[AR] Re: starship abort?

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2023 23:24:08 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 21 Apr 2023, John Dom wrote:

Your mention there  was ever considered an F5 concept in the 60ies surprised me. Yes there were so many gargantuan rockets considered...

The launcher-design chapter in "Lunar Missions and Explorations", Leondes & Vance eds., 1964, has a number of plots of various characteristics against launcher size. The X-axis, launcher size, is usually measured as number of F-1s in the first stage, typically running from 1 to 20...!

F5s could maybe have made the shuttle unnecessary to build  the ISS and an early moon  base.

The shuttle originally was not meant for *building* those things -- it was just supposed to be the supply ship. The hardware would be launched using improved versions of the Saturn V. (When Congress finally definitively rejected further Saturn V production, on 29 July 1970, a stop-work order went out to NASA's space-station-design group the same day.)

Henry

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