NASA Space Launch System. The SLS Rocket.

Greenlantern101

Super Hero And All Round Good Guy
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Taller than the Statue of Liberty. Designed to take man to Mars. The SLS will be the biggest rocket ever built. Even bigger than the Apollo missions Saturn V's.

Capable of lifting 75metric tons in its first iteration before being able to lift 130 tons for the deep space missions. SLS will be capable of taking astonauts to an asteriod, the moon and ultimately, going to Mars.

First test flight is set for 2018 and with the successful test of the new booster yesterday things look like they are on schedule. The new booster is based on the shuttles booster design but bigger. It develops 3.6 million pounds of thrust. Mind numbing figures. If you want to see glowing concrete you have come to the right place.


http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html#.VQFvB2SsUqc

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Is this a block one booster test or the bigger block two?

I thought the block ones were still going to use the 5 segment space shuttle boosters already in service. These will be used on the LEO missions while the new boosters will be used for the later BEO missions ?
 
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Ok. No doubt the design has changed then due to the delay in funding. It makes sense to use the one booster. I think the original plans called for two 5 segment shuttle boosters on the 70t varient and 2 new SRB derived boosters for the 130t.

I've not seen a mock up of the 4 booster 130t version however, that's going to look seriously awesome.
 
Seeing that dump about twenty billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere makes me want to turn my telly off at night to save the planet...
 
The SRB's are made of pretty harmful stuff but the main engines are powered by Hydrogen and Oxygen. It's one giant steam engine. No need for a lack of TV mate.
 
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