and provide no means of proceeding further. They are high risk without particularly high rewards. As much as I detest gravity wells, the money would be better spent on a permanent Moon base or on a base on Phobos or Deimos that would basically tell us about medium sized asteroids and provide a safer jumping off point for actual missions to Mars. Someplace in all of this, we need to see some plans for sustainable space operations. If we don't do it,. the Chinese will, and they don't share very well. But, we are too busy worrying about whose district the work and jobs will be in and not worrying about our national future.
Love the "millstones" reference. As much as I love the Saturn V rocket and wish we could have another like it that time has passed. In many ways the overgrown bureaucracy of NASA has made the development of a rocket like this using government process and personal just to expensive. NASA the government entity can do it, but it will cost billions and in the long run prove to be no more reliable than a privately designed version. Case in point the Space Shuttle. It was supposedly designed to the "manned" safety rating but in practice fell short of that goal. SLS is going to be, as Ross Perot would say, the "giant sucking sound" where funds better spent elsewhere go. JWST is very much the same. As awesome and incredible is it will be it is being constructed at the expense of many other missions. I could not wait for the Hubble to launch and get on orbit, I also cannot wait to see the science JWST will product. I just hope it launches and deploys successfully or we have sacrificed many missions for nothing.