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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 97 - Tahoe - March 2006
Agenda Location	5 SUBCOMMITTEE B - MISSILES AND SPACE 5.1 Launch Vehicles for NASA's Exploration Program
Title	Launch Vehicles for NASA's Exploration Program
Presenter	Donald Sauvageau
Affiliation	ATK Thiokol
Available Downloads*	presentation
	Downloads are available to members who are logged in and either Active* or attended this meeting.
Abstract	President George W. Bush set the bold vision and charter for NASA to take the next steps in the exploration of our solar system. This exploration initiative provides unique opportunities for the space community to work closely with NASA to accomplish tasks that have not been matched since the Apollo era. In order for the NASA exploration initiative to be successful, it must come up with approaches that are affordable and sustainable, within a realistic schedule and budget environment, and are consistent with the overall projections contained in the President’s exploration vision announcement. In order to have a sustainable and affordable program, the aerospace industry team, which includes NASA and contractors, must concentrate their limited resources on developing hardware that specifically accomplishes the overall exploration mission and minimizes the investment in the launch vehicle by using hardware that already exists or can be easily adapted to support the overall exploration vision. Launch vehicles with significant lift capability can be configured using elements from the current Space Transportation System (STS). By taking advantage of the current STS propulsion elements, capabilities can be provided to deliver up to 300,000 lb of cargo to low earth orbit. There is also the potential to configure STS elements into a complimentary crew launch vehicle (CLV) that could lift a Crew Exploration Vehicle in excess of 40,000 lbm to low earth orbit. All STS-derived launch vehicles take advantage of the flight proven, human rated propulsion elements, thus ensuring early successful demonstrations of highly reliable launch vehicles. The STS-derived configurations offer a logical evolutionary path of increasing capabilities that could support and enable the NASA Exploration Initiative, providing significant flexibility in the formulation of architectural approaches.