Launch vehicle

Space Launch System

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• published: 04 Jul 2013
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NASA's New Space Launch System -Todd May -Katherine Van Hooser - Barry Howell -The Co-Host SLS ANNOUNCER: The Space Launch System. NASA's new and powerful heavy launch vehicle designed to take astronauts and payloads beyond low Earth orbit into deep space. Is this the most powerful rocket NASA has ever made? Will the Co-Host gather enough technology and materials to launch his own rocket? Find out next on NASA EDGE! CHRIS: Welcome to NASA EDGE... BLAIR: ...an inside and outside look... FRANKLIN: ...at all things NASA. CHRIS: I can't believe this is our 100th episode. BLAIR: I'm amazed actually. I'm very excited that we're still doing this and still having fun at the same time. FRANKLIN: Six years doing the show I wouldn't rather be here with anybody other than you guys. CHRIS: What about our fans? Without the fans' support this wouldn't be happening. BLAIR: That's right. And in honor of our fans, everyone, go out there and download each episode a hundred times. It will be a little celebratory activity. FRANKLIN: Tell a friend. CHRIS: That's right. On today's show, we have a jam-packed show. We're going to be talking about SLS or NASA's Space Launch System. The SLS will be taking astronauts and science experiments farther into space then ever before. FRANKLIN: On this show, we're going to be bringing you a lot of information about the SLS and how it was made, its rockets and we'll even talk to a model maker who is making models of SLS. BLAIR: Don't forget NASA EDGE's own contribution to the program, which we'll hear about later. CHRIS: First, let's go and talk with Todd May who is the SLS Program Manager. He can fill us in with what SLS is all about. CHRIS: So Todd, we're celebrating our 100th episode and what better way to celebrate it than with SLS. TODD: Well, thank you for that honor and congratulations on a hundred episodes. That speaks well of your program. SLS is the Space Launch System. It's the nation's next heavy lift launch vehicle designed to take humans beyond the bounds that have constrained us for the last 40+ years. CHRIS: The Space Launch System involves a pretty big rocket, doesn't it? TODD: Even in the initial configuration it's as tall as the Statue of Liberty to put it in perspective. CHRIS: Wow! How does that compare to a Saturn V back during the Apollo program? TODD: It's a little smaller than the Saturn V in terms of initial configuration. When we get to the ultimate Block II capability, it will actually be taller than the Saturn V. Even in the first launch it will have 10% more thrust off the pad than the Saturn V did. CHRIS: It seems if you have to go beyond low-Earth orbit, if you want to go to the moon, you want to go the asteroids, to Lagrange points or to Mars, you need a pretty big rocket just to get up there, don't you? TODD: You do if you want to take humans to those places... CHRIS: Okay. TODD: ...because us, humans, are fairly needy people. We need water and our food and our clothes and our laundry and our teddy bears for those long trips. CHRIS: We were talking offline earlier and you talked about the difference of the 1969 Stingray and the 2014 Stingray. Talk about that analogy comparing it to rockets. TODD: We saw an old picture of the Apollo astronauts next to a bunch of Stingrays that Allen Bean had evidently designed the color scheme for and we happened to also hear the other day on the radio about the new Stingray they're coming out with in 2014. In some ways, we like to think it as this is not your grandfather's Stingray. This is not your grandfather's rocket. CHRIS: Right. TODD: The new Stingrays have completely new designs on the inside. The outside has roughly the same dimensions but it has computer health monitoring, nanocomposites, it actually gets better gas mileage than we had in the past. CHRIS: Right. TODD: In the same way, we used a lot of the same components we had on the Saturn V, like the J-2X engines, or on the Shuttle, the RS-25 main engines or the boosters. CHRIS: Some people might think you're using old technology from the Shuttle days and before but you're actually not because you've improved that technology over the past 30 years. TODD: That's right. Just for example, the RS-25 engines have actually been through seven different evolutions over the time of the Shuttle flights, and, even today, it is the state of the art in terms of stage combustion. As an example, one of those engines has as much power as eight Hoover Dams.