>>11994659Constellation also had technical and design problems too. Ares I was designed for crew-only, which is fine, but they ran into serious weight problems with Orion. Worse, they found that the Ares I was super dangerous too and had the same Black Zones that the shuttle had with regards to its SRM.
As a result they kept piling mass onto the Ares V, which was huge and kept getting bigger. Ares V was not a bad rocket, but it’s size made it damn near impossible to see ever being built. It also ran into technical issues with its engines, which meant that they had to be totally redesigned pretty much from scratch. I think the report which killed constellation noted that the engine redesign would take until “the mid 2020s”.
If I could be in charge of constellation, I would’ve done one simple change: Making Orion the same diameter as the Apollo capsule. Apollo carried three crew, but could’ve seated five using space under its seats. An Apollo capsule also massed five tons, compared to Orion’s 11.
Orion has 1.3 km/s of Delta-V and masses 26 tons. I did some math and found that a 5 ton Apollo-derived capsule+service module would mass only 17 tons for the same Delta-V.
With a 17 ton capsule that means you can either launch Orion on an EELV like Atlas V 552, or you could make an Ares I which doesn’t require a “five segment booster”, thus increasing safety and reliability. The 17 ton capsule would also save weight on the LSAM too, taking it’s mass from 46 tons down to 43 tons.
A 60 ton stack to TLI is small enough for a shuttle-diameter launcher to boost to the moon. This means you don’t need the god awful Ares V first stage, or it’s 5.5 segment boosters, and all you need are “just” the 5 segment ones. If you use four SSME’s, you also don’t need to worry about the RS-68’s.
Something like the “Esas CALV” on the right of this pic.
