posted 08-09-2010 06:17 PM               

SpaceX unveiled its exploration vision at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference in Nashville, Tenn. "Mars is the ultimate goal of SpaceX," says Tom Markusic, director of the company's McGregor, Texas, rocket development facility.

SpaceX has focused mostly on developing vehicles to transport cargo and humans to low Earth orbit (LEO), but it now believes its Falcon 1/9 launchers could be evolved into a super-heavy-lift family that will be the basis for a Mars-capable architecture.

For the interplanetary role beyond the development of the next generation of heavy-lift launchers, Markusic says, "...we have to do nuclear thermal." Unless this happens, "spaceflight will devolve into social welfare for nerds." The California-based commercial launcher provider estimates that a Mars mission would take as many as 15 chemical-powered vehicles to perform the same mission as two nuclear-powered Earth-departure stage vehicles. The nuclear thermal vehicles would also be capable of faster transit times in the order of 170-210 days, he adds.

Basic technology for the nuclear option could be derived from the Nerva (nuclear engine for rocket vehicle applications) program, Markusic says. Nerva was a joint NASA/Atomic Energy Commission effort of the 1960s. The program included more than 17 hr. of hot-fire tests and restarts, and will provide a suitable jumping-off point for a new development, he argues. "We don't feel there would be any politically sensitive nuclear hot-fire testing needed," he adds, saying that electric heating could be used to simulate the reactor core in future tests.

posted 08-12-2010 09:11 AM               

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) founder Elon Musk says plans laid out recently by a company official for growth beyond International Space Station resupply and missions beyond low Earth orbit are not official SpaceX policy.

Referring to a presentation given at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference in Nashville, Tenn., by McGregor rocket development facility director Tom Markusic (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 5), Musk says, "Tom was throwing out a bunch of ideas for discussion."

Musk says provisional concepts for a deep space architecture were outlined as "brainstorming ideas" by Markusic. "The only thing SpaceX is intending to do for sure in the long term is to try to move toward super heavy lift," Musk says. The key element of this, as outlined in Markusic's presentation, is development of the Merlin 2 engine. "Part of it depends on NASA and its willingness to fund a portion of that. We'd certainly hope it would be a private-public partnership with NASA, because that's what it would take in the long term.