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Home Front: Tech
Monster Rocket Launches Today
2004-12-12
A lot more than a dummy satellite is riding on the successful first flight of the super-sized Delta 4 Heavy rocket set to blast off today. The future of United States rocketry, and perhaps the nation's plans to send people to the moon and Mars, faces a major turning point when The Boeing Co. lights the three engines on the most powerful rocket launched from Cape Canaveral besides the Saturn 5 and the space shuttle. The thundering roar, which will be heard and felt for dozens of miles, will slowly lift the rocket off Pad 37B on a mission to prove Boeing's concept of strapping three Delta 4 core boosters together to create a launcher capable of delivering more cargo to orbit than NASA's shuttle...

"We redesigned this engine with simplification in mind," said Mike Costas, a program manager for the RS-68 engine for Boeing's Rocketdyne division. "It's very simple to build." Yet, "it's the largest hydrogen-fueled rocket engine in the world," Costas said. What does that mean? Quite simply, more power. Each of the three engines create more than 660,000 pounds of thrust and 17 million horsepower. That's about the equivalent of 850 Boeing 747s. The engines are not exactly fuel-efficient either, consuming a ton of propellant per second or five tanker-trailer loads per minute...
Hoping for eventual 150 ton payloads. (Insert 'Monster Island' joke here.)
Posted by:Anonymoose

#7  Here's an interesting reference link for those interested...
Posted by: .com   2004-12-12 11:18:56 PM  

#6  AC: If you look again at the Titan4B data sheet, you'll find " Payload: 5,760 kg. to a: Geosynchronous orbit".

The 21k Kg payload is to 150 mile orbit at 28 degree inclination.
Posted by: Unagum Elminelet3876   2004-12-12 9:58:35 PM  

#5  A bonus would be a wave of potentially suicidal depression among eco-wackies and media disinformationists.

LOL!
Posted by: Shipman   2004-12-12 4:56:07 PM  

#4  Payload shamayload, Ima talk Thrust! The rest of the exercise is weight management. :)
Posted by: Shipman   2004-12-12 4:54:04 PM  

#3  

Today's launch was scrubbed because of a computer glitch, they'll try again tomorrow.
In fact, the D-IV Heavy does outlift the Titan IVB (25K kg payload to LEO vs. 21K) and does so at less than half the launch cost (170M vs. 430M).
Both outdo the Golden Killer-Goose (aka "Shuttle") by a huge margin.
Saturn I-B's LEO payload was around 20K kg and Saturn V's 110K.

It is interesting that this is an all liquid-fuel rocket, like the Saturns and unlike other recent US heavy lift boosters. Some analysts have asserted that reliance on solids is a false economy in a really well run program (something we haven't had for a long time).
With a NERVA-derived nuclear upper stage replacing the RL-10, LEO payload would double at no increase in cost. A bonus would be a wave of potentially suicidal depression among eco-wackies and media disinformationists.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy   2004-12-12 3:13:11 PM  

#2  Not quite on par with this 'en yet tho.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-12-12 2:07:59 PM  

#1  Wow! We've invented an improved Saturn IB!
Posted by: Shipman   2004-12-12 2:03:19 PM  

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